My Favorite Series of Juvenile Literature

I shared this on facebook earlier this year, but apparently didn't post it here.  Slightly updated since then, having now added the Ranger's Apprentice series by John Flanagan.  The list includes series of three or more books of juvenile literature: These are my favorites, based especially on my experience in reading them aloud to my children over the years.  I expect that the list will continue to be modified and to grow in the months and years ahead, but here is where it stands so far.  Enjoy, y'all.

Harry Potter, by J. K. Rowling

Gregor (Underland), by Suzanne Collins

Great Brain, by John D. Fitzgerald

Narnia, by C. S. Lewis

Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander

Beyonders, by Brandon Mull

Ranger's Apprentice, by John Flanagan

Mr. Benedict, by Trenton Lee Stewart

The Missing, by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Tales of Magic, by Edward Eager

Fablehaven, by Brandon Mull

Percy Jackson, by Rick Riordan

Jimmy Coates, by Joe Craig

Jack Blank, by Matt Myklusch

Michael Vey, by Richard Paul Evans

Five Children and It (Psammead), by E. Nesbit

Shadow Children, by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Ordinary Boy, by William Boniface

Peter & the Starcatchers, by Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson

Tunnels, by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams

Keys to the Kingdom, by Garth Nix

Edge Chronicles, by Paul Stewart & Chris Riddell

WondLa, by Tony DiTerlizzi

Redwall, by Brian Jacques

Everything Has Something to do with the Beatles

"'Charlie, it's not a game. I'm afraid it's desperately serious.'

"'Serious games are the only kind of game I like.'

"So Oliver gave Charlie the same rundown that he had given to Mrs. Pearson, only he tried to make this version shorter and more to the point.

"When he was finished, Charlie looked at him in a friendly — in fact, in a slightly too friendly — manner.

"'Oliver,' he said, 'if that's, like, your reality, cool. Your parents are like, also really supportive about this?'

"'I haven't told them.'

"Charlie looked as if he was repressing a smile.

"'Charlie, this is serious. Anyway, what does "supportive" mean?'

"For a second Charlie looked lost. 'It's — uh — it's an American word that means, sort of, you may be nuts but you have a right to be nuts in your own way. Hey, I like your thinking on this, Ollie. We had to do something like it for credit in symbolic archetype class — that's what they used to call English, but Randi decided to change it. Now we do archetypal symbolic information analysis. I mean, we each had to create our own myth, and draw our own mandala and everything. And then we had to, like, analyze everybody's archetypes. Personally, I'm thinking of becoming a Buddhist. They worship lettuce.'

"'Charlie, you don't understand. This is desperately serious. This is real.'

"'Hey, Ollie,' Charlie said reprovingly, and he held up a finger solemnly. 'Like the Beatles said, nothing is real.'

"'This is real.'

"'On the other hand,' said Charlie Gronek, settling down with a pillow on Oliver's bed, 'they also said although she feels as if she's in a play, she is anyway. Which is different.'

"'Charlie, this has absolutely nothing to do with the Beatles.'

"'Oliver, sooner or later everything has something to do with the Beatles.'

"Charlie reflected for a moment. 'Okay. I can't see any fun for me in not believing you. And if I do believe you — why, it could be fun. So I believe you, Ollie.'

"Oliver was unhappy, and he threw himself back down on his bed.

"'That's not really believing me, Charlie. Believing me for fun is not the same thing as believing me.'

"'Well, maybe that's the way we believe things in America. Anyway, no one else believes you right now, so you might as well take my kind of believing'" (The King in the Window, 136-37).

The Point of Rhetoric

From The King in the Window (2005), by Adam Gopnik:

"'Imagine all the people looking in their windows, searching for their joy through the lens of their longing! The small boy staring at a train in a toy store window. The woman wanting a hat in the window of Christian Dior; a hungry man staring in the window of the pâtissier who desires a mille-feuilles that he denies himself . . .'

"Oliver seemed to see the people as Racine named each one: the little boy looking into a department store on Christmas Eve on a chilly Parisian boulevard, and the middle-aged lady in her gray suit staring at the hat, and the fat man desiring his pastry, all of them filled with longing as they stared into windows. . . .

"Racine's speech might be very rhetorical, Oliver thought — very fancy and full of metaphors — but it was also extremely affecting, and for the first time Oliver could really see the point of rhetoric. It dressed up ordinary things in fancy paper, and then let you unwrap them in your mind, like presents.

"Racine shut his eyes and paused, and then his chant continued. 'Just think about all the people looking out! The lonely bachelor staring out the window of his study at the children playing in the field below . . . the longing lover peering through the window where the beauties flow . . . the museum guard staring out at the busy street . . .'

"And once again Oliver could see with Racine all the lonely people, the sad old man and the unhappy lover and the rest, all looking out of windows at the things they longed for. He reached out to touch them, but his hand passed right through them" (The King in the Window, 75-76).