YA and Middle Grade Picks By File 770 Readers

Compiled by DMS. Readers’ favorite middle grade and young adult titles culled from the comments section of File 770 have been posted at Goodreads under the heading “That wretched hive of scum and villany recommends MG and YA”.

DMS explains her strategy for editing the list:

For series, I have only included the first book unless an omnibus showed up in search. Recommendations for authors that didn’t include specific books have not been listed.

If you are a File 770 commenter and I missed your recommendation, please feel free to add to the list!

Goodreads always makes lists look so nice by adding the cover art.

17 thoughts on “YA and Middle Grade Picks By File 770 Readers

  1. Neat. I completely missed this, but I got two other YA picks that could be added:

    Corrine Duyvis’ Otherbound and Laura Ruby’s Bone Gap.

    The first has a protagonist who every time he closes his eyes, he looks out of the eyes of the servant girl bound to a dethroned princess on the run in a fantasy world. Every time he closes his eyes. Even when he blinks. And he has no control over it and he feels everything he feels, including her pain…

    The second is what happens when the fairy prince taking home his bride looks slightly more like a kidnapping than love at first sight…

  2. Nice list- are only books that are currently in print allowed? Because I can make a number of older YA recommendations that are still easily found on Amazon.com.

  3. I’ll get Otherbound and Bone Gap added in the next few minutes. Anyone with a goodreads account can add titles to the list as well.

    If it’s in the database, it can be added to the list with a simple search. If it’s not in the database, it can be manually added to the database by any goodreads librarian (myself, for example) and then added to the list.

    Also, hey everybody, I have my own tag now!

  4. Oooh, useful!

    I have a Goodreads account, but I haven’t been active there since a pack of self-published authors went on the attack against readers and reviewers they disapproved of. It was pretty scary, and also when I became painfully aware of how inadequate the moderation on that site was.

    But I’d be glad to look at the list. Thanks for compiling it.

  5. Yeah, I stopped reviewing there when the owners decided the best way to deal with those authors was to delete reviews where readers discussed them and send us emails warning us to behave. Now my reviews are all on booklikes.

    But . . . the cataloging and list making features on gr are so much nicer than anywhere else, I still use it for that.

  6. Pfft. I’ve been off Goodreads for two or three years now and I still get numerous emails every week that someone has liked one of my lists or reviews. I got an email from the admins a year after I left thanking me for being one of their most valuable contributors.

    If I was so valuable to the site, how come they let the jackals take over?

  7. Uh, sorry. That was kind of grumpy.

    Thanks so much for compiling the list. It’s a great help for those of us who need to find books for young persons.

  8. “Uh, sorry. That was kind of grumpy.”

    But you’re not wrong. I refuse to use the site but for the barest maintenance of my own books – and I used to be a frequent contributor and user too 🙁

  9. Are these too old to be on the list? the’re old favorites of mine. They’re still available on Amazon:

    H.M. Hoover: Children of MorrowTia and Rabbit are telepathic, and outcasts in their primitive post-apocalyptic society. After killing someone in self-defense, they have to flee, guided only by a mysterious voice in their dreams.

    H.M. Hoover: The Rains of Eridan A research scientist on a newlycolonized world witnesses a murder- the sole survivor tells of a mysterious Fear that’s sweeping the research base. And then the rains begin, and the sleepers awake…

    Alexander Key: The Forgotten Door: All Jon knows is that he’s fallen and lost his memory, and every around him is strange. But the kind family that takes him in realizes that he’s far stranger than he seems, and his abilities put him- and them- in danger…

  10. Me too. Got THE FORGOTTEN DOOR, along with THE GNOME-MOBILE and ESCAPE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN (I think that was the title) from the Scholastic Book Club.

  11. I honestly would have put Escape to Witch Mountain on, except it had he Disney movie cover, and I had to go have a lie down.

    Here’s another oldie:

    John Christopher: The Tripods Trilogy Many years after the tripods came to Earth and took over, humanity is used to being capped- except Will, who along with his friends plots to escape to freedom…

    And a modern one:

    Scott Westerfield: The Leviathan Trilogy. In an alternate universe, one where mecha war with bioengineered monsters, World War One is about to break out. Prince Aleksander of Austrio-Hungary is betrayed and on the run. Deryn Sharp is a crewman on the living zeppelin Leviathan- and secretly a girl. When the two meet, it may change the course of the war…

  12. @Rose

    I am sure John Christopher was mentioned on one thread as was some John Wyndham. As were some others – I am sure I mentioned Railsea too. Also I think the subthread was asking for middle grade 9-12 recommendations rather than specifically YA otherwise I would have added a few more.

    I also note that there are 3 Agatha H. books on the Goodreads list, rather than just the first book.

    @Peace

    I’m a LibraryThing user not a Goodreads user. I’ve heard very little of that kind of thing going on there.

  13. Huh, apparently, I can only add 100 books to a list! I got as far as forgotten door before hitting the limit. Can someone else add the others mentioned after that to the list?

    andyl, I added everything that was mentioned by title, but if a series name was mentioned I just added the first book.

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