80s Books

The Scholastic Book Fair. Collecting and trading bookmarks. Drawing in the margins of schoolbooks but keeping your Babysitter’s Club books pristine of even the slightest page crinkle. Reading by flashlight after bedtime or curled up in the back of the bus. The 80s were an explosion of tie-in books for the many toy lines anbd tv series but also brought out literary gems that continued in the YA tradition of the late 70s of portraying the experience of being a kid more realistically.

On the flip side, book series were massive sellers that went on seemingly forever, from the multiple Choose Your Own Adventure books to Sweet Valley High and Babysitters Club, and Scary Stories to tell in the Dark- we all saved up our pennies to get the newest edition from Waldenbooks or the school book fair.

Picture Books were aplenty and every cartoon series had them. When the adventures ran out on screen, we could still follow Optimus Prime through books to be read over and over. Notable non-TV picture books included Cloudy with  a Chance of Meatballs, the Serendipity books (Leo the Lop, etc), If You Give a Mouse  A Cookie, The Snowy Day and a plethora of reprint and new Little Golden Books.

And reprints were also gaining new life in the 80s-books like Little House on the Prairie, A Wrinkle in Time and Black Beauty found a whole new generation with brand new covers. 

Our older brothers and sisters (and be honest- us too) were digging Stephen King and Judy Blume, Roahld Dahl and Katharine Patterson, Lois Lowry and Gary Paulson. And of course someone was always sampling their mother’s stash of Harlequin books…  (I have no idea who you are talking about!)