Flashback Friday: Why Fall is My Favorite

Welcome to Week Twenty-Three of Flashback Fridays where the old and new collide on everything from books to movies to first loves to favorite vacations. This week I'm looking back on my favorite time of year: Fall

Whenever the air gets crisp and the leaves start to fall, I'm instantly transported back to Fall's Past. I love Fall because of the weather, the beauty of the changing leaves, the promise of holidays like Halloween, Thanksgiving, and my most favorite of all, Christmas. I love that Fall brings the smell of burning wood in neighbors fireplaces and bums me out because I have gas logs, lol. Sure, Fall is symbolic of death and decay as it moves towards the hardening winter, but for me, it's all about love with its promise of family get togethers and friends hanging out. It's also a blossoming of pumpkins and gourds.

Some of my favorite memories of childhood revolve around Fall. At the small elementary school I went to, we had a Halloween Carnival for many years until the political correctness got it changed to a "Fall Festival" instead. There were cake walks, a "haunted boiler room", bingo, grab bags full of cheap plastic fun, goodies for sale--it was wonderful. Since it was a small community, you could pretty much bet on hanging out with your best buds all day since our parents all took turns helping out. If I close my eyes, I can still smell the fresh popcorn from the concession stand and see myself running from booth to booth with my friends under a clear, cloudless sky.

One of my favorite books from childhood that dealt with Fall and Halloween was Popcorn by Frank Asch. I read this every time I went to my family doctor--he seemed to never get too many new books for kids, lol. The plot is Sam, the bear, is left alone when his parents go to a costume party. Sam then decides to throw a party of his own, and he dresses up in a costume and invites all of his bear friends over. Each friend has individually come up with the idea to bring a package of popcorn, and after having some fun at the party, someone gets the idea to pop all of the popcorn together in a big black kettle. The popcorn soon fills the house up to the ceiling, out the windows, etc, and the young bears spend the rest of the night eating popcorn in order to fix the problem. After Sam cleans up, his parents return home with a gift of....wait for for it....POPCORN! The final picture is awesome of Sam, with his distended little belly from eating too much popcorn, looking at the gift like, "I'm going to puke!"

My absolute favorite Baby-Sitters Club book deals with Fall. Sure, #2 Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls was tre cool with it's October setting just before the Halloween Hop with Claudia being pranked with heavy breathing phone calls at baby-sitting jobs(I'm getting a When a Stranger Calls flashback here), but my favorite, favorite is #17 Mary Anne's Bad Luck Mystery. The plot centers around Mary Anne, who was my favorite BSC character by the way, receiving a chain letter, which she ignores. Shortly after, she receives a bad luck charm in the mail with scary as shit cut out lettering that reads, "Wear this bad luck charm or ELSE!" Then, things start getting batshit crazy not just for Mary Anne, but for all the BSC. Claudia gets a hella lot of millage out of her catch phrase "Oh Lord!" on some epically horrifying babysitting jobs. The girls head to the library to find ancient books to help ward off the evil of the Bad Luck Charm. And once again, the Halloween Hop makes an appearance. Of course, this year Mary Anne has her hunka hunka burning Kentucky love, Logan Bruno to take her. In the true fashion that Logan can only be a boyfriend formed in fiction, he and Mary Anne don black spandex costumes with furry headdresses to go as cats from the musical Cats. I have a feeling if Logan had really showed up like that, his buddies would have kindly handed him his balls back. The best comes at the end when Mary Anne realizes that Cokie Mason, who has a hella crush on Logan, mentioned her "bad luck" charm at the dance, and that no one outside the BSC knows about it. The BSC unite forces to come up with a way to get back at Cokie, Grace, and their other Mean Girl friends by turning the tables on them when Mary Anne receives a final note to meet at the cemetery at midnight on Halloween. Gah, it's awesome.

So what are some of your favorite Fall memories or Fall inspired books?

Flashback Friday: Summer Vacations

Welcome to Week Ten of our fabulous segment Flashback Fridays where the old and new collide on everything from books to movies to first loves to favorite vacations.

This week we're flashingbacking to those fabulous summer vacations--you know, the ones you still remember to this day. Maybe they took you to wild and exotic locations, maybe they helped you to conquer fears like going on a rollercoaster or parasailing at the beach, or maybe they resembled something out of the Grizzwald's vacation to Wally World(sure hope none of you had a dead relative strapped to the luggage rack of the Family Truckster!).

But the vacations of your teenage years are probably most memorable because they held heart racing, gut wrenching first loves--I may or may not be able to still remember the guy's name I met in Panama City Summer of 94....eesh!
One of the best "summer vacation books" has to be The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. It's the first summer best friends, Lena, Carmen, Tibby, and Bridget are separated as each ventures off on different summer plans--Lena to Greece to visit her grandparents(enter hunky Greek god), Bridget goes to soccer camp in Mexico and plays on and off the field with her enter hunky, young soccer mentor. While Carmen visits her dad in South Carolina and also manages to find a hunky soon to be step-brother. And then Tibby...well, she really doesn't have an enter hunky dude in the first book. She stays at home, works on a film, and befriends a young, dying girl.

While time seemed to stand still in Stoneybrook and the members of the Baby-Sitters Club stayed in 8th grade long enough to qualify for Social Security, they did manage to take some AWESOME summer vacations. Who could forget their memorable turn as counselors as Camp Mohawk? But seriously, Ann M, could we have found a better name less offensive to Native Americans? Why not "camp runs with babysitters"? Then there was summer they all went to Sea City on the Jersey Shore--of course that would be pre-Snookie and the Situation drunken Jersey Shore. As sugary-sweet G rated as the BSC was, I can't imagine Claudia and Stacy getting in bar fight, or one of the Barrett kids almost drowning because Logan Bruno had stopped watching them to go lift weights and tan. Speaking of Logan, doesn't he kinda look like a Zach Morris rip-off in this cover?

So what are your favorite summer vacation reads?

Flashback Fridays: Those Memorable Books We Grew Up With

We're starting a new weekly segment at GotYA called Flashback Fridays. We'll be talking about everything from books to movies to first loves to favorite vacations as well as relating them to the YA literature scene. We'll be "flashbacking" on our own blogs, but most of all, we want YOUR participation as well. So, mark Fridays as your blog days to gaze into the past and smile!

The first ever Flashback Friday is on the books we grew up with. The ones that have stuck with us after all these years for both good and bad reasons. Think of the books your favorites and blog about them!

Here's the links to our personal Flashback Fridays: Krista, Jamie, Debra, Veronica

Jennifer

Are You There God It’s Me Margaret, Superfudge, Ramona, the Pest, The Babysitters Club, Sweet Valley Twins and Sweet Valley High, Harry Potter, & Fear Street. Hearing these titles can make us salivate on cue like Pavlov’s dogs. Why? Because us they take us back to the excitement of devouring books and before the pressures of life’s responsibilities robbed us of our coveted reading time. But not only that, they were our first forays into Young Adult literature.

So, sit back as we take a stroll down memory lane with some books that may or may not be familiar...

Ah, The Baby-sitters Club…there was someone for everyone: the jock, the artist, the California girl, the sensitive one, the dancer, the writer, and the hip NYC fashionista. What about sporting

Team Logan or Team Alan shirts back in the day? You know for Logan Bruno, Mary Anne Speir’s Southern hottie with the drawl, and Alan Gray, the immature pest who couldn’t man up and tell Kristy his feelings? Okay, maybe not.

The Babysitters Club is being resurrected, and no, not like Claudia and the Art School Zombie Crush! Like a lot of us who are growing older, they’re being dusted off and revamped. Here’s some information about the relaunch.

Babysitters Club Set for Relaunch

The Babysitters Club Returns

Want an absolutely HILARIOUS recap of your favorite BSC books? Then you must, and I do mean must, check out BSC Headquarters. Tiff, a 20 something gal, is blogging as she rereads through her old BSC books. I spent way too many hours spitting coke zero on my computer screen at some of the recaps.

If you couldn’t get enough of Claudia’s crazy digs, then check out What Claudia Wore. It not only breaks down Claudia’s fashion forward, er, perhaps worst dressed moments, but it recaps the other characters as well along with a healthy dose of witty repartee.

You might have been under a rock if you never read one of the Ramona Quimby books growing up. If you’re feeling especially nostalgic, you can check out the upcoming Ramona movie, Beezus and Ramona, with Selena Gomez, Joey King, and my own personal favorite, John Corbett. It’s premiering in July. And how cool is it that author Beverly Cleary began penning novels in the 1950’s, and she is now 94 years old! Go Beverly!

How many of us gleefully scared the pants off our preteen selves by reading the Fear Street books? RL Stine gave us a diverse variety of characters and settings, but the creepy factor rang true in all the books.

Good girl, bad girl. Good sister, spawn of Satan sister. Before we were old enough to realize how a lot of soap operas delved into the cliche evil twin brother or sister, it was happening prime time in the Sweet Valley Twins and then Sweet Valley High books. Okay, maybe Jessica wasn’t evil. But come on, she was a megabitch, right? Most of us felt sorry for poor Elizabeth at one time or another, but it didn't keep us away from seeing just what antics Jessica would get into next.

And how bout' those classics? Anne of Green Gables with the daring and precocious "Anne with an E", her wonderful Gilbert, her bosom friend Diana, and the stern, but loving Marilla.

And the Little House on the Prairie series with Laura, her sisters Mary and Carrie, along with Pa and Ma told the story of a family overcoming the odds on the harsh, untamed frontier with love and laughter.

Now it's your turn to tell us about your favorite books from childhood. Leave us a comment with your link.