Vampires Don't Wear Polka Dots
Marcia Jones, Debbie Dadey
1990

I’m choosing book one as a representation for my love of the series as a whole. One of my favorites in the series was Sea Monsters Don't Ride Motorcycles, honestly, I always thought the green girl on the front was really hot. My other favorite was Knights Don’t Teach Piano. In 3rd grade my mother enrolled my twin sister and I in piano lessons. Every Thursday she would pick us up from school and take us to Mrs. Pipers’ house. Lessons were half an hour long, while each of us was waiting for the other to finish we could either stay in her living room or go outside. Inside held a table full of Eye Spy books, I thought these were amazing. Outside was a blacktop about 10 by 10 feet wide with a pullup bar and a big spinny wheel, one of the dangerous ones that have since been removed from parks around the country.

Blizzard of the Blue Moon
Mary Pope Osborne
2006

At the back of me edition was a translucent sticker meant to cling on to a window. At some point my parents let me take it out and stick it on the glass door that led to our backyard. This is the first time I had ever heard of or learned the term “Blue Moon” and I thought I was the bees knees for telling my friends this very cool and interesting fact I had learned from the book. My edition was covered in sparkly glitter and filled with illustrations. The glittery cover made it feel more special than any of the other Magic Treehouse books, or any other books I owned back then.

The Ruins of Gorlan
John Flanagan
2004

At some point the author mentioned how the plains the characters were travelling through were always windy because there was nothing to block the wind. I don’t know how true this is but coming from someone who has lived on the Great Plains their entire life, I’ve never been able to get this “fact” out of my mind. After reading book 1 I immediately got book 2 and kept reading until I finished every book in the series. This is the first series I have memories of laying on my bed until past midnight to finish the story. I wouldn’t go to sleep until I finished the next book.

The Lightning Thief
Rick Riordan
2005

Every week in 5th grade my teacher gave us quiet time to read. Almost every student in the entire class was reading The Lightning Thief. I imagine this is what Harry Potter was like for some people, but never before nor since have I seen so many people reading the same book. It was much more common for students to bring Tech Decks and Sillybandz than it was to bring a DS or Gameboy.

Mrs. Vlakanciks 5th grade class was the first time I ever used PowerPoint; she had all of us spend 3 months making a presentation on a country, in my case, Ireland. Every Friday she would pull down the projector and slide in a disc from her DVD copy of BBC’s Planet Earth. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced before.

The Maze of Bones
Rick Riordan
2008

As orphans, for most of their lives Amy and Dan have been raised by their grandmother. The book begins on the day of her funeral. The series takes the siblings on an breath taking adventure around the world and I was thrilled for every minute of it. My favorite line in book one is Amy criticizing Dan for leaving his coat unzipped when it’s cold out. Dan responds along the lines of ‘Cool kids don’t zip it up all the way.’

Back in Time with Benjamin Franklin
Dan Gutman
2005

In chapter one the main character mentions his screen saver, a space background with flying toasters. It wasn’t until years later I learned it was called After Dark. I was also a big fan of The Million Dollar Strike and The Homework Machine.