Simone Reddington

Over the last couple of years there is absolutely no denying that we, as a society, cannot get enough of y2k culture. Whether it’s the renaissance of Sophie Ellis-Bexter’s Murder on the Dancefloor in the charts, the recent remake of Mean Girls or the fact that stylish young people are happy to be seen wearing Crocs in public; the appreciation for these noughties trends suggest that we are all nostalgic for the era before social media and the internet took over our lives. As a 26 year old, I was a preteen during this pivotal first decade of the twenty-first century so I cannot comment on whether clubbing really was more fun before we had smartphones to record everything and can only use the price of Freddos to compare how much cheaper the cost of living was 20 years ago. Instead I yearn for a time when I had no responsibilities and could spend the majority of time with my nose in a book. Even while I was studying for my English Literature degree, I wasn’t reading anywhere near as many books as I did between the ages of 7-13. If you’re also approaching you’re late-twenties and also loved reading as a child, here are the book series that you probably loved but may have forgotten all about within the last decade or so.

1. Harry Potter- Okay, let’s start with the most basic one. Let’s ignore the fact that the author is a transphobe who has since alienated herself from her audience with her hateful views, I simply could not compile any list about Young Adult fiction without mentioning the Boy Wizard who went to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. J.K Rowling changed Young Adult fiction forever when she first published Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 1997 as the genre was not previously considered to be very marketable. However the world went mad for Potter, with bookshops opening at midnight for fans to pick up the copy of the final novel in 2007. Truly a cultural zeitgeist.

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2. Rainbow Magic- I only found out that the author of these books, Daisy Meadows, is a penname for a team of ghost writers when I was researching for this article but it does make sense as poor Daisy would have been worked to the bone if she wrote all 200 titles in the Rainbow Magic series. I received the first 7 books in a boxset for Christmas and re-read them several times, so I was over the moon when I found the many more titles in my local library. The series follows two young girls who are trusted to help protect the fairies in a magical kingdom from the evil Jack Frost. Each book is named after a different fairy and they are grouped by various themes, the colours of the rainbow fairies and the days of the week are just a couple of examples.  I can imagine that they were inspired by Barbie as they encouraged young girls to pursue an enormous range of interests and hobbies. Please can this be Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie’s next film project?  

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3. Animal Ark- Another epic series published under the pen name of multiple authors, these books were about the daughter of two vets who owned a surgery in the Yorkshire dales, and the adventures that she embarked on to protect the various animals she found in the village around her. Just thinking about the 70+ Animal Ark stories is making me nostalgic for being an animal-obsessed preteen who did not care about what I looked like or what other people thought about me.  

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4. Heartland- As I got a bit older, my love for animals evolved into the obsession with horses that many teenage girls go through at some point. I may not have owned own pony, but I could borrow any children’s paperback with a horse on the front cover, which was the next best thing. The ‘Heartland’ books by Lauren Brooke, with dramatic titles such as After the Storm and One Day You’ll Know and photographs of a young girl stroking a horse while staring wistfully into the camera, were always the most popular.  The protagonist of the books was a teenage girl who lived on a ranch in Virginia, where she healed traumatised horses alongside the brooding stable-hand who eventually became her boyfriend.  I just remember wanting to be exactly like her when I grew up. Also, who knew that the teenage male model on the front covers was actually a young Scott Disick before he found fame by marrying Kourtney Kardashian? My mind is blown.

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5. Secrets at St. Jude’s- If I couldn’t live on a farm with 21 horses, my other unrealistic wish was to go to boarding school which was the setting of many books I read.  Carmen Reid’s Secrets at St Jude’s books were a twenty-first century version of Enid Blyton’s school stories that our mums and grans loved.  The protagonist was an American it-girl, Gina, who was sent to an all-girl school in Scotland and expected to hate it, but ended up finding a great bunch of friends who get each other through the pains of being a teenage girl.  The plot appears heavily inspired by the 2008 classic chick-flick, Wild Child, but they were so fun to read.  

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6. Ally’s World- Fun fact: I came across the first title in Karen McCrombie’s ‘Ally’s World’ series on a family holiday in Norway when I ran out of reading material and The Past, the Present and the Loud, Loud Girl was the only children’s book in the town’s local library that was printed in English.  The witty protagonist, Ally Love, lived in North London with her dysfunctional siblings and she just seemed the epitome of cool to me. Criminally underrated books. 

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7. My Story- Like most bookworms, my favourite subject in school was English but it was closely followed by History.  As I got older, my interest waned, and I didn’t take it further than GCSE, but I still enjoy learning about how people lived in the past.  For this I must credit the ‘My Story’ books, which took the form of fictional young people’s diaries set during historical eras such as the Industrial Revolution and the Plague.  Not only were these books an important educational tool, but they also demonstrated how people still laughed and cried like we do all those years ago. 

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8. Roman Mysteries- As a history-mad bookworm, it only made sense that I also loved Caroline Lawrence’s ‘The Roman Mysteries’, which were essentially Enid Blyton’s Famous Five if they were set in Ancient Rome.  When ‘How Often do you think about the Roman Empire’ trended on TikTok last year, I thought of these books specifically.  

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9. The Midnight Library- R.L Stine’s horror novels, Goosebumps, was very popular with kids my age during the noughties but for some reason, I personally can’t remember reading them.  I much preferred Nick Shadow’s Midnight Library books (not to be confused with Matt Haig’s adult 2020 bestseller); each one was an anthology of three dark and creepy tales that often gave me nightmares after reading.  I would always read the scarier ones several times so that I could retell them to my friends at sleepovers.   

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10. A Series of Unfortunate Events- The noughties decade is fondly remembered by many for the emergence of ‘emo culture’ which, to describe in most basic terms, involved pop-punk bands such as Paramore and Panic at the Disco! releasing music with angsty lyrics for fans who dressed exclusively in dark skinny jeans and eyeliner. Lemony Snickett’s A Series of Unfortunate Events was a series of books that were very popular with those aged 7-13 at around the same time, and they share many elements of traditional Gothic literature that emo culture is also inspired by. Snickett prewarns his readers that his story, split into 13 books, do not contain a happy ending before proceeding to tell the story of the Baudelaire orphans who must use their wits to protect themselves from their evil guardian, Count Olaf. These books were dark and weird, just as children’s fantasy should be, and so fun to read.  

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11. Absolutely anything that was written by Jacqueline Wilson- Last but certainly not least is the queen of child literature and the Children’s Laureate 2005-2007 herself.  It would be impossible for me to pick a favourite title from her work, which included iconic titles such as The Illustrated Mum, Double Act and My Sister Jodie.  She is still writing books today, with an incredible career that spans over 50 years.  Her popularity lies with the fact that she never patronised her young readers and was not afraid to tackle difficult subjects, such as divorce an, grief and bullying.   As I look back to my childhood, I now recognise that people in my generation did not take part in as many conversations about mental health that children today have access to, but we did have the characters in Wilson’s book, whose experiences we could relate to.  Her most famous character has to Tracy Beaker, thanks to CBBC televison adaption (see An Ode to Tracy Beaker – Simone Reddington (mywordsandrants.blog) for essay I wrote in tribute to the feisty icon that I wrote a couple of years ago.

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