Popular Series Fiction for Middle School and Teen Readers: A Reading and Selection Guide (Children’s and Young Adult Literature Reference)

Young readers enjoy the delightfully consistent cast of characters and reliable story lines of series fiction. Because of their popularity and appeal, books in series are great vehicles for fostering literacy among all types of readers, including ABE and ESL students. In addition, readers of series fiction are almost always adamant about reading every title in the series-in series order. Yet traditional information sources on YA literature include very little about series fiction. It is rarely reviewed or catalogued, so objective information about the titles is hard to come by. And finding out the proper order of titles in series can also be a challenge. So, while series fiction is in high demand with young readers, librarians often have difficulty managing this large and growing body of literature. This guide, geared to readers in middle to high school, will be a rich resource and time-saver for librarians who work with tweens and teens. It introduces users to the best and most popular fiction series of today, covering approximately 800 series appropriate for middle and high school readers. For each series, the authors provide an annotation that describes the series’ appeal and lists characters, and location. The original publisher of the series is given, along with the range of dates over which the series was published, a grade level range, and genre. Annotations will also indicate series and titles that are accepted by some of the popular electronic reading programs (e.g., Accelerated Reading, Reading First). A numbered list of titles in the series follows. Grades 6-12.