After a few lame #BookBlogWriMo posts--and that lameness is totally on me, not the event or its creator, of course!--over the last few days, here's one where I can really shine. I read a ton as a kid, and while there are plenty of books that didn't stick out in my memory (some to the point of forgetting their titles to this very day), there are some that still have a really fond place in my memory.

First and foremost, if you want to take a glimpse at all the books I read during my childhood years, you can check out my shelves at Goodreads. 1993-2003 covers everything I can recall reading between my birth and the end of elementary school; 2004-2006 covers middle school; and 2007-2011 covers my high school years (plus a few months before and after I turned eighteen).

Let's do this in chunks, shall we?

A lot of little kids have an animal phase sometime after they learn to empathize with nonhuman creatures. My animal phase was long, intense, and fostered by series like Ben M. Baglio's Animal Ark and Dolphin Diaries, as well as Jeanne Betancourt's Pony Pals.

Books like Mummies in the Morning from Mary Pope Osborne's Magic Tree House series and Kristina Gregory's Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile from the Royal Diaries series helped foster my early childhood obsession with ancient Egypt.

Series like J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter (of course!), Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness, Emily Rodda's Deltora Quest (and its sequels, Deltora Shadowlands and Dragons of Deltora), and Jackie French Koller's The Keepers helped make fantasy one of my two favorite genres to this very day.

My other favorite genre is horror, and spooky stories like Grace Maccarone's The Haunting of Grade Three, Mary Downing Hahn's Wait Till Helen Comes, and R.L. Stine's The First Horror helped solidify my love for all* things frightening. *Well, most. I don't do torture porn.

But I also enjoy mysteries, a genre which I was first introduced to through Ron Roy's A to Z Mysteries (with my favorite being the quite-spooky-when-you're-four story, The Haunted Hotel) and continued to explore with series like classic Nancy Drew and Ann M. Martin's The Baby-sitter's Club Mysteries.

I discovered manga via Miwa Ueda's Peach Girl, and ventured on with series like Reiko Yoshida and Mia Ikumi's Tokyo Mew Mew and Matsuri Hino's MeruPuri.

Carolyn Meyer's Young Royals series helped get me into historical fiction (and I have a particular fondness for historical princess/queen stories thanks to both it and Royal Diaries), and her books Mary, Bloody Mary and Doomed Queen Anne, along with Ann Rinaldi's Nine Days A Queen, got me through a brief period of Tudor fixation.

Of course, like a lot of 2000s teens, I had a vampire phase, and the books that got me through that admittedly rough period included romance-y stuff like Ellen Schreiber's Vampire Kisses (perfectly average upon rereading), and R.L. Stine's books, Dangerous Girls (didn't hold up upon rereading) and One Last Kiss (haven't been able to find for rereading!). But I also read horror-focused vampire stories, including Sebastian Rook's Vampire Plagues (still totally loved upon last rereading) and Darren Shan's Cirque du Freak (rereading... someday).

There were other favorites that didn't correspond with trends, of course. Elizabeth George Speare's The Witch of Blackbird Pond was a book that I read thinking there would be actual witches, but totally loved even when it turned out to be about puritanical witch persecution and its victims... though I never actively sought out more books like it. (The time period and subject matter weren't what hooked me with this one--it was the emotional impact of Speare's writing.)

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events was an awesome series that I got into long after I should have, but totally loved when I finally sat down to read it (and yes, I do like the ending in spite of what almost everyone else seems to think). But while I love that series, I haven't managed to read any similar series yet--with perhaps the exception of the first book in the Templeton Twins series, which uses a "Lemony Narrator".

And then there was Nancy Springer's I am Morgan le Fay, which really made me a bit obsessive toward that particular mythological figure for a while (and, to a lesser extent, Arthurian myth), but I never really got around to reading many Arthurian books besides Nancy Springer's other endeavor, I Am Mordred... which unfortunately wasn't as impressive to me.

(I'm hoping to reread I Am Morgan le Fay soon, and I really hope it holds up!)

Of course, after writing all this out, I have to say I'm fairly interested to realize that most of my favorite stories growing up were written by female authors... except when it came to my vampire phase, which was inexplicably populated by male authors' books! I'm honestly fairly fascinated, and I'd love to someday take the time to break down my author stats to look at sex, race/ethnicity, nationality, etc.

So what about you? Have you read any of these books--besides the all-but-obligatory Harry Potter and A Series of Unfortunate Events? And what were your childhood favorites? Feel free to leave a comment below!

Jody McGrath's dolphin dreams are coming true! Her whole family is sailing around the world researching dolphins--and Jody is recording all their exciting adventures in her Dolphin Diaries.

The McGraths are in Key West, Florida, visiting a very special dolphin center--with "dolphin teachers." Jody loves watching the dolphins at work.

But when one dolphin gets tangled in netting, will Jody be able to free it?

In the first book of the Dolphin Diaries series, Jody McGrath and her family ship out with the crew of the Dolphin Dreamer. With her are Craig and Gina McGrath, her parents; Sean and Jimmy McGrath, her younger twin brothers; Harry Pierce, the captain; Dr. Taylor, a corporate scientist; Cameron Tucker, the first mate; Mei Lin, the Chinese cook/engineer; Maddie, the African American research assistant; and Brittany, Harry's daughter who was effectively abandoned by her mother and definitely doesn't want to take part in any research trip.

All in all, it's a cute story, though it has its fair share of flaws. For one, the concept and science are, as far as I know, a tad outdated now it's been nearly fifteen years since the book was published. The idea of setting up a database like the one they describe in the story seems like a particularly "early 2000s" idea. (Though I'm fairly sure there are plenty of areas of study that still lack such tools, I don't expect the ever-popular dolphin to be quite so neglected.) And the story about the endangered baiji dolphin is more heartbreaking now that no one's sighted one in several years and they may possibly have already gone extinct.

Other areas of note are the characters—two in particular. The Dolphin Dreamer is funded in part by an oil company, which I think is an interesting shade of grey to add to the story, but so far the only thing that's come of it is the addition of another scientist to the expedition. This character, Dr. Taylor, is the most stereotypical fuddy-duddy scientist you can imagine; he disapproves of anyone having any form of fun, he's clearly implied to be entirely inexperienced with field work, and he refuses to see dolphins—the creatures he's paid to learn about—as anything more than mindless animals void of personality and incapable of any behavior he hasn't read about in his books. It's kind of ridiculous, and I really hope to see Bagley do something a little more interesting with the character in later installments.

Meanwhile, Brittany is a cookie-cutter Rich Bitch stereotype. Her mother is neglectful, she doesn't connect with her father because he works too much to spend time bonding with her, and her personality is your typical mash-up of spoiled, whiny, and self-centered. Oddly, in spite of the fact that her character arc will obviously be one of "redemption", she has her pivotal "learning her lesson" scene halfway through the book and almost immediately hits the reset button to revert back to her former brattiness. (Most series at least have the decency to hit the reset button between books—not chapters!) Honestly, I'm not even going to bother hoping that she turns around, because I've seen this stock character too many times to care about another one.

The only other complaint I can make is that the book paints a very idealized picture of dolphins. None of the more disturbing (from a human perspective) behaviors are even alluded to (which is perfectly reasonable, given that it's a children's series), and Jody quite vehemently defends their carnivorous diets (which is in character for her but still felt a bit silly).

On the other hand, it's a really cute, vaguely scientific series from the penname behind Animal Ark, and I highly recommend it to any children interested in dolphins.