#peter lerangis

[anneofteenfables]

The Sword Thief ⚔

39 Clues

[killian-whump]

Just saw the most relatable answer in a Q&A with Peter Lerangis about his Point Horror novels from the 90s...

Q: How do you think you would react if you experienced any of the occurrences or goings on in [your books]?

A: I’d move immediately and seek professional help.

[zhezhy]

I recently read the "Seven Wonders" books by Peter Lerangis. Marco makes me laugh all the time, he's funny!

[sawthefaeriequeen]

 The thing about Peter Lerangis’s ghostwritten Baby-Sitters Club books is that he was the only male writer, and he was very ‘boys will be boys' about it. Not in the misogynistic way but in the madcap “oh well, this might as well happen” way. Helicopter crashes? Iddy hurricane evacuations? Getting stranded in the badlands? Mallory related to Shakespeare? Stacey finds ashes of a WW2 veteran in her suitcase? These were all plots in BSC books by him and they were bonkers and it was great.

(And then you hit the California Diaries spinoff and he channels all that craziness into writing intense teen drama and…it works. It works remarkably well. A man of many hats, Peter.)

[rainbow-flavoured-skittles]

"Normal is the enemy of interesting"

-Jack McKinley, The Curse of the King

[thelightfluxtastic]

I was hoping to find some nostalgia fandom for the Spy X series (the scholastic kids books) but it's all completely buried in Spy X Family stuff

[kpopandbookschild]

Book poll round 1 #11

yes ik theres a lot of these but i can only put twelve on each

[havewereadthis]

"Trying to get the hang of becoming a better driver, Kirsten gratefully accepts Rob's offer of help, but when Rob disappears after their first lesson, Kirsten begins to realize that the driver's ed class may be more than she bargained for..."

[sparkbirdmusic]

sparkbird, age 15ish

I SPY:

- massive garfield collection

- the tip of a giant yellow crayon bank

- american flag but also a british columbia flag

- filing cabinet

- photo of me and gavin creel

- smiley face lamp

- krispy kreme hat

- ceramic nun

- garfield alarm clock

- pikachu

- some kind of page-a-day calendar (probably garfield)

lemme see what books I can ID…

- several by diana wynne jones (the dalemark quartet and dogsbody were my faves)

- cirque du freak series (vampire books)

- anne of green gables series

- replica series by marilyn kaye (clone books)

- watchers series by peter lerangis (also his antarctica duology but I found those tedious)

- several by karen hesse (I loved out of the dust)

- goose chase!!! by patrice kindl (fairy tale retelling, LOVED it at the time, I think it’s out of print now)

- holes (which I never actually read bc it was such a boy book)

- I thiiiink I see the deltora quest series

[barbielore]

As with almost all pieces of media with a sizable fanbase, there are those Baby-Sitters Club fans who interpret certain BSC characters as part of the LGBT+ community.

Kristy Thomas is often at the top of this list. She is persistently described as a sporty tomboy, who feels more comfortable in jeans and baseball caps than in skirts and dresses. She is an avid softball player and coaches a softball team of local children who aren't able to join Little League. The stereotypes are leaping off the page.

In the book canon, Kristy is loosely romantically linked with two boys: Alan Gray, with whom she goes to a school dance in Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls and Bart Thomas who she first meets in Kristy and the Walking Disaster and has a quasi-romantic relationship with over the course of the series. This culminates in Kristy + Bart = ?, where Kristy and Bart face the nature of their relationship head on. Notably, though in this book they explore kissing, by the end of the book Kristy chooses to end their relationship, concluding that she is not ready for or interested in having a "boyfriend" at this time.

Her relationships with other girls have been noted by some fans as carrying some subtext as well. She becomes deeply jealous of Mary Anne forming close friendships with other girls, such as with Dawn Schafer most notably in Dawn and the Impossible Three. In fact, she goes to a school dance in Claudia Kishi, Middle School Dropout wearing a matching costume with Mary Anne: Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf. That's a couples costume if I've ever heard of one, girls.

In the California Diaries spinoff, many people have pointed out that Ducky reads as queercoded. He is described as "sensitive" and, though he kisses Sunny, reflects on the fact that he felt nothing when doing so. Ghostwriter Peter Lerangis confirmed on Twitter that Ducky was intended to be read as gay.

The Netflix series that debuted in 2020 actually featured canonical, unambiguous LGBT+ characters for the first time. For example, Charlotte Johansson's parents are both depicted as women, unlike in the books where Charlotte has both a mother and a father. Dawn's father is also described as gay and her parents' divorce is attributed to this. The episode "Mary Anne Saves the Day", loosely based on the book of the same name, features a trans-fem child named Bailey instead of the book's Jenny Prezzioso, and Mary Anne's big moment of responsibility is stepping up and correcting medical staff who are misgendering her.

Claudia's older sister, Janine, comes out to Claudia as a lesbian in the season 2 episode "Claudia and the Sad Goodbye", revealing that she is in a relationship with Ashley Wyeth, first introduced earlier in the season in "Claudia and the New Girl". But possibly the most notable is that Dawn herself gives a speech to Mary Anne about romance where she says that she does not assign a label to herself but that she can see herself falling for someone of any gender.

And why not? Ann M Martin, the creator of the series and writer of a number of the books (though she outsourced many to ghostwriters of course) revealed in 2016 that she spent many years in a relationship with a woman - former co-writer Laura Godwin.

[wanderingmind867]

Okay, I didn't get through my whole bookshelf yet. And it's annoying having to search through my bedroom for all my books. So let's try to make this a lightning round, listing all the books I saw in my room (specifically, all the novels i know i read):

The Guardians of Childhood by William Joyce (These were the books that first made me love reading, I think. The first novels I ever read, in Grade 1 or 2. They were turned into that movie, Rise of The Guardians. But the movie came out before he was done with the books, and the books took forever to come out. He finally finished them recently, but now I feel like it's too late. Also, I didn't like the summary when I looked it up).

Alice in Wonderland (This book is amazing. Lewis Carroll is a genius. I have a whole massive book full of his works. It's too big to bring it to school, but I've read Alice in Wonderland many times. Genius book. Fun and clever and not at all depressing. I never really got into the sequel, Through the Looking Glass, as much. But I still like Lewis Carroll. He's also a great poet.)

Sherlock Holmes (Somehow, I ended up buying a big book of Sherlock Holmes stories at a library clearance sale or something years ago. It's now too old to feel safe reading it again, but I liked it. The short stories with Sherlock Holmes were the best. Arthur Conan Doyle is one of the few mystery writers I know I like. Although the full length novel didn't hold my attention nearly as well as the short stories did. I guess I couldn't handle a full novel of detective stuff?).

Roald Dahl's books (I read most of these, including the one where he wrote about his childhood. The only one of his children's books I skipped was the one about his war service. It was boring to me. But his books were pretty good. A bit creepy and weird in some spots, but never enough to scare me into dread the way many other things do. Also, I don't want to read his adult stuff. In elementary school I had to read a crime story he wrote. It was dark and weird, and it made me uncomfortable. So he's a complicated writer).

The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel (This series. God, this series. I started out really liking it. Historical figures, magic, mythology? It was amazing. But the ending. God, that ending. Time travel, time loops, immortality and more. It just became too confusing for me. I couldn't stand that last book. I did like how the book introduced me to Niccolo Machiavelli and Billy the Kid and other historical figures, though. I just really, really hated that ending).

The Seven Wonders series by Peter Lerangis (I barely remember these books. I don't think I actually ended up loving their ending, but I did somehow sit through them. So that was probably a deep disappointment to my younger self).

Fine. I have to stop again. Turns out I have at least four more book series. So I'll make a third part, then i'll probably be too burnt out to mske any more posts for an hour or two. But to think, I started making these posts hoping I could eventually use them to ask for suggestions for books for my Christmas List. But I guess that'll have to wait. sigh...

[anneofteenfables]

The Sword Thief

Title: The Sword Thief 

Author: Peter Lerangis

Genre: Mystery

Length: 4 hours

Summary: 

Amy and Dan Cahill have been located once again, this time in the company of the notoriously unreliable Alistair Oh. Could they have been foolish enough to make an alliance?

Spies report that Amy and Dan seem to be tracking the life of one of the most powerful fighters the world has ever known. If this fearsome warrior was a Cahill, his secrets are sure to be well-guarded... and the price to uncover them just might be lethal.

Review:

Another 39 Clues book! I barely remembered any of this book other than the airport scene. I really enjoyed the ability to sort of read this book for the first time again. As with the rest of the 39 Clues books so far, I really liked reading this book! In all honesty, I read this book and started to write the review but then my life got busy, so it’s been a little while since I actually read this book. 

As per usual, I really enjoyed the adventure in this book and the motivation. Obviously, each character wants to find all 39 clues but in The Sword Thief, we learn more about individual motivations. I especially liked learning about Alistair Oh’s backstory. He’s not just the microwave burrito guy, his father was killed and he’s working toward revenge. I think it really humanizes certain characters and adds perspective outside of what Amy and Dan think of their competitors. It really adds more depth and helps create more of this world of the Cahill Family. There is also a lot more that Amy and Dan learn about the Cahill Family and the original siblings. Again, the fact that they don’t know their branch creates a logical opening for exposition. Obviously, the reader wants to learn more about the Cahill Family and branch systems and so do Amy and Dan. I heard someone refer to (bad) exposition as “pointing and staring” but I think the 39 Clues books smartly move away from that. Amy and Dan are being presented with a lot of information but it's not sight-seeing and a lot of times they have to figure it out on their own. Instead of one character taking them around and showing and telling them everything they need to know just because the reader needs to know these things too, the exposition and world building is logical. Amy and Dan have to learn these things because it’s part of the clue hunt, often it is how they find the clues. Even though Alistair tells them a lot about Thomas Cahill and the original four Cahill siblings, this is because it’s important to the clue. 

Speaking of Thomas Cahill, this brings me to a detail of the book that sort of bothered me. I know that the 39 Clues books involve a good dose of rewriting to history to make all of these historical figures tangentially related to the Cahill line and the clue hunt. However, in this book there is a pretty blatant change by making Thomas Cahill, a white Englishman, the father of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a pretty iconic Japanese figure. I understand that not a lot is known about Hideyoshi’s early life and his family but it still felt a little bit like they were whitewashing history by changing this fact. I think perhaps they could’ve kept Thomas Cahill as having moved to Japan but maybe he could’ve been an influential figure or ally to Hideyoshi, not his actual father. Otherwise, I enjoyed the history of this book which went outside of the European realm that this series tends to stick to. I also appreciated that they included a bit of Korean history, especially since most media at this time would’ve just stuck to Japan or China.  All in all, I enjoyed this book. It felt a bit short but there was still plenty of action and world building. I think Alistair really got a lot of good development, you feel bad as you learn his motivation but you also don’t like him after he faked his death. (again?) I think The Sword Thief definitely suffers by being written by a different author. There’s an obvious tone difference, especially with Amy and Ian Kabra being romantically inclined. Still, I think the overall tone and ideas of the series as a whole still wins out. Hopefully, I won’t be too busy and can read and review another book soon!

Divider: @/cafekitsune

Header Paintings: Jiraiya Riding a Frog by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi + Comtesse de la Châtre by Èlisabeth Vigée Le Brun

[revisitingstoneybrook]

#44 Dawn and the Big Sleepover: Chapter 11

Sorry for the long break! I'm back with more from this book and there will be new content coming up that wasn't on the LJ group!

In this chapter, Haley Braddock bores us and...that's pretty much it.

So we have a BSC notebook entry from Mary Anne, writing about her babysitting job for Matt and Haley Braddock, and she said she was hoping to take a break from the pen pal project. *GASP* You heartless wretch! When a BSC member is involved in a project, they go in wholeheartedly, no questions asked! Wait until Kristy finds out *cue lightning and thunder clap*

We start out with Haley begging Mary Anne to let her play Madame Leveaux so she can raise money for her pen pal. And no, Haley isn't planning on performing an exotic cabaret on her front lawn. She wants to tell fortunes, which is actually pretty creative. And Leveaux...the old people? No, that would be Lesvieux. Ok, time to translate this.

Veaux is apparently the plural of veau. Which means...veal. Haley is Madame Veal? She should thank her lucky stars that Dawn isn't babysitting her.

Anyway, Haley is excited when Mary Anne agrees to help out, and she happily signs her plans to Matt. And while I ponder how Jessi and the kids of Stoneybrook were able to pick up ASL quick enough to communicate coherently with Matt (because Dawn just gave us the explanation of who Matt is), Haley gets to work setting up. She emerges from her bedroom in a costume that Dawn describes as something from I Dream of Jeannie.

Old TV show, everyone take a shot!

Haley tries doing an exotic dance that involves "wiggling awkwardly" (ew?) and talks to Mary Anne in an over-pronounced, Eastern European accent. And since this is a BSC book, ghostwriter extraordinaire Peter Lerangis spells it out phonetically. It looks like Mme Noelle's french, but more nasal. If something can look more nasal. Thees eez zuh vay vee speek een Trannnsylvania! I can think of a few Transylvanians who are offended by this stereotype:

They only have an hour until their parents get home, so the kids and Mary Anne get to work, setting up a card table on the front lawn and Mary Anne makes a sign advertising Madame Leveaux's services. Whoa, mind meet gutter. And she actually writes in PRINT on the sign, instead of her usual loopy cursive, so this is the only time I can call Mary Anne's handwriting 100% legible. Haley sits down with a deck of cards and Matt decides he wants to practice catching while Haley works her magic. Good lord, this chapter is boring.

So her first customers are Suzi and Marnie Barrett, along with Mrs. MILF. Why is Mrs. Barrett known as Mrs. MILF? Well, as soon as she saw Haley, Dawn said she flashed a dazzling smile. A smile from Mrs. Barrett alone could raise enough money to rebuild the school on the Zuni reservation.

Mrs. Barrett pays for Suzi to have her fortune told, and Matt pulls the chair out so Suzi can sit down. Haley touches Suzi's forehead while shuffling the cards around and her fortune for Suzi is she sees Buddy at the elementary school's gym, having fun at the sleepover. Um, you'd think for Suzi's fortune, she'd make up something for Suzi and not tell her something about Buddy?

Suzi complains, not because she didn't get her own personal fortune, but because Haley already knew about it and demands her money back. LOL I love the Barretts.

Mrs. Barrett quiets her down and lets Marnie get her fortune told as well. Only Marnie isn't too interested, screams "NO!" and starts crying. And there we have one of like three times I can think of Marnie talking in the entire BSC series. Gabbie Perkins, who's also 2, would sit down and say "Why I am positively delighted to have my fortune told by you, Haley! What is written in the stars about my future?"

The Barretts leave, and Haley says she thinks her veil scared Marnie. Mary Anne tells her not to worry about it, and reminds her that it's OK to make up fortunes, she doesn't have to be accurate. The next customers are a group of 8th grade boys who just so happen to be walking through the Braddocks' neighborhood. Alan Gray, Pete Black, and Justin Forbes. Let me just say, forget Logan Bruno and his hiring a horse-drawn carriage and wanting to buy a ring for his beloved Mary Anne. Alan Gray is the most accurate teenage boy in the BSC series, even though his personality tends to fluctuate a lot. Like sometimes he's the class clown, sometimes he's taking Kristy to dances and sometimes he's even a bully.

I have no clue who Justin Forbes is, but from the way Dawn describes him, it sounds like he was a one-note character in another book, and Peter Lerangis needed another immature 8th grade boy for this scene. Dawn says he prank-called Stacey once and said he was from the Atlanta Pig Farm? It sounds familiar but I don't know what book that was.

Alan sits down to get his fortune told, and calls Haley "Madame Levy-oox" and "Madamee Lee-voke-see-odor." Haley ignores his looniness and pulls a fast one on him, by giving him part of a fortune and telling him to continue, he has to pay more, and ends up collecting two bucks from all three boys. Clever. Either the boys decided to humor the 9-year-old and play along or they're dumb enough to be led on by a 9-year-old. It's actually hard to determine. Haley tells Mary Anne she felt guilty about it, but Mary Anne told her to suppress the feelings like she does, and let them out later when everyone least expects it not worry about it.

Meanwhile, Dawn's finalizing plans for the sleepover. So, 11 chapters into this book, we FINALLY get to what the title's all about. This book should have been called Dawn and the Great Relief Project or Dawn Saves the Zunis or something. Mary Anne comes home and Dawn tells her the Stoneybrook News interviewed her over the phone, and is coming to the sleepover, with a photographer. The toy store's donating prizes, and Pizza Express is donating pizza, and they'll be bringing their stuff over when the photographer's there. See? Being involved with the BSC is the BEST publicity any business in Stoneybrook could ever ask for!

And there will only be four teachers there. So 100 kids, and four teachers, who I guess are there to pick up the slack while the BSC runs the show since they're so much better with kids than teachers are. And some cafeteria workers are showing up in the morning to cook breakfast, pancakes and juice all donated by the supermarket. Mary Anne and Dawn spend the rest of the chapter organizing games and activities and we can finally move onto the point of this whole book!

[blacky-ermittelt]

Die drei Fragezeichen Folgen Tournament: Runde 1, Gruppe 8

Klappentexte der einzelnen Folgen sind unter dem Cut.

und der Doppelgänger

Sollte es ihn wahrhaftig geben, einen zweiten... Justus Jonas? Jan, der sich aus Angst vor hinterhältigen Gaunern auf dem Schrottplatz einquartiert hat, weiß nicht, daß er dadurch die drei ???, und vor allem sein Ebenbild Justus, in große Schwierigkeiten bringt. Gefahr und Chaos lauern auf Schritt und Tritt. Justus wird an Jans Stelle von den Männern geschnappt und eingesperrt. Rätselhafte Botschaften! Politische Intrigen über Länder und Kontinente! Lebensgefährliche Irrtümer! Ein Gegner, der sich beinahe in der abgeschirmten Zentrale der Nachwuchsdetektive einnistet! Aber Bob und Peter beweisen, daß sie auch ohne ihren Chef richtig und überlegt handeln können. Eine wilde Verfolgungsjagd beginnt, denn es geht um Minuten!

Der Mann ohne Kopf

`DJ-Devil´, von der Presse auch reißerisch `Satans-DJ´ genannt, scheint wahrlich über teuflische Fähigkeiten zu verfügen. Der geheimnisvolle Discjockey ohne Kopf entlockt am Wochenende seinem Mischpult die unheimlichsten Beats, die die tanzenden Besucher in rasende Euphorie versetzen. Doch plötzlich gerät die Szenerie außer Kontrolle. Die drei ??? sind an diesem Abend zufällige Besucher in der Diskothek `Planet-Evil´ und werden Zeugen eines unheimlichen Phänomens, das Justus an die Grenzen seiner Logik katapultiert...

Brainwash

Verschollen, gefunden, endlich veröffentlicht: Eine Geschichten aus dem Jahr 1989 von dem amerikanischen Die drei ???-Autor Peter Lerangis. Als in einer Woche gleich zwei Bekannte der drei ??? verschwinden, vermuten die Jungen, dass die Sekte SynRea dahinter stecken könnte. Um die Vermissten zurückzuholen, fliegen die drei Detektive nach New York und treten in einer Undercover-Aktion der Sekte bei. Schon bald stellt sich heraus, dass die vermissten Jugendlichen tatsächlich dort sind. Was jedoch als einfache Rückholaktion geplant war, entpuppt sich zunehmend als unlösbare Mission - denn die Mächte der SynRea-Gruppe scheinen auch von Justus, Peter und Bob Besitz zu ergreifen.

und die Automafia

Mit Autos kennt sich Justus' Vetter Ty Cassey einfach phantastisch aus. Ein bißchen zu gut, findet Kommissar Maxim vom Sonderdezernat Autodiebstähle und nimmt den verdächtigen jungen Mann vorläufig fest. Zugegeben, der geniale Mechaniker in den abgerissenen Klamotten, der die meiste Zeit durch die Gegend trampt, wirkt schon etwas ausgeflippt - aber ein Autodieb? Die drei ??? setzen alles dran, Tys Unschuld zu beweisen. Dabei bekommen sie es mit ausgekochten Profis zu tun, die vor nichts zurückschrecken.

Dopingmixer

Sport läßt Justus normalerweise kalt. Besonders, wenn er an einem neuen Fall arbeitet. Aber was er da auf dem Sportplatz der Highschool von Rocky Beach erlebt, macht ihn stutzig. Einer der Jungs, die mit Peter für das Sportfest trainieren, läuft sensationell schnell! Und kaum versuchen die drei ??? der Sache auf den Grund zu gehen, taucht der Sprinter unter. Opfer gewinnsüchtiger Manager oder selbst ein gewiefter Dopingbetrüger? Wer hat da seine Finger im Spiel?

[ashleybenlove]

Reading a Baby Sitters Club book from June 1992, Jessi's Gold Medal by Ann M. Martin (ghost written by Peter Lerangis) and Jessi's narration says of her dad: "He sounds sort of like James Earl Jones, the famous actor."

She has got to be talking about him in the context of Darth Vader because The Lion King isn't out yet (not for 2 years). Unless she's seen Coming to America but that's an R-rated movie and she's 11, so less likely.

[arconinternet]

Little Monsters: A Novelization (Book, Peter Lerangis aka A.L. Singer, 1989)

You can digitally borrow it here.

From the author of Worlds of Power: Blaster Master.