Bruce Coville

[Lil Reads]

Does anyone else remember reading his books? I know my elementary and middle school libraries had several books by him across several genres.

The main one I remember was a collection he wrote part of and edited was of stories about unicorns.

[Amanda Deck]

I think one of my boys read My Teacher Is An Alien. After looking through the (extremely long!) list of his books, I don't actually recognize any others that they read. That surprised me greatly because his name is so familiar as an author.

[Lil Reads]

Thank you for reminding me to check his bibliography.

I think I read a handful of his books, but some of the titles sounded a bit too much like Goosebumps for me to pick up.

Are his books now considered out of date?

I think his heyday may have been the 1980s to 1990s so some of his books might not be as popular so they are replaced with books that are considered more relevant.

[Amanda Deck]

Well, since I was checking to see if there were any I'd consider for my grandchildren now, they're at least last generation! But that doesn't necessarily mean they're too dated, depends on the book. A lot of authors write for decade after decade after decade. I was shocked to discover how old some of my favorite authors that still write are now. In their 70s, still writing well, and still publishing!

[Lil Reads]

Some authors are very talented and can keep writing for decades, but sometimes the author needs to adapt to changes in writing trends as well as keep up with modern trends. For example, some of the things I read in some older books were things my grandparents had to explain to me, such as having school versus play clothes or how phone numbers were less than 7 digits.

Books further separated from recent history don't seem to have this same cultural disconnect because the setting seems much further back than it really was.

For Bruce Coville, specifically, I was thinking of how some of his books about teachers or school will seem odd to future generations - I don't remember standardized testing showing up much in his books nor using computers to type up and research schoolwork. A few generations after that, standardized testing and computer usage patterns will make more sense because eventually they will become historical topics to discuss, not yesterday's news.

[Vscholz]

Ah, that is a name I don't hear much often! I remember reading some of his books, but I don't remember a lot of his titles.

I do remember Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher and the unicorn books. Ah, good times!

[Lil Reads]

Wait he wrote about dragons too? I'll have to look for that in the library book sales!