11 Forgotten Books Every ’90s Kid Loved Growing Up

For about a decade, children’s publishing in America ran on two delivery systems: a newsprint order form that hit your desk once a month, and a metal bookcase on wheels that rolled into the school gym twice a year. What was in the catalog got read, and what wasn’t, mostly didn’t.

A handful of those titles are still going strong; these 11 aren’t.

1. Animorphs
2. Give Yourself Goosebumps
3. The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids
4. Dinotopia
5. Sweet Valley Twins
6. The Saddle Club
7. Dear America
8. Wishbone
9. The Time Warp Trio
10. My Teacher Is an Alien
11. The Zack Files

Animorphs

Kids came for the shape-shifting and got a war story that turned genuinely bleak. Scholastic put out 54 of these books between June 1996 and May 2001, plus 10 companion volumes, and had nearly 10 million copies in print within 18 months. They tried a relaunch in 2011 with lenticular covers and refreshed pop-culture references, then stopped after eight books.

Give Yourself Goosebumps

Goosebumps became a sensation, but its “choose your own adventure” spinoff wasn’t quite as long-lasting. Scholastic launched the line in July 1995 with Escape from the Carnival of Horrors and shipped 50 titles—42 regular, eight specials—before closing it out in February 2000 with All-Day Nightmare. Every one is now out of print except Please Don’t Feed the Vampire, which Scholastic reissued in 2015 as Classic Goosebumps #32.

The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids

The premise never changed and never needed to: the third graders of Bailey Elementary suspect some adult in their lives is a vampire, a werewolf, or Santa Claus. Marcia Thornton Jones and Debbie Dadey wrote 51 editions for Scholastic starting in 1990, plus spinoffs. Nathan Hale, later of Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales, re-illustrated a batch of covers in 2000.

Dinotopia

James Gurney’s 1992 illustrated novel imagined an island where shipwrecked humans and intelligent dinosaurs built a civilization together. It hit the New York Times bestseller list, sold more than two million copies, and appeared in 18 languages. ABC’s three-night 2002 miniseries cost roughly $70 million, among the priciest ever made. Gurney is better known among painters now, for his instructional book Color and Light.

Sweet Valley Twins

Bantam spun Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield backward into middle school in July 1986 and ran 118 main titles through 1998, plus Super Editions, Super Chillers, and Magna Editions. The byline said Jamie Suzanne, but no such person existed: creator Francine Pascal oversaw ghostwriters who reportedly churned out five books a month.

The Saddle Club

An editor at Bantam asked Bonnie Bryant for something aimed at horse-obsessed readers, planning on four books. Bryant delivered 101 between October 1988 and November 2001, plus seven special editions, and Stevie, Carole, and Lisa never aged a day. An animated adaptation was announced in 2026.

Dear America

Scholastic’s historical diary series opened in 1996 with Kathryn Lasky’s A Journey to the New World and ran 35 titles through 2004, hitting 14 million copies in print. The packaging did the work: cloth-look hardcovers with a sewn-in ribbon marker made these feel like something you’d found, not something you’d bought. A 2010 relaunch didn’t stick, though.

Wishbone

The PBS show starred a Jack Russell terrier who imagined himself into literary classics, and the tie-in series got big fast. 12 Wishbone Classics, 21 Adventures of Wishbone, 20 Wishbone Mysteries, and more were all published by Lyrick Studios—whose Big Feats! Entertainment division made the show—under the imprint Big Red Chair Books. A relaunch started in 2000 but was canceled after nine books.

The Time Warp Trio

Jon Scieszka’s time-travel series started in 1991 with Knights of the Kitchen Table, illustrated by Lane Smith, his partner on The Stinky Cheese Man. Sixteen books were released through 2006, and a Discovery Kids cartoon premiered in 2005. In January 2008, the Library of Congress named Scieszka the first National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.

My Teacher Is an Alien

Bruce Coville’s 1989 novel hinges on a new teacher, Mr. Smith, whose human face turns out to be a mask. Three sequels followed through 1992, ending with My Teacher Flunked the Planet, plus—inevitably for the era—a CD-ROM game. Coville has published more than 100 books that have sold over 16 million copies.

The Zack Files

Dan Greenburg named the series after his son and gave the fictional version a New York childhood crawling with the paranormal, starting in 1996 with My Great-Grandpa’s in the Litter Box. Grosset & Dunlap published 30 in all. A Canadian adaptation aired on YTV from 2000 to 2002 and ran for 52 episodes—a better run than most of these books got.