Proof that I read way too much AVClub content, oh, my God. This was actually fairly hard to write, mostly because I don't write list content like this pretty much at all. (The list's title is terrible, but I couldn't think of anything good. DX)
12. Growing Nobody, Philippa K. Eaton
Philippa K. Eaton barely makes this list. While her parents, legendary sci-fi writing team Julius Eaton and K. C. Hunter, were prolific writers, their primary output consisted of short stories and novellas; they wrote only one full-length novel, A Wrinkle in Space. Eaton herself has focused primarily on television writing, though she shows considerable skill in her woefully out-of-print debut book, 1978's Growing Nobody. Half memoir, half fantasy horror, Nobody is the story of ten year old Ursula, the imaginative daughter of eccentric but doting Manhattan writers. With no friends to speak of besides a cat (whose job it is to protect his owner from Cthulu), she spends most of her time having serious conversations about spacemen with adults and making up wild fantasies. When plants with hand-shaped leaves begin to grow out of the corners of Ursula's bedroom walls, however, her life is no longer an endless game of pretend: the stories her parents tell her have begun to invade reality. What sounds like a typical children's book is in fact much more suited for adults--it's eerie throughout and downright scary in places--but the protagonist's age kept the book from clicking with a mature audience.
-excerpted from A Density of Souls: 17 Novels by the Children of Novelists
12. Growing Nobody, Philippa K. Eaton
Philippa K. Eaton barely makes this list. While her parents, legendary sci-fi writing team Julius Eaton and K. C. Hunter, were prolific writers, their primary output consisted of short stories and novellas; they wrote only one full-length novel, A Wrinkle in Space. Eaton herself has focused primarily on television writing, though she shows considerable skill in her woefully out-of-print debut book, 1978's Growing Nobody. Half memoir, half fantasy horror, Nobody is the story of ten year old Ursula, the imaginative daughter of eccentric but doting Manhattan writers. With no friends to speak of besides a cat (whose job it is to protect his owner from Cthulu), she spends most of her time having serious conversations about spacemen with adults and making up wild fantasies. When plants with hand-shaped leaves begin to grow out of the corners of Ursula's bedroom walls, however, her life is no longer an endless game of pretend: the stories her parents tell her have begun to invade reality. What sounds like a typical children's book is in fact much more suited for adults--it's eerie throughout and downright scary in places--but the protagonist's age kept the book from clicking with a mature audience.
-excerpted from A Density of Souls: 17 Novels by the Children of Novelists