sapiens

When I was a kid, I often got in trouble for reading under my covers late at night with the bed lamp. I loved reading. I was always had a book.

What books from your childhood do you remember fondly? Why? What books would you recommend? What books would you want to read with your children if you ever had any?

I must admit that I have had some trouble recalling some of my own favorites from childhood. Some that I remember enjoying:

The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks.
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
The Cay by Theodore Taylor
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

levite

+1 on The Hobbit!
Also, Lord of the Rings
The Chronicles of Prydain series, by Lloyd Alexander
The Dark Is Rising series, by Susan Cooper
The Little House books, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Earthsea Trilogy, by Ursula K. LeGuin
The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster
Caddie Woodlawn, by Carol Ryrie Brink
A Wrinkle In Time series, by Madeleine L'Engle
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory/and the Great Glass Elevator, by Roald Dahl. (Although I went back and read these again as an adult, and found them so tweaked and fucked-up, I'm not sure I would give them to my kids.)
The 21 Balloons, by William P. DuBois
The Out of the Silent Planet trilogy, by CS Lewis (I always liked these better than the Narnia books, which even as a kid I found too Christian for my Jewish tastes)
The Oz books, by L. Frank Baum
The Vesper Holly books, by Lloyd Alexander
Adventures of Robin Hood, by Roger Lancelyn Green
The various architecture books by David Macaulay
The Golem, by Isaac Bashevis Singer
As A Driven Leaf, by Milton Steinberrg
The All-of-a-Kind Family books, by Sydney Taylor

And the usual run of classic novels and short stories.....

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cdwonderful

A Wrinkle in time...

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genuinegirly

Alice in Wonderland
The Wizard of Oz
Wind in the Willows
Charlotte's Web
Prydain Chronicles
Narnia series
Ramona Quimby
Babysitter's Club
Boxcar Children
Andromeda Strain
Out of the Silent Planet
Perelandra
That Hideous Strength
Wrinkle in Time and associated series
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Voyages Extraordinaires
Swiss Family Robinson

A few my brother read to me, which he edited along the way:
Lord of the Rings
Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy
a bunch of Isaac Asimov's works

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Fremen

Runaway Ralph by Beverly Cleary

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fresnelly

I really liked books by John Bellairs:

The House With The Clock In Its Walls, The Mummy The Will and The Crypt, The Curse Of The Blue Figurine...

A kids book I was happy to rediscover for my own kids was Harry The Dirty Dog by Gene Zion

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dlish

where's willy..seriously

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crewsor

Clifford the Big Red Dog, and Curious George.

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sapiens

I forgot about Ralph. I enjoyed reading those books (The Mouse and the Motorcycle, etc.). They preceded my interest in The Secret of NIMH.

---------- Post added at 07:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:23 PM ----------

I read The Phantom Tollbooth with my daughter recently. I didn't like it at all.
I completely forgot about Roald Dahl. I read many of his when I was a kid. My daughter and I read James and the Giant Peach awhile back. That was a fun read.

Bear Cub

Something Big Has Been Here by Jack Prelutsky.

Something big has been here,
what it was I do not know,
for I did not see it coming,
and I did not see it go.

But I hope I never meet it,
if I do I'm in a fix,
for it left behind its footprints,
they are size nine-fifty-six.

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ring

noone compares to, 'Aunt Beast.'




or Max, either.

CinnamonGirl

Picture-book-wise, I loved (still love it, actually) Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Judith Viorst.)


Getting into chapter books, the Ordinary Princess (M.M. Kaye) has always been one of my favorites. I was really into the Babysitters' Club and Sweet Valley books for a few years.

Others:
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (E. L. Konigsburg)
The Wish Giver (Bill Brittain)
Remember Me to Harold Square (Paula Danziger)
The Witches (Roald Dahl)
Pretty much any L.J. Smith book, especially the Vampire Diaries & the Dark Visions trilogy
All of the Narnia books


...I read a lot as a kid. Mom made it a rule that I could only order three books from the monthly Scholastic book orders, because otherwise, we would've gone broke

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inBOIL

A Light in the Attic. And when I was younger, The Hungry Hungry Caterpillar and Ottie and the Star. And I still have a copy of King of the Birds autographed by Shirley Climo.

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Fremen

Other favorites of mine were the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries, plus The Three Investigators.

And, though not really a book, I loved Highlights.

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ShaniFaye

I've been reading as long as I can remember

some of my favs were
Mog the forgetful cat
Hurray for Captain Jane
Harvey's Hideout
Moe Q McGlutch, He smoked too much
the Stuart Little books
the Harriet the Spy books
A taste of blackberries
Little house on the Prarie(all of them)
charlottes web
anything by Judy Blume
The Hiding Place
The headless cupid
Christy
Book of Lists
Paul Harvey's rest of the story books
Diary of Anne Frank
anything by Beverly Cleary
the entire Trixie Belden series (I still go back and reread them)
a wrinkle in time
outsiders
when I turned 13 I started reading my first romance books and got hooked on Victoria Holt
anything by V. C. Andrews
I started reading John Saul's books when I was 12
anything by Erma Bombeck
the man in the iron mask
H. G Wells, The Time Machine

(those were in no particular order except the first few, those where when I was between the age of 4-6)

I still have every original copy I had of every book I listed (or the copies of the Beverly Cleary "teen" books that had belonged to my mother first)

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oliver9184

I don't think it was one of my particular favourites but I remember my grandparents having a book called Little Black Sambo when I was very small, which I used to look at when I visited them. It had illustrations that were later seen as controversial - it was a product of the colonial times - and the name of its main character, Sambo, was used as a derogatory or perjorative term, but the story as far as I can remember is pretty good. According to wiki, it has been re-illustrated with its original text intact.

Glory's Sun

alot of mine have already been mentioned..

I loved alot of the Beverly Cleary books..
Boxcar Children
Indian in the cupboard series (movie was horrible)
Maniac Magee (Jerry Spinelli had a good series of books)
There was one series about a group of skateboarders that were always against the odds.. can't remember the name of the series...
of course the C.S. Lewis sets

and my favorite trilogy was during my teenage years.. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the books or the author..maybe if I write it up someone can tell me what it was..I'll put down what I remember.

It started off with a man and his friend doing some research and one of them stumbled upon an odd looking mound of rock, when he went behind it, he was transported to an ancient celtic world. He wandered around and found the warriors and villages and as the book series goes on, he is taken in by one group and is put to training.. further along they are involved in many battles and eventually he is king of his tribe and towards the end he stumbles back out to the real world..but he goes back to the other world and I think at the end he dies while in battle..

it has a resemblance to Lion Witch and the Wardrobe, but it was just a better series of books IMO. any help would be awesome.

Baraka_Guru

It's incredible how little I read as a kid...how little I read until university, actually. I haven't read most of what's been listed here. By most, I mean at least 98% of it. Seriously.

I remember reading some cool novels in high school. I liked Of Mice and Men and Brave New World. But I didn't finish the latter. The only book I finished reading on the school curriculum was the former, but only because I liked it so much. There were many books I barely started. Most of them I probably got about half way.

But I don't quite consider my teenage years as my "childhood," so I must say I liked the series of books we had growing up that were in the same vein as a lot of Dr. Seuss. (I liked Dr. Seuss too, of course.) These books were mainly meant for learning to read and such. Between these and the books in high school, there is a big blank. I don't recall what I read in school, but I didn't really read outside of school at least until I was around 14, when I started to read cheap fantasy novels based on Dungeons & Dragons. You know, the TSR Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms series.

Odd, looking back at it.

Anyway, here is a memorable book from my childhood. It was the first book I read on my own: Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb by Al Perkins, illustrated by Eric Gurney.

Yeah, I wasted my youth watching tv and playing video games. Appalling, I know.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Glory's Sun

ok so I somehow stumbled upon the set I was looking for.. it is the Song of Albion trilogy by Stephen Lawhead. Interesting that Lawhead is a christian.. not that it matters in any way, since I don't recall any sort of religious themes in the books.

abaya

I read voraciously as a kid (one of my absolute favorite hangouts was the public library), but I only remember truly loving a handful of titles, which I often read over and over again:

The Secret Garden (read it at least 10 times)
The Little Princess (again, read it over and over)
Roots (who knows how I picked this up, but I read it 3 times!)
Ramona Quimby books
Little House on the Prairie books
Roald Dahl books (though they creeped me out occasionally)
Wrinkle in Time books (though I think they were way over my head, then)
A ton of fairy tales (I had a Brothers Grimm collection that I wore out)
Encyclopedia Brown books (does anyone remember those?)
Babysitters' Club books (my best friend loved the Super Specials and gave them to me)
Sweet Valley High books (I know, I know... I went through a phase!)
The Robert Jordan fantasy books, I forget what they're called now

I find it strange that I didn't really get into Narnia until much later, and most of all did not read any of The Lord of the Rings until my 20s (before the movies came out). But again, I don't know if I would have gotten as much out of reading them at a young age, who knows. I think I would have loved Harry Potter if it had been around in my childhood... but it was just as good in my 20s.

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SabrinaFair

When I was very little, Berenstain Bears were my absolute favorite. I even had my own Sister Bear doll that I took to preschool with me. In elementary school, The Babysitter's Club and American Girl series were on the top of my list. Favorites as I got older included The Giver, The Diary of Anne Frank, the Anne of Green Gables series, Number the Stars, and Caroline Cooney's Time series (Both Sides of Time, Out of Time, Prisoner of Time, For All Time). I actually re-read the Anne of Green Gables series not too long ago....still love it!

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CinnamonGirl

I love this thread... some of these books that everyone else listed, I'd forgotten about!

A couple more: When I was in early junior high, I was all over the Song of the Lioness series by Tamora Pierce (about a girl who disguises herself as a boy to become a knight), and the Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patrica C. Wrede, which is about a very unconventional princess who goes to live with the dragons instead of getting married off for the good of the kingdom. I still reread both series about once a year or so (what's nice about rereading YA books is that I can get through four or five books in just a couple days.)


Oh, and I think I read every Christopher Pike book in eighth grade.

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"...for though she was ordinary, she possessed health, wit, courage, charm, and cheerfulness. But because she was not beautiful, no one ever seemed to notice these other qualities, which is so often the way of the world."


"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

lostgirl

As a small child I enjoyed 'The Rainbow Goblins' and the Serendipity books.

When I was in Jr. high I discovered Stephen King and Dean R. Koontz. I LOVED the Dune books, esp. 'Children of Dune' and The Lord of the rings series, including the 'Simerilian'. It was kind of dry but gave a lot of very interesting history.

There are so many more maybe I will post them as I think of them later.

Baraka_Guru

I really should make a point of reading these books. I need to reclaim my lost childhood.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

sapiens

In the last year or so I have read a number of different children and teen titles. My initial motivation was to find appropriate books for my daughter, but I have enjoyed reading many of them independent of my daughter.

---------- Post added at 12:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:35 PM ----------

I forgot about her. I remember enjoying Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and Superfudge.

shakran

Wow. Seems like almost no one has heard of those books anymore. I used to love 'em as a kid.

Also the Prydain series, the Wrinkle in Time series, The Three Investigators (shut up! they were fun! ), anything by Tolkien, and anything by Shel Silverstein.

Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary books were good as well. Got a big surprise when talking to a friend of mine who's the parent of a 1st grader, and neither had ever heard of the Ramona books. Have they fallen in popularity, or is this gal living under a rock?

(edit)

I keep remembering more Someone else mentioned the Phantom Tollbooth, which was excellent, as was the Devil's Storybook series by Natalie Babbitt. I still have the autographed books somewhere - she did a reading at the local library when I was in 3rd grade.

Also saw a mention of Jack Prelutsky. I'd forgotten about "The New Kid On the Block," but it was every bit as good as Silverstein's stuff.

The View from the Cherry Tree was my introduction to the thriller/mystery genre, and a good one it was, despite having to beg my folks to let me read it because they use the acronym "SOB" in there. . . The innocence of youth.

Sink or Swim was a good read, as was anything by Katherine Patterson.

I was a pretty lucky kid. Had 3 floor-to-ceiling bookcases full of books. My folks expected me to read a lot, and it's stuck with me to this day. It's both a blessing and a curse, because I go through 3 or 4 books a week, which gets expensive. The library here sucks.

Glory's Sun

anybody remember the Wayside School series by Louis Sachar?

Strange Famous

A book I read when I was about 11 - Witch Week. I think the writer was called Dianne Wynne Jones.

I remember it really capturing my imagination.

And on a similar theme, "Witches" by Roald Dahl, which was read TO me at school when I was 6 or 7 and really again fascinated me about the idea of magic and strange powers

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ring

What was the name of that book ordering club we had in school,
back in the 60's?

I remember the electric anticipation.
I remember not being able to concentrate much on the lessons that day,
with a stack of new books sitting on the left hand corner of my old wooden desk.
( I remember "Queenie Peavy and 'To Kill A Mockingbird', sitting atop each other.)

@Gucci....I am trying to recall the book you were talking about earlier,
no luck so far.

I know Shani was able to help another person with a similar request,
some time ago.

ShaniFaye

Ring I think he was asking more of the "did anyone else read them" way Louis Sachar — Wayside School Book Series

I remember book fair weeks!!! very first book fair book I ever bought was Charlotte's Web in 1975 in 2nd grade lol Used to always get a mad libs as well

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I want the diabetic plan that comes with rollover carbs. I dont like the unused one expiring at midnite!!

ring

no..the book he is talking about in post #17

I won't rest till I find it.

edit..I saw he found it already...cool.

Glory's Sun

thanks for the help ring..but I came back in post 19 cuz I actually found it.. stroke of luck today

edit: I found a box of some of my old books in the attic.. turns out the 3 skateboarders books were called Street Wizards..

Found a bunch of Bruce Coville and R.L. Stine books in there as well.. lots of random books ..ahh Jeremy Thatcher the Dragon Hatcher.. Coville books were great!

found my copy of Maniac Magee.. think I'll give it a read tonight.

Cynthetiq

I have many of these very books in my office or in a box just outside my office.

The Giving Tree
Aesop's Fables
Bullfinch's Mythology
A Wrinkle In Time
Encyclopedia Brown (yes I do remember them, they got me into Sherlock Holmes)

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shoegirl

This thread is fantastic!

I'll start with a few.. but I'll be back (I should be running out the door right now)

- Babysitters' Club
- Ma and Pa Dracula
- The Key to the Treasure
- Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day
- The Summer of My German Soldier
- The Giver
- The Wayside School series - I remember it gucci, it was fantastic!

Oh.. there's so many more. But, now I'm definitely going to be late. Oops!

Bear Cub

Until making the move to middle school, I think I read every Goosebumps book ever made.

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snowy

Shani, you reminded me of a lot of my youthful favorites. I'm pleased to see Christy on your list; I read that book several times growing up.

Loved the Beverly Cleary "teen" books--started reading them when I was 12 or so because I'd just found out I was moving to Oregon, and Beverly Cleary's autobiography was the only book in our school library that had anything interesting about Oregon in it. This then spurred me to keep reading her books--I'd read Ramona, but I'd had no idea that she wrote young adult fiction too.

Victoria Holt is another I read a lot of at about that age. I blame my mother. She had The Devil on Horseback. God, I love that book. I worked my way through a lot of her stuff via the used book store, and still have several copies of her works on my shelves--The Shadow of the Lynx, The India Fan, The Captive, and The Black Opal off the top of my head (there are others).

The Little House series was one of my favorites. I read them repeatedly throughout 4th and 5th grade, and read anything associated with them, including a warts-and-all biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder that painted a far grimmer picture of her life than her own works do. I reread the entire series a couple years ago when one of my young charges was working her way through them with her parents.

I also really love the Anne books. I still read those, just about every year. I can't tell you how many times I've read my favorites of the series--Anne of the Island and Rilla of Ingleside. My copies are very, very worn and in need of replacement. I had to replace Anne's House of Dreams a year or so ago, because the cover and some pages came off.

Judy Blume saw me through puberty, as I'm sure she did for most girls

And Madeline L'Engle has to be one of my favorites too. I read all of the A Wrinkle in Time series, and read several of her "teen" books, as well as one of her autobiographies, Two-Part Invention. Admittedly, my paperback copy of Many Waters had to be one of my favorites; it had an illustration of teenage Sandy and Dennys on the front, and they were very attractive to my 12-year-old self.

The Giving Tree is one of my childhood favorites that I still have. My mother made sure that when I left home, I had my copy with me. It means the world to me.

I also really liked Scott O'Dell books growing up, like Black Star, Bright Dawn and Island of the Blue Dolphins.

I read so many books, I can't remember them all, but I think I've hit the highlights. I might be back to add more though

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abaya

Actually, I read that book too, and loved it... to the point where (I might have been a bit younger than you when I read it) I wrote a letter to the "head witch" or whomever it was, asking for my Halloween broom to be able to fly around. Of course, it never happened, but my dad lifted me up on the broom and flew me around the house anyway. Sometimes I wondered if some of the Harry Potter stories hadn't been lifted from that book...

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ShaniFaye

I think from the ages of 12 to..well now I've read Jean & Johnny and Fifteen and Sister of the Bride a bout 300 times each lol those books were MY primer on dating even though they were written in the 50's I LONGED for a soda shop lol Im one of those that reads more than one book at a time, there is one in my car, one in the bathroom at work and several in the bathroom at home lol Im currently rereading all of Victoria, and right now Im on Judas Kiss, India Fan and Queens Confession

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I want the diabetic plan that comes with rollover carbs. I dont like the unused one expiring at midnite!!

ring

noodle

I think snowy and I had half of the same library as children.

The Giving Tree
Anything Madeline L'Engle, Beverly Cleary, Christopher Pike, Scott O'Dell and every book from Walter Farley.
Misty of Chincoteague
Stormy, Misty's Foal
Born Free
The Lion's Paw
The Yearling
All of the Little House books
The Dollmaker
The Thornbirds
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day
Alexander Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday
Matilda and Her Children (the cats, not the witches)
Little Women
Anno's Journey
and I ready Gone with the Wind in two days when I was 14.


One of my favorites to this day is Thirteen...

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