There was another thread started about favorite short stories and my mind became inundated with children's books. I hope that's not a reflection of my reading comprehension. It also doesn't help that I read The Giving Tree to my goddaughter the other night and found myself getting very sentimental. Both my older brothers and I can also recite the boy's entire name from Tikki Tikki Tembo after thirty plus years after reading the book. A couple others that will always be near and dear to me are There's a Nightmare in My Closet, The Five Chinese Brothers, and any one of Shel Silverstein's books. What are some children's books that have stuck with you through the years?
It's funny because I didn't really read much when I was a kid, I'm even having trouble remembering what I read way back when. I know though that The Hobbit is technically suppose to be a children's book, so I'll go with that.
What age group? Anyway, I have LOADS of books I still love from way back when, and some that I've read rather recently: The Gruffalo The Gruffalo's Child Puffin Book of Five-Minute Stories Gumboot's Chocolatey Day (One of my favourites) Kipper's Birthday Five Minutes' Peace (Another favourite) Animal Stories by Dick King-Smith The Spotty Pig (Actually, this might be my favourtiesetsetststest one ever) When Will it be Spring? The Snowman (A classic) I Don't Want to go to Bed!/I Don't Want to have a Bath!/Little Tiger's Big Surprise! (Another few good ones) Go with Christian! by Alan and Linda Parry (This is The Pilgrim's Progress for young children, with interactive pages and games) The Chronicles of Narnia Phew!
Dr. Seuss books were the best. And Where the Wild Things Are is a classic. I don't think I've heard of anyone who doesn't like that book.
I was actually thinking I am probably the only person who doesn't like Where the Wild Things Are while typing the OP
I don't think I read one book in that list... A little more advanced (like third to fifth grade), Book Fairs were great opportunities to load up on Superfudge, Ramona, Ribsy, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark...
You haven't lived. I loved my school's tiny book fairs. I bought my first "how to write" book from there, and I still have it on my shelf! It does have some useful things to look at now and again. You also reminded me that I loved/love any book in the Goosebumps series.
I didn't have a lot of picture books when I was a kid. My parents were more art oriented - lots of crafty stuff but not a lot of books. My favorite was the Frog and Toad books & Beatrice Potter. As I got older - Harriet the Spy & it's sequel The Long Secret. The Tucker books by George Selden. And Wind in the Willows.
Any Roald Dahl children's book. The man was a genius of children's literature and was singularly the biggest influence on me as a child in developing my love for the written word and all that can be achieved with it.
I had a hankering to re-read The BFG the other day. I went diving through my boxes of books in the garage and couldn't find it.
@Garball I'd read and owned them all at one point. Don't think I have any left now. I could be wrong though, I'll have to check. It would be nice to read some to my son. He just turned four the other day.
The Giving Tree is a definite favorite form childhood for me. I also greatly enjoyed the Gus was a Friendly Ghost series of books as a child too.
For me, it's Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Books and Just So Stories. Beautiful stuff that resonates with me to this day. Kipling remains one of my favorite writers.
I used to figgen love Roald Dahl. For some reason, my favorite was George's Marvelous Medicine. That or The Hobbit - and yes, that is a children's book. I also still have one book from my childhood called Greeks and the Trojans which was one of those books that took a classic story (in this case The Iliad) and put it in a very child-friendly way. It also explains the background to the Trojan war and what happened after, with Aeneas too. I read it again recently and it's an amusing little book. Basically the stuff it describes is pretty darn macabre at times, but it's in this simple and illustrative style - the contrast is actually rather jarring. When just learning to read, I used to ask for those Little Bear books a lot apparently, and Kipper the Dog books. No idea where those are anymore though.
I think I read every Goosebumps and Fear Street book, loved The Boxcar Children, The Baby-sitters Club, my mom gave me all her Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books, and I remember really liking Charlotte's Web. When I was really little Dr. Seuss was always a hit as well as The Berenstain Bears. Oh, and all the Little Golden Books, like The Poky Little Puppy. My favorite (probably because it was the first I learned to read myself) was Katie the Kitten and to this day I can still recite the whole thing from memory. When my first was born, my parents hunted down a copy of it since it's been out of print for who knows how long, and gave that to "us" as our first mommy/daughter gift. It's so special to me I keep it in my jewelry box, lol.
The gothic mysteries of John Bellairs were wonderful. You don't hear of them on booklists too much, but I read all of them to my kids and many of the kids I taught as well. Another great one you don't often hear about is Shane by Jack Schaefer. Boys love, love, love that book.
I used to love folk tales, couldn't get enough of them. I loved the "Horse Without a Head" as a kid. I never saw the movie they made out of it, forgot they even made one until I went looking for a link to the book. And of course, Lord of the Flies was one of my favorite books as a kid. Not sure if that's considered a kid's book or not. My son was an avid reader of chapter books: Animorphs, Goosebumps, Captain Underpants, Harry Potter of course.
I used to read a lot of Native North American mythology, along with my early exposure to Greek and Norse mythology. I loved that stuff. (I especially love the way Thor is depicted in the Norse myths - not so much the mighty warrior of the Marvel comics, but more of a comic buffoon...) Lord of the Flies struck me as a book about children written for adults. It seems that's a very rare genre, if you could call it a genre. I knew a couple of boys who loved it, who read it as a cool-as-hell boys-on-a-desert-island adventure, missing the whole evil-abides-in-the-innocent theme Golding was writing about. I keep worrying that if kids get their hands on it, they'd all adopt Jack and his gang as their heroes and turn into serial killers and fascist dictators.
There are so many good ones, but I pick- Swedish Author Astrid Lindgren. For example "The Brothers Lionheart" "Ronja the robbers daughter" "Emil" and "Children of Noisy village" Lindgren is also the author of the for foreigners well known "Pippi Longstocking" Lindgren is one of my many "Mothers" in the World of the written Word, she helped form my imagination and Im very gratefull, that her stories was read to me as a child.
All the Ramona books. I loved those books and still read them sometimes. I got one because a lady my Mom worked with knew I liked to read and it was in the lost and found since forever, and my collection grew from there. And the Beverly Cleary "romance" novels, like Fifteen, The Luckiest Girl, Jean and Johnny, etc. Not sure if they count, but also Donald Duck comic books. They were from the '40s, and my Grandpa gave them to me. They are so torn to pieces from readings that I think I had to throw some of them out, but I really enjoyed and I think that's what gave me my somewhat erratic sense of humor that I use while writing. That's good that there is at least some, because I am writing one about an 11-year-old, but it's probably one of my heaviest works.
Considering I'm such a hardcore reader now, as a child I was strangely inconsistent. I went through phases where I didn't read at all, and phases where I would not read anything unless it was Harry Potter or something by Jacqueline Wilson. My Mum was always trying to get me to read some 'children's classics', but I was never interested. (Which reminds me, going slightly off topic, I overheard this exchange in Waterstones the other day: Child of about ten: I don't know what I want to read next.... I want something that's good, but not too sad. Mother: Amelia, books are supposed to make you feel emotions! You can't only ever read 'happy' books. In fact, I want to get you reading some classics soon. Perhaps some Dickens. Hmm. And Jane Eyre, though that might be a little old for you just now. ...I found it amusing.) There were two books that I loved as a child because they made me laugh out loud. One was called Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf, and the other was Emily and Mr Prendergast by Shirley Isherwood. (Mr Prendergast is a cat who thinks a great deal of himself, and often tells stories from his life which you strongly suspect may be slightly embellished.) Mr Prendergast in particular stayed with me, because I wrote a letter to the author telling her how much I loved the book (as a child) and she not only sent a reply, but wrote a short, personalized story about Mr Prendergast with me in it, which is an absolutely amazing thing to do for a fan.
I actually only read children's stories when forced as a child. I was a stubborn non-reader until I was 13. But I read extensively to both my children when they were young, and my favorite story was one my son loved called The King's Chessboard.
