Oh man... trying to pick one or even just a few favorite books from growing up... I read a lot, started reading when I was 3 and pretty much never put down a book after that. But as to the favorite classic childhood stories that were on everyone's book shelf where I lived...
Black Beauty
White Fang and Call of the Wild
Heidi
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The entire Dr. Suess collection
Charlotte's Web
Grimm's Fairy Tales ('Americanized' version)
Aesop's Fables
Wind in the Willows
My Side of the Mountain
Hatchet
The Phantom Tollbooth
The Box Car Children
Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys
The Babysitter's Club
Anne of Green Gables (still is my all time favorite series, even beats Harry Potter)
All of which were my favorites at some point in my reading history, but then there were some strange ones, like Wait Till Helen Comes, a ghost story for kids that I thought was just awesome, it was a bit more of a tear-jerker as a kid then scary.
I cried and cried when we moved from NH to GA because my entire library was sold off to the used bookstore we frequented. And I had in my possession at the time around 100 of the Boxcar Children series books. To watch them all go along with my Babysitter's Club books which I owned the complete series of including the Little Sisters books, and my complete series of Anne of Green Gables, all of my Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books that I worked so hard to find and complete the series as best I could... it was torture.
But the folks were bankrupt and there was only so much room in a moving van for the lives of 6 people
. I understand it now, but at the time I was inconsolable much to the confusion of my father who couldn't understand why I had no problem throwing out all of my toys minus 1 or 2 little knick-knacks and even the majority of my clothes, yet my books!!!!!!! NO! Anything but my books, please oh please oh please not my books!!!! A hard earned collection of hundreds became a drawn out battle for me to pick no more than 5.
I think we all regretted it once we got down here though as my book collection initially rivaled that of the local public library and the only book store in town was the Christian Bookstore. We were all stuck in literary hell.
And I never missed a day for about the first year down here to tell them that they should have let me leave my bed behind and only take 2 outfits rather than make me give up my books.
