Favorite Childhood Books . . .
 

DD26's nephew is having a tough time reading. I told him about some books that kids his age seem to really like. The problem is, I don't think he is to that level of reading yet. Talking about books with him got me thinking of some of my childhood favorites. I thought I would start a thread and see what you all like as a child. Here's my off the top of my head list. . .

Ramona (any of the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary)
All of a Kind Family
Boxcar Children
Charlotte's Web
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia - which are still my favorites today and have read them more than once)
The Borrowers

What were some of your favorites?

I don't know as I had any favorite books as a child... (wasn't much of a reader.) However, my wife & I now have a large collection of children's picture books (nearing 300 volumes). I know one of my wife's favorites, as a child, was The Boxcar Children.

Our son was born in 1981...

His fave was the Church Mice...as he loves animals.

The Church Mouse: Graham Oakley: 9781935279693: Amazon.com: Books

There are several of these. We have 6 or 8 of them, and also borrowed some from our library. We read them to him when he was younger 3-4... By 4.5yrs he was reading some himself!

There are like graphic novels....for adults. Lots of color, panel format, and a funny sense of humor.

A librarian steered us to these, as they are from England and not as popular here as there. But our son just LOVED these.

Read the reviews, and you'll see how much they are loved.

I have never heard of the box car family. We enjoyed the Dr Suess books, Little House, Hardy Boys, oh what was the girl mystery novels????Nancy Drew. We really just enjoyed riding our bikes down to the library and letting them pick out their own books since we had so many at home also.

I think my all time favorite book to read to my girls of any age is 'The Monster at the end of the book'. It is a Sesame street book and the monster is Grover. But I love to read with a lot of drama both in my voice and actions. And Grover does not want those pages turned and I put that drama in. I read it to all the kids at Christmas.

Good thread

Skeezyks - That's awesome!!! I wish I had room for books. I would love to have a little library. I did when my kids were younger but ended up with so many books that when I moved, I gave them away.

mrsD - I have never heard of that series. I will check them out as my grandson loves animals and loves, loves to have someone read to him. He's only 18-months old but could sit there with books and either "read" to himself or bring books to me to read to him for hours. We spent a couple of hours reading books yesterday morning. His current favorite book is "Book of Giants and Little People" by Diane Goode.

Doydie - I liked Little House on the Prairie books as well. I forgot about those and the Nancy Drew books. I remember going to the library and picking them up and reading them. When I think of summertime, I always think of riding my bike or walking to the local library and picking up books.

What is nice about the Church Mice series is that the illustrations are complex and funny while the underlying message is one of cooperation and learning acceptance of others. The comic book type format encourages all readers so the words can be slowly learned in a fun way. We didn't expect our son to learn to read with these, but he did on his own.

His fave was "The Church Mice and the Moon:
The Church Mice & The Moon: Oakley: 97868974741: Amazon.com: Books

This one appealed to hisbudding techie nature and was also a big adventure. There is one about a constuction site, too that was prized by him.

I liked the art work (of course) and it has been fun remembering these books and how our son responded to them! Nice memories for me!

There are two other animal books I learned about here...just recently and I bought them for MYSELF!

The author Jackie French from Australia.
Diary of a Wombat
Diary of a Wombat - by Jackie French and Bruce Whatley ((C) Harper Collins Publishing) - YouTube
Diary of a Baby Wombat:
This one is funnier and has a human baby in it too.


These are precious and are mostly targeting small children.. but I loved the simplicity of these and the art work is very good and would appeal to a creative type child I would think.
Jackie French has a funny blog with a story of how she came to write the books, as they are based on her own experience with a rescued baby wombat on her property in Australia. It is very funny and touching...

jackie-french

I think these books are keepers forever, even when the kids grow up and leave.

I often read these myself, again and again. ;)

What cute stories! I got a kick out of both of them. I have started a list of the books that you have mentioned as I really think my grandson, as well as DD26s niece and nephew, will enjoy. We have a resale bookstore that I can take old books to and get a trade in credit. (I'm sure they have them all over the U.S. now. They're awesome). I have books that I need to bring in and I will check to see if they have some of these books.

Babar the Elephant. Babar the Elephant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

We had the whole set. Wish I still had them. My sister took them for her kids and they destroyed the books. I think my sister tossed the books because she didn't want to take them on a move. I would have saved them. I loved that series.

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. :eek: 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. :p

Great books!

Erin - I forgot about Babar!!! I think all kids love Babar. Those are great books. You also reminded me of Paddington Bear! That's a great book. I also love the Carl books. They are only picture books but the artwork is amazing!

Starz - How sad! You had to leave behind a huge piece of your heart when you moved. I would have been so heartbroken. We had some books but we used the library A LOT! I think having such a large family and moving a lot is the reason we didn't have a lot of books. We had lots of reference books though - World Book encyclopedias, dictionaries, National Geographic magazines (which aren't books but I remember them on the book shelf), my mom's nursing books, my dad's engineering books, a series of classic novels, etc. As far as children's books though, I don't remember too many of the ones we had except the Children's Bible and some nursery rhyme books.

I read all of my sister's Nancy Drew books. Some more than once! I wish I knew whatever happened to them. I'd love to have them now.

Anne of Green Gables (series of books) was also a favorite. When it came on TV (Insp channel) I watched all of the episodes.

I remember my sister reading Charlie and The Chocolate Factory to me.....one chapter at a time as a bedtime story. I loved that book.

I don't remember if I ever read Anne of Green Gables. It seems to me I may have in junior high but I really can't remember. There were so many books that we had to read in junior high and high school that I can't remember them all.:D

i remember my mom getting "little golden books" when i was young and reading those. of course i loved "nurse nancy". it even came with a read bandaid

for boys there was a "doctor dan".

i also liked grimm fairy tales.

The Little Golden Books are great!!! I remember my mom and older brothers and sisters reading them to me and me reading them to my younger brothers and sister. I also remember you telling us that Nurse Nancy was how you came up with your screen name on NT. I always thought that was so cool as I loved Nurse Nancy too!

Grimm Tales were good too! We had a set of Hans Christian Anderson books. I think they were my mom's from when she was little. I know that we were not allowed to read them without permission. Thumbelina and The Little Match Girl were some of my favorites.

I didn't read any of the Ann of Green Gables until I was an adult. I got them on my Nook.

When we were children, that was many years ago, my parents enrolled us in some kind of book club that every couple of months we would get new ones in the mail. I wish I had those. They had differnet levels and since my brothers were 8 and 9 years younger than me, we had two different levels. But that was how important books were to my parents. Sorry Starz. We also got Highlights.

My oldest grand daughter is going into her sophomore year in high school. I remember asking her last year if she was excited and I got a big NO. But this year she is thrilled. Why? She gets to take history again!!! and she wants to take a couple of differnet history classes a semester if she can.

"Gone-Away Lake"

I loved taking history courses! I even have an associates degree in history :D, though I was working on my bachelor's in psychology before MS struck me down. I really thought the two of them paired well, along with a few courses in anthropology, you can start to understand the "human condition".

But I almost completely forgot about Highlights, and Ranger Rick! Great magazines when growing up. And the Little Golden Books, which are they still making those? I've a nearly 5 year old grandson who might be ready for them if they are. Very easy for young readers to read even if they occasionally had longer words. Although I will be honest, if we're including magazines in our favorites growing up... MAD magazine was the greatest literature of all time :D I mean come on Spy vs. Spy! It was totally worth the month long waits between publishing. My brother and I both loved it though we would constantly fight over who got to read it first.

Harold and the Purple Crayon
Babar
The Little Princess (still love it)

A different book at different ages

B2Y - Hi!!! I miss your posts. As I have always said, you have a way of making something ordinary into something extraordinary! I think about that every time I think my life is boring. I think about viewing normal things they way you would view them. It always makes me smile and think of you. Anyhow, I had never heard of "Gone Away Lake" before. I just google it and it sounds like a great book!!!

Doydie - We had Highlights too!!! Those were great magazines. Books and reading were always important in our house when I was growing up too.

Starz - You're so funny! MAD Magazine was one of my brothers favorite magazine. He would save up his allowance and whatever other money he got and buy the magazines. We all read them.

Kicker - I love "Harold and the Purple Crayon" and wish I had that one here at my house to read to my grandson. I loved Harold's imagination. Such a cool book. I also forgot about the Little Princess. That's a good one too.

All these great book ideas makes me want to head to the used bookstore and start a little library for my grandson. He is going to be a reader. At 19-months, he can identify about 1/2 of the letters of the alphabet. It's just crazy. So, I need to hustle on getting a little library of kids books going.

I had twins. Both can write but DD great! Same books and Mom - but DD big reader, DS not as much. DS very neat and organized. DD is not. DS very spacial. DD very artistic, DS just OK. Kids same somewhat, very different in other ways, Even as babies.

Kicker - It's both amazing and not surprising that each child is different despite being twins, raised in the same household - same parents and environment, etc. Although my girls aren't twins, they are both very different than each other. I like that about them.

DD24 and my grandson came over last night. Their cooler wasn't working well. (Evaporative coolers do not work well in humidity and it was humid yesterday.) I bought a book on my Kindle through my Nook app. It's a cute story about a little blue truck. There are a few Little Blue Truck books. He loved it.

i also remember my mom reading me the series of Madeleine books. about the little orphan french girl.

all the girls "in a straight line, except for madeleine". and all her adventures, including having her appendix out.

My son loved" Captain Underpants" (grade level 2-5) and "Holes", my daughter "Goosebumps". (again grade 2-5). Older kids will read what interests them.

i love it that both my grand daughters love to read. Both my daughters loved to read, my husband could care less about it, reads the car adds. But my son in law is a writer so books is very important in their home. I have talked to my daughter though that when we see the GK I would like for the older one to interact with us more. She would prefer to read the whole time they are here. But she is 14 so that is part of it.

I have an old Madeline book! I completely forgot about it. It's the one with the dog that saved her when she fell off the bridge or something. My girls loved those books and we would read them over and over.

yes. it was one of our going to bed rituals. i still have some of the books from when i was little. nice memories.

refreshing thread. thanks.

Judy - Some books bring back such fun memories! And, I'm glad you are enjoying the thread and the memories it is bringing up. It is bringing up such happy memories for me as well.

I went searching on my Nook app for books for toddlers. I came across Corduroy. Another book series for little ones that I forgot about. I did get Harold and the Purple Crayon but haven't read it to my grandson yet. It's a lot longer than I remember it being.

DD26 and I were talking and I remember a series that both my girls loved...the Junie B. Jones books by Barbara Parks. Those books are so funny!!! (Some funnier than others.)

Well hopefully this nasty infection I've got going on will clear up before our scheduled NH trip, but I can tell you being reminded of all these great children's books the used bookstores up there are going to end up cleaned out :D. Of course I also have 2 GBs that I'll be buying books for rather than the planned on 1. I can't believe that my GS father isn't letting him take his books with him :eek: I mean he's not even the one bringing him down, it costs him nothing for his son to bring his toys and books or his clothes for that matter. But there's no point in getting upset, after all I know the kid will be spoiled rotten once he gets down here in just a few more days. And now that I've a good list of books to remember to look for he'll have more than enough to read.

This thread is causing me to make a list of books as well. Some for my grandson and some for me to reread just for the fun of it, and others I have never heard of but put on my list to read (thanks mrsD!:hug:).

My grandson loves "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" and can now recognize a good portion of the letters of the alphabet. I had already been teaching him, mainly the ones in his name, but the book is helping him recognize other letters. It's a great book!