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.