StoryWorth: Stories I've Loved
What is one of your favorite children's stories?
I enjoyed so many books as a child that it’s impossible to pick just one-and also difficult to know where to draw the line on “children’s stories”. As a little kid I loved the Beatrix Potter books and the Winne the Pooh stories-Eeyore was always my favorite. I learned to read so early that I quickly moved on to what are now called chapter books-I remember Black Beauty being one of my favorites in kindergarten. I read both The Earthsea Trilogy and The Hobbit at age eight, thanks to my sister, Anne, and I also adored A Wrinkle in Time at that age.
It was a delight to revisit some of my favorites with Alice, but also to discover some of the amazing new books that had been written since I was a kid. Jason’s mother worked for many years in the children’s department at the University of Washington bookstore and she had squirreled away copies of all the books she loved there. Every week or two through Alice’s first three or four years we would get a USPS flat rate box filled with wonderful books and padded out with clothes from the consignment shops near her, or toys that she had kept since Jason was a boy. At Christmastime she would send us ornaments, some from Jason’s childhood, and others that she found and couldn’t resist. One of the strangest and most intriguing was a stuffed panda wearing a grey coat and carrying a red parasol.
Some of my favorite books to read to Alice included The Owl and the Pussycat, Silly Sally, Chicka Chicka Boom, and Way Out in the Desert, a desert take on Way Out in the Meadow that had beautiful illustrations of desert creatures.
I loved Petite Rouge: A Cajun Red Riding Hood and was very proud of my Cajun accent, but it always freaked Alice out when I read it to her-she didn’t like me putting on a different voice like that. It came up in conversation recently and she said she’d love to hear it now, so I’ve ordered a copy for her birthday.
Another favorite was Rosie and the Rustlers. The story is lovely-how Rosie’s ranch hands managed to thwart the villains who stole their cattle without killing anyone. The illustrations are great and there was something deeply satisfying about the rhyme scheme:
Where the mountains meet the prairie, where the men are wild and hairy,
There’s a little ranch where Rosie Jones is boss.
It’s a place that’s neat and cozy, and the boys employed by Rosie
Work extremely hard, to stop her getting cross.
And then we found Zen Shorts, a book about three children who happen to meet a new neighbor, a panda named Stillwater, who wears a gray coat and carries a red parasol and tells them simple versions of Zen koans, which I have loved since college. When I was called on to read a story to Alice’s first grade class, that’s the one we chose together, and it still sits on the shelf near my desk where I occasionally pull it out and read it for myself. And every year we unpack our Stillwater ornament, delighted to know his name and share our holiday with him.
This entry was originally posted at https://lillibet.dreamwidth.org/1312628.html. You can comment either place! There are
comments over there now.
I enjoyed so many books as a child that it’s impossible to pick just one-and also difficult to know where to draw the line on “children’s stories”. As a little kid I loved the Beatrix Potter books and the Winne the Pooh stories-Eeyore was always my favorite. I learned to read so early that I quickly moved on to what are now called chapter books-I remember Black Beauty being one of my favorites in kindergarten. I read both The Earthsea Trilogy and The Hobbit at age eight, thanks to my sister, Anne, and I also adored A Wrinkle in Time at that age.
It was a delight to revisit some of my favorites with Alice, but also to discover some of the amazing new books that had been written since I was a kid. Jason’s mother worked for many years in the children’s department at the University of Washington bookstore and she had squirreled away copies of all the books she loved there. Every week or two through Alice’s first three or four years we would get a USPS flat rate box filled with wonderful books and padded out with clothes from the consignment shops near her, or toys that she had kept since Jason was a boy. At Christmastime she would send us ornaments, some from Jason’s childhood, and others that she found and couldn’t resist. One of the strangest and most intriguing was a stuffed panda wearing a grey coat and carrying a red parasol.
Some of my favorite books to read to Alice included The Owl and the Pussycat, Silly Sally, Chicka Chicka Boom, and Way Out in the Desert, a desert take on Way Out in the Meadow that had beautiful illustrations of desert creatures.
I loved Petite Rouge: A Cajun Red Riding Hood and was very proud of my Cajun accent, but it always freaked Alice out when I read it to her-she didn’t like me putting on a different voice like that. It came up in conversation recently and she said she’d love to hear it now, so I’ve ordered a copy for her birthday.
Another favorite was Rosie and the Rustlers. The story is lovely-how Rosie’s ranch hands managed to thwart the villains who stole their cattle without killing anyone. The illustrations are great and there was something deeply satisfying about the rhyme scheme:
Where the mountains meet the prairie, where the men are wild and hairy,
There’s a little ranch where Rosie Jones is boss.
It’s a place that’s neat and cozy, and the boys employed by Rosie
Work extremely hard, to stop her getting cross.
And then we found Zen Shorts, a book about three children who happen to meet a new neighbor, a panda named Stillwater, who wears a gray coat and carries a red parasol and tells them simple versions of Zen koans, which I have loved since college. When I was called on to read a story to Alice’s first grade class, that’s the one we chose together, and it still sits on the shelf near my desk where I occasionally pull it out and read it for myself. And every year we unpack our Stillwater ornament, delighted to know his name and share our holiday with him.
This entry was originally posted at https://lillibet.dreamwidth.org/1312628.html. You can comment either place! There are
comments over there now.