day 9: favorite books from childhood

[destina]

13 days of happy things, day 9! Today I'm going to list twenty of my favorite books from my childhood. (I read most of these books before I turned 10, though some were written for middle-school kids or teens.) Many of these books featured a strong female protagonist, which I didn't realize until I was much, much older. (My sneaky mom and her sneaky

Comments

[wishfulaces]

Yellow House Mystery, part of the Boxcar Children series by Gertrude Chandler Warner. This was the book that actually got me interested in reading, and I devoured the rest of the original books after that. Also probably explains my life-long love of mysteries, come to think of it...

[destina]

I remember that book! :) I read that one at the library. Because I was working at the library (actually getting paid) by the time I was 14, I was prone to reading things as I was shelving them, and this was one of those. *g*

Isn't it interesting, how much the books we loved as kids explains about our grown-up tastes? I think it's funny. In a good way.

[musesfool]

Trixie Belden! Anne of Green Gables! The Tombs of Atuan (I liked A Wizard of Earthsea, but Tombs of Atuan remains one of my favorite novels ever)!

Also, though it's about boys rather than girls, The Teddy Bear Habit by James Lincoln Collier - it's about a 12yo boy named George who believes his teddy bear is his good luck charm and he can't succeed without it. He gets an audition for a prefab band to perform on what is basically a thinly-veiled Ed Sullivan show, and also there are jewel thieves. And his dad is a comic book artist and it all takes place in Greenwich Village in the 60s.

[destina]

Ah, Anne of Green Gables! My mom gave me that book; it was one of her favorites, but for some unknown reason it never took, with me. I have no idea why. I should have loved it. Also, I never heard of the Earthsea books until I was in my thirties. It's a mystery to me how I did not really read any SF at all, as a kid.

Thank you for sharing yours! :D

[riventhorn]

The Little House books were one of my favorites (still are), too (and my mom's, in fact they were her books from her childhood) and also the Mary Poppins books. Little Women was my grandma's favorite book, and although it was never a favorite of mine, I've read it and enjoyed it. And Harriet the Spy! I forgot about her, but I remember enjoying that one.

As for my favorites--wow, there were so many! I loved the Anne of Green Gables series and Nancy Drew. Paddington and Pooh. I think my dad actually had more influence on my book reading than my mom, though. He introduced me to the Redwall series, particularly the original five or six which I still love. The Elfquest comics. The Wind in the Willows. The Once and Future King. And of course, the Hobbit and LOTR. Also a book that I think you might enjoy based on your favorites--Wise Child by Monica Furlong. Female protagonist, strong female characters, very well done.

[nerthus]

Ooh, how could I forget Ann of Green Gables, I LOVED that book and series as a child!

[destina]

The Hobbit! That was a fave of mine, too, tho mostly for one scene. (Riddles in the dark. *g*) PADDINGTON BEAR. Aw, now I'm thinking of Pooh, too. I still love Pooh. :D

I'll look up Wise Child; thank you for the rec!

[riventhorn]

I still read and love most of these, too. :)

Oh, and I forgot all of the great Roald Dahl books--Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, The BFG, etc.

[nerthus]

I still have my childhood copy of The Witch of Blackbird Pond (price on the cover was something like 50 cents, ha); loved that book as a child and I re-read it from time to time. I also loved Five Little Poppers and the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. I also loved Pippi Longstocking, Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series, which was a series of books featuring 3 boys, Bob and Pete and Jupiter, who had a secret hideout in a junkyard and who solved crimes, ha; I had this book called The Mysterious Bender Bones that for some reason I just loved, and one of my faves I would read over and over was The Secret Garden. The very first book I can ever recall receiving was the first and original Curious George book; I have few memories of my really early childhood but I do recall being not quite 3 and carrying that book with me everywhere till it was torn and raggedy. One of my earliest fave toys was a stuffed monkey (not George, just a chimp with white shoes painted on its feet and red suspenders, holding a banana which was part of its

[nerthus]

Ugh, Peppers, not Poppers, ha; can't type correctly today! But hey, Mr Popper's Penguins, another good one! My daughter is a penguin fanatic, she loves that one.

[destina]

Hmmm, I wonder if I ever read that Alfred Hitchcock series you mention? I don't remember it. I did read all his ghost story and thriller books for kids, those old anthologies; I have a couple I found at used book sales and I will never part with them because they are hard to find nowadays.

The Secret Garden is another of my faves, tho I liked it less than A Little Princess. I felt I had to choose. And so I did. *g*

Wow, that is a powerful memory associated with Curious George. And your stuffed monkey. Just goes to prove that books and the characters in them are the purest comfort to kids.

[laurashapiro]

Unsurprisingly, many of your favorites are also on my list, particularly the Little House books and the Narnia books.

I would add From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsberg as an all-time favorite. A tween girl and her little brother run away from home and live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. With bonus mystery plot thrown in! It's literate and wonderful, and to a suburban kid, quite exotic.

I also ate up The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, which is about the particular sort of magic created by the collective imaginations of children. The illustrations in my copy indicated that the family in the book was an interracial one, but I don't recall if that's in the text.

The Great Brain series I liked a lot, as well as Beverly Cleary's books about Ramona and Beezus, as they dealt with sibling rivalries and power dynamics. That was a reality I was living at the time.

What else. Chancy and the Grand Rascal. The Good Master. And pretty much all the Judy Blume books. I couldn't live without them.

[destina]

Oh, god, Judy Blume. It's funny, I read all those books, but I have a sort of particular uncomfortable feeling associated with them. Growing up and seeing the world differently? Coming to terms with not being a kid anymore? Not really wanting to revisit insecurities that she specialized in? I'm not sure, but tho I loved them then, I wouldn't touch them now. I think I'm weird. But I own my weirdness.

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler - heh, I liked that book quite a lot. But it was another of the books I read at the library. I devoured quite a lot of the children's library, but those tended to be books I only read once. Like A Hero Ain't Nothin But A Sandwich, which I picked up for the title and which had become one of the most memorable books of my life by the time I put it back on the shelf. 13 year old heroine addicts were not really known to exist in my part of the world.

[laurashapiro]

I wonder if Judy Blume was uncomfortable for a lot of kids -- or would be uncomfortable for other adults. I haven't read them in thirty years, so I don't have a sense of how it would feel to revisit them. But they were absolutely crucial to me back then.

I know what you mean about library books. I have trouble remembering anything I only read once. It's one reason why my minimalist, non-consumerist lifestyle is not reflected on my bookshelves. If I loved reading it, I've got to own it so I can love reading it AGAIN.