Yesterday, I discovered that one of my all time favorite young adult fiction series — Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials — is being made into a movie. The first of which, The Golden Compass, will be released this December. I have absolutely no idea how the movie series will be, although it does look as though they are filming all three books from the series.
But I do know this: if you have not read these novels, do so. They are wonderful — rich in scene, in narration, and in characters that will break your heart in two and make it whole again. From the very start of the series all the way to the end of the third book, you are pulled into a world born of Pullman's vivid imagination. But it is his insight into the human psyche, the character and the flaws that are present in all of us, that makes this such an amazing read.
The first time I read this series, I could not put it down. Which, honestly, is exactly what you want in a book when you are an eleven year old — or even a 30-something who is pregnant with her first child and on strictly enforced bedrest – isn't it?
Two of my favorite books as a child — The Secret Garden and Mandy – had to do with little orphan girls who have these wonderful gardens of their own to tend, and then find wonderful families to share them with in the end. Sappy, British kiddie lit? Sure. But I still love them, and still pick them up when I'm feeling mopey.
Because of The Witch of Blackbird Pond, I've always wanted to go to Barbados. (Haven't made it yet.) But I also got hooked on American history through this book, and through the wonderful Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
And of course, with The Peanut, I get to relive a lot of my old favorites: the entire A. A. Milne Adventures of Winnie The Pooh, with the original Earnest Shepherd illustrations that I adore; all of the wonderful Beatrix Potter stories; any and everything by Dr. Seuss; and The Snowy Day, which my very favorite book as a kid. (And I still love to read it, along with all things Eric Carle.)
And I've also found a new favorite or two — including the wonderful Olivia series. And Miss Spider's Tea Party.
As a kid, I was a voracious reader. And I hope that The Peanut will be one as well. I still love to read, even though my free time is quite limited these days. The fun thing is that one of The Peanut's favorite places to go is to the bookstore. She likes to browse as much as we do, and we hope that will translate into a lifelong love of reading for her in the years to come.
This is but a tiny, tiny snapshot of some of my favorite books as I was growing up. I left out so many more, but I wanted to leave a lot of room for everyone else to add in some favorites in the comments. For me, settling in with a good book is like sitting down with an old friend, you just relax into the world of the author and see where the words take you.
And with that, what were your favorite books as a kid? Which ones do you still find yourself picking up and reading when you need a lift — or a source of comfort? For me, it is the Little House books and Anne McCaffrey's Crystal Singer series (and my original paperback with its Michael Whelan cover is battered, but I still love it — Whelan is amazing), when I need a quick, easy comfort read, or Tolkien when I want to escape altogether. Just like when I was a kid.
Let's talk great reading — for kids, for young adults, and for the kid in all of us. Pull up a chair…
PS — For some great snickers this morning, Bob Geiger has the Saturday funnies up. And they are fantastic this morning! Thanks, Bob!
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Christy!
Mornin’!
Zed! Ha ha! Now to go back and read. Good morning all!
One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish
I love FDL… I read it everyday.
One of my favorites is the riddle master trilogy
by Patrica McKillip. One of my favorite escapes.
Good morning Christy et al.
When I was a kid I liked to read books about mice. Don’t ask me why. Anything that was about a mouse the school librarian would put aside from me. This was in first and second grade. Stewart Little was one of the ones that I do remember.
Ah those were the days.
With all the bad news surrounding us everyday, great escapist fiction is just the ticket. As a youngster, I always gravitated toward science fiction. Arthur C. Clarke was a particular favorite.
“His Dark Materials” – three of my favorite books (well, it’s really one very long book in three parts). And certainly not just for “young adults.”
Philip Pullman is working on a sequel:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/wh…..35,00.html
And a very interesting profile from The New Yorker back in December 2005:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/…..226fa_fact
Fitz! Literature! Children!
Winnie the Pooh and B Potter now….. are they not Sappy British Literature too? Sir Brian with his battle axe “…. and he blipped him on the head!” Magic! My sister loved the Secret Garden: I thought it was a bit girl sappy too, but the victorian coloured pictures of that sensationally pretty girl……..!
oh, and
MARCY WHEELER IS GOD
Redd: The fun thing is that one of The Peanut’s favorite places to go is to the bookstore.
Yeah, that was always one of my daughter Meg’s favorite places whenever we went to the mall. I had a policy that I would buy her pretty much any book or any clothes she wanted. (That last one may have been a mistake.)
Five Children and It was one of our favorites as kids:
http://www.amazon.com/Five-Chi…..0140367357
Also Jules Verne, H.G. Wells.
I loved the Oz books, and finally, this Christmas, Santa brought me the whole series with the original John Neill illustrations.
My other faves were a series by Elizabeth Enright called The Melendy Family: The Saturdays, The Four-Story Mistake, and And Then There Were Five.
“His Dark Materials” is for adults of ALL ages.
I had the strange good fortune to grow up next door to the library in my small village (pop about 500 when I was growing up). I read everything Cristy mentioned.
Plus all the Walter Farley Horse Black Stallion and all his progeny horse books.
Black Beauty broke my heart, and I don’t think I am over it yet.
I wore out the Narnia books, read the whole series at least 3 times by the time I was 10.
And the “Borrower” Books.
Actually, I was one of those kids who read pretty much anything I could get my hands on, including the borring Nancy Drew books
Neil @ 4
Black Fish Gold Fish Old Fish New Fish
Milne’s Winne the Pooh is a favorite of mine, too.
and his Christopher Robin poems.
I loved nearly all the books you listed, Christy, and can only add: don’t leave out author E. L. Konigsburg! From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler was my first favorite…. then there was Jennifer, Hecate, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth.
I also loved The Saturdays. Anybody else remember that one?
Isn’t God an evil character in His Dark Materials? I read that somewhere, I think it was Kevin Drum who said it.
If that’s true, aren’t Bill Donohue’s and Bill O’Reilly’s heads going to explode simultaneously?
Great kid lit:
– A Wrinkle in Time
– The Faraway Lurs (A Romeo & Juliet plot set in the Bronze Age)
– The Time Garden (time travel for kids)
Good Morning!
Dr Seuss taught me to read before I started school. My mom would read them to me and I memorized the words that went with the pictures. It was like solving a puzzle or cracking a code to me. Needless to say, Dick, Jane, Sally and Spot didn’t do much for me.
Mom bought me a book called Fifty Famous Fairy Tales that I poured over. From there it was Aesops fables. I read The Hobbit in Junior High and was telling someone about it in the hall. Some girl came by and said “There’s more, you know.” Dayam! What a truly gifted writer.
And absolutely no book collection is complete without “A Confederacy Of Dunces.” The author does the most magnificent job of holding at least a half dozen plots aloft, tying up all loose ends at the very end. An absolute magnificent read.
In it you find such jewels as this:
“Her shoe squeaked with discount store defiance.”
My kids love Junie B. Jones. Her malapropisms delight them to no end.
I read every Nancy Drew I could get my hands on when I was a kid.
My FAVORITE children’s book is The Velveteen Rabbit, although I didn’t discover it until I had my own little one. I sobbed and sobbed so much while reading it that my daughter hates the book because it “made Momma sad.”
Another favorite that I didn’t discover until I had my daughter is The Runaway Bunny. I love it so much.
As a nerdy little kid the Tom Swift jr books, then SciFi, Heinlein, Arthur C. Clark, Asimov and (non sci-fi)the Sherlock Holmes stories. I still read the latter.
Also, “The Dark is Rising” series by Susan Cooper is a crowd pleaser among the 5th grade set.
Ooh, ooh! A thread designed just for me! (Well, and maybe some other folks here, too.) I was a Nancy Drew addict. My mother had the complete original set in hardcover from the 30’s. As a little girl growing up in the fifties, having books about an intrepid girl sleuth in her spiffy little roadster, with her girlfriend named George (!) was like a lifeline to my self-image.
My dad read us Tom Sawyer. Yep that’s how old I am. Not bedside either, in the living room, prime time, with the TV off. The Norman Rockwell illustrations of that book still give me a frisson.
I cannot live without books, said Thomas Jefferson. From the minute I learned to read, I’ve been the same.
Boy did I devour everything, but Nancy Drew in fifth grade especially…
Good morning! Books!
Some of my favorite old kids books are Arthur Ransom’s Swallows and Amazons series.
Also E. Nesbit’s Railway Children books, which are marvelous fantasies.
Narnia, of course.
But I also read Sherlock Holmes, and fairy tales, and lots and lots of science fiction.
My favorites before Tolkien were the Doc Savage series. It seems there were nigh on a hundred of them, and I tried to read every one.
The movie (unlike LOTR) ruined it, but it was great while it lasted.
Oh, as a real little kid Dr Suess (they were new then), A A Milne (my mother’s favorite). Learned later that the real Christopher Robin (Milne) had a pretty troubled life.
Marlowe at 9 — The picture up top is a still from The Golden Compass. The website for the movie has some fascinating shots, and you really get a feel for the atmosphere they are doing with the film. And you are right — they are absolutely not just kids books. I love them. (Partly because they got me through some tough bedrest, but mostly because they are just wonderful.)
Charlotte’s Steiner’s little redheaded Kiki
Morning all.
I loved all biographies, Hans Christian Andersen tales, The Lonely Doll Stories, Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web, Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Cherry Ames…….
A Confederacy of Dunces is simply amazing OFG!
A couple of books for slightly older kids were favorites of our family:
Lizard Music
The Snarkout Boys and the Avacado of Death
Baconburg Horror
all by Daniel Pinkwater, and laugh out loud funny.
Sharkbabe @ 27
Same here. My dad used to read to my sister and I before bedtime. He read Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Kipling, Louisa May Alcott. We really loved it. That was in the 50’s. Don’t people do that these days?
Nancy Drew,
and it was extra fun to read the really old copies
I came to wonderful children’s lit late in life. As a child, I snuck into my mother’s collection of true crime books, and horrified myself. I did read all of Encyclopedia Brown again and again, though.
The only full-sized series I recall reading was The Bobbsey Twins. It was strange, because I loved the pictures on the covers, but I could hardly stand the saccharine characters, and the way the “bad guys” were so easily subdued by the kids. I complained about this to my grandmother, because I knew from “Helter Skelter” and other horrifying books found high, high on my mother’s bookshelf (and pulled down using chairs and boxes) that bad guys were much, much worse.
My grandmother rolled her eyes, put her forehead into her hand, and explained that “criminals were more well-mannered back when these books were written.” I think she honestly believed that.
As a grownup, I’ve dived into Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden, and now I will dive into whatever people recommend here! I’ve enjoyed more childhood as a grownup than I did as a kid. Anybody else here like that?
Delurking here. I was sick alot as a youngster. Fortunately my mom went to the library for me. The best for me was Tolkien. I still read it, and it is still one of my favorites along with several others. As my children grew, I shared these books with them. Now we pass books back and forth. You have lots to look forward to with the peanut. By the way thanks for all of the info on all of the many topics here at firedoglake.
Oh yes, Huckleberry Finn!
I see I’m not the only Nancy Drew fan here. ;) I was also a science fiction fanatic (still am) and read all of Heinlein and Asimov. My favorite now is Lois McMasters Bujold’s Vorkosigan series. My Lady, can that woman write!
Story books by Virginia Lee Burton
Choo-Choo the Runaway Engine was my favorite. Then there Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel and The Little House(a Caldecott Award Book).
I loved the illustrations that she did in these books. And they are all still print!
withcywoman at 40 — Lois is wonderful. And she is a hoot — if you ever get a chance to met her, do it. You’ll love her.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island!
and I remember Mike Mulligan!
I hate how they’ve commercialized Charlotte’s Web – there’s only one Charlotte’s Web, that original book and those original illustrations.
Sharkbabe @ 44
yep! and our own imagination.
I want to mention that I find Beatrix Potter’s books wonderfully subversive! Savannah (my own little peanut) and I laugh at her devilish humor. She is great fun to read aloud and theatrically.
Beatrix Potter, btw, was a fascinating and accomplished woman. I didn’t learn until after college that she was one of the first to understand and explain lichen.
The 3rd book in His Dark Materials, “The Amber Spyglass” is a biblical allegory for the Adam and Eve story (or something like that). Yes? I keep 12 copies of each book in the set in my 5th Grade classrrom. As soon as one reading group starts the series the shelves remain empty of these great books until January.
Here is a new one for y’all…The Traveler, by John Twelve Hawks. This is a story of multidimensional travel by beings that move in and out of the six realms (ask a Tibetan Monk for an explanation). There are these people called Harlequins who are tasked to protect them. The story mixes off-grid living with gritty under-belly real world martial arts combat, and a dose of Golden Compass style multiple reality intrigue…wow!
G*d…I love books…
such wonderful comments
I loved reading Dr. Seuss to my kids, who never outgrew it! My favorite to read out loud was Oh Say, Can You Say?
Nancy Drew addict from way back. I also read Hardy Boys and — does anyone remember these? — Dana Girls.
My all-time favorite comfort book was one I got from one of those book clubs as a kid: Mrs. Coverlet’s Musicians. And my girls liked a read-aloud trilogy we did by Monica Furlong that began with Wise Child and then the prequel Juniper and then Colman.
I loved the Lonely Doll
treebark @
6
treebark, i remember when the first one of those came out. I got to the end and realized she left us hanging and HADN’T EVEN STARTED the sequel yet. I threw the book across the room…and it was two YEARS before I was able to get the other two.
I read Watership Down, Wind in the Willows, and Tolkein to the kids – they loved anything long that promised many days of being read to.
Are we really surprised to find a lot of Nancy Drew fans in the land of Plameology?!
Being read to by Dad and/or Ma makes for early readers (& joyous childhood memories). Pop used to read to us from the newspaper almost daily, especially if we crawled up on the arm of his chair & begged for attention.
Favorites I first found in my older brother’s bookshelf:
The Boxcar Children series
The Once and Future King- T.H. White
Huge set of “Cricket” magazines
The Illustrated Man- Ray Bradbury
Just So Stories- Kipling
Complete Works of E.A. Poe (Marie, put that back! Read it on the sly) ;)
Kathryn in MA @ 52
oh yes!
Elliott @ 50
Haunting and beautiful! I read the biography of its author Dare Wright a couple of years ago after I got The Lonely Doll from the library for my girl.
One of my favorite childhood books,long, long ago, was No Children,No Pets by Marion Holland.I was nine when I first read it in 1957 through the Weekly Reader summer book club. It’s a story about a young widow with two children trying to find housing in Florida and has stayed with me all of these years. When my daughter was young, one of her favorite series (mine,too!) was James Howe’s trilogy: Bunnicula, Howliday Inn (the best of the three, I think),and The Celery Stalks at Midnight.Great fun.
George Bush likes stories about goats!
Bob Geiger has some fantastic cartoons this morning. I’m updating the post above with the link, but I wanted to be sure everyone saw it. hehehehe
Kathryn in MA @ 52
That is so special and sweet. You must be a great mom.
(Reminds me somehow of many scenes in “The Cider House Rules”)
JoyB @ 56
Edith and Little Bear were so naughty!
JoyB@37
I know what you mean about enjoying more childhood as an adult than you did as a child. I was a very serious little girl. I didn’t develop a sense of the ridiculous until much later in life.
And I completely agree with you about the Bobbsey twins. Absolute dreck!
Good Morning Christy and Firedogs,
Joan of Arc by Mark Twain (yep, that Mark Twain)
Tales From The 1001 Nights
Little Women
Pollyanna
and good morning to Sharkbabe – miss ya in these threads gal –
the oh so busy college girl and I read aloud to each other in the precious little time we have together -
Anne of Green Gables (hers)
Nancy Drew (mom)
Christy Hardin Smith @ 59
Thank you – they are worth running over to see.
I’m the son of a kindergarden teacherand a school administrator. Started reading quite early in french. The books I remember the most from my early reading days are still the Time-Life encyclopedia on photography and on the grand masters of painting. I always had my nose in a general encyclopedia, a dictionary…
Le Petit Prince, by Antoine de St-Exupery is a book that still has a profound signification.
I started reading english at about nine, with Mad magazine and Car and Driver. My first english book was the Lord of the rings when I was eleven.
Reading is life.
Elliott 53 – oh if this nation only had Nancy – well we’ve got Jane and Christy & co. – and things are a little more psycho fucked-up complicated than in Nancy books – but our plucky heroines (and their boyfriends) are on the case…
Jim Trelease’s Read Aloud Handbook.
A must for all parents and teachers! Great shower gift or teacher gift.
I have a question for this well-read group. I have come across the name “Dorian Grey” several times and do not know where it came from or what it symbolizes.
really I’m gonna save this thread
I love Le Petit Prince and 1001 Nights!
OFG– here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorian_Gray
A Ms Allende has written some very good literature for younger people and should be supported by reading her books. I haven’t their titles but Amazon or Amazon.co.uk might oblige. She had me hooked on an early book about Chile which is a must read for adults.
luv ya cbl
The Picture of Dorian Grey
by Oscar Wilde
Best book as a kid? Any book. Especially from the summer bookmobile.
When my son was about five, his grandmother gave us Andrew Lang’s “The Brown Fairy Book”, and we were hooked.
I thought there were about five of them in the series, but I just looked on Amazon and discovered there are at least a dozen, each named with a different color; they’re fairytales from all over the world.
Some nights it was a fight between my wife and I as to who would get to read to him because we’d want to know what happened next in a story we were in the middle of.
Some people won’t read fairy tales to their children because they can be scarey, but I know I loved them when I was a kid, and so did my son. Anyway, I think my minds-eye version of the evil magician in Alladin was way better than anything Disney could come up with.
Books and Music: the refuge of sanity. The Dark Materials trilogy was so enchanting that I am almost afraid contemplate the movie. Alas Eragon.
I would nominate: Mists of Avalon; The Ship Who Sang; and Enders Game Oh and a slitchy little Heinlen book – Friday for at least the top 1000 list
I was a book junkie in my childhood. Thankfully, we lived directly across the street from the library. My idea of sport was to sign up for the summer reading program and blow all the other kids out of the water. My Mom used to hide my books so I would go out and play. To this day, I read 2 or 3 at a time “just in case”.
angie @
60
Thank you, sweet heart.
More classroom reading:
The Ranger’s Apprentice…OMG
The Last Book in the Universe…(this one will warp their minds to rage against the machine.
The House of the Scorpion…(Genetic cloning for Young Readers…the kids will never eat GMO’s after this book)
Tucket’s Gold…Gary Paulsen (4th book in a good old-fashioned Oregon Trail adventure).
I loved having my mother read “I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew” again and again. She would groan, because it was so long. Finally, she told me she hated the book!
I bought it for Savannah and read it all the time to her. I suspected I would feel as my mother did, but nope. I LOVE IT. You really need to read it using all sorts of different voices and tempos. It is a wonderful journey. Savannah always wants to discuss why the protagonist decides to just turn around and face his troubles in the Valley of Vung. I love trying to explain it to her! God, I love this thread, Christy. Thank you!!!
The Wind in the Willows is my absolute favorite. I don’t think Lewis Carroll is for children. He’s best read by young adults who’ve been exposed to surrealism.
Children should definitely read Dickens, however — so they’ll know what they’re in for. Poe is also very fine for adolescents. Their parents, meanwhile should read “Pages From Cold Point” — a cautionary tale by the great Paul Bowles.
I always loved Dr. Suess, Aseops Fabels, and folklore. It laid the ground work for my fascination with mythlogy, and the work of Joseph Campbell.
I do remember reading the Hardy Boys, and we had a set of World Book Encylcopedias, with a companion set of Child Craft books. I read the set of encyclopedias when I was in 7th grade. I didn’t read every word of every subject, I skimmed some pages. And the Child Craft books were quite fascinating for me.
By the time Trivial Pursuit came out, I was ready.
Oilfieldguy @ 68
Here’s a little more info.
Dorian Grey is a character created by Oscar Wilde who imbues his picture with all of the bad traist and acts the character has committed. The picture changes horribly while the character remains unchanged.
Wilde’s childrens stories are really for adults — particularly “The Happy Prince.”
Madeline L’Engle’s Time Quartet, starting with A Wrinkle in Time.
We atched the movie for the first time last month, and I am not quite certain it worked.
Not an abomination, but some of the magic was lacking; well, actually Disneyfied.
Much like the Narnia series.
THe BBC rendition had really cheap, Dark Shadows kind of FX, but trumped Disney with acting, direction and general adherance to the books.
My summers were spent on the Canadian shore of Lake Huron, down the hill from any possible television reception. Which meant that we palyed outdoors, and spent evenings and rainy days reading.
Tom Swift was a favorite (I guess I was a geek from the start)
And my aunt introduced me to detective fiction with her vast supply of Mystery Magazines.
I still love the pulp genre.
The Portrait of Dorian Grey on the other hand is perfect for children.
I grew up reading all the fairy and witch books in the branch library I could bicycle over to on my own… But these recommendations here are for newer children’s books.
Touching and real, about both animals and people, are the books by Cynthia Rylant. “Every Living Thing” or “The Van Gogh Cafe” or her easy reader Mr Putter and Tabby or Henry and Mudge books. Not leaving out,the picture books “Dog Heaven” and “Cat Heaven” for any small person who has lost a beloved pet.
Children who like to laugh should read Roald Dahl’s books “The BFG” “Matilda” (any of his for young kids really) and don’t miss the autobiographical “Boy” for middle school readers.
Also I highly recommend Karen Cushman’s “The Midwife’s Apprentice.” historical fiction, and for those who like mice and rat books, “A Rat’s Tale” by Tor Seidler. (Or the Redwall series by Brian Jacques.)
And lastly, one of my most favorite, the often overlooked: Farley Mowatt’s “Owls in the Family.” Just go read it, if you haven’t already.
Morning Christy. Actually, I’ve been re-reading “The Lord of the Rings” recently. I’m currently on the way to Helm’s Deep.
For some years it was my job to surf the kidlit stacks of the Library of Congress. Endless spines of books…pull off shelf, only a couple seconds to tell if they had heart.
Hey, I wonder if they have children’s books threads on the wingnut blogs? It would be a pretty short thread, consisting of The Children’s Book of Virtues by William “One Armed” Bennett and Starship Troopers by Heinlein.
There is the Ben Sargent Cartoon from yesterday:
http://www.uclick.com/client/w…..index.html
RevDeb @ 7
Have you read about Angelina the little ballerina mouse?
Or how about “She Was Nice To Mice” by Ally Sheedy (yes! the actress! she wrote this when she was a kid!)? She won a literary prize for it. I read about her in my National Geographic Scholastic magazine years before she was a movie star. I need to read this book.
Millineryman @ 82
From Child Craft Books (I memorized it when I was five):
Once there was an elephant,
Who tried to use the telephant—
No! no! I mean an elephone
Who tried to use the telephone—
(Dear me! I am not certain quite
That even now I’ve got it right.)
Howe’er it was, he got his trunk
Entangled in the telephunk;
The more he tried to get it free,
The louder buzzed the telephee—
(I fear I’d better drop the song
Of elephop and telephong!)
Oilfieldguy @ 68
Hi Oilfieldguy – The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde is about a handsome upper class gentleman who leads a completely corrupt and dissolute life while remaining young and beautiful. In is attic is a painting that ages and changes with his vile actions and reflects the debauched life he leads.
Oilfieldguy @ 68
From the wiki:
Good morning. We finally have sunshine in Minnesota, but I have ‘mountain’ peaks on either side of my driveway from the well over 25″ of snow we have had in the last week. I burned a few calories there, I can tell you.
And just a note, on Monday I am leaving for a month in Texas. I will be staying with a friend who volunteers at a zoo and we plan to do some joint volunteering. She is currently assigned to the primate section. Should be veeeery interesting.
GrandmaJo, if you are lurking and I know you usually are, I have sent you a couple of emails but still no response. I wanted you to know that I won’t be around for awhile. GrandmaJo and I will be roomies for the YearlyKos event. We are very excited, I can tell you.
I will certainly be lurking on FDL from my friend’s computer, but until I have talked to her, unsure whether I should post from her computer or use her email address. Time will tell, but rest assured I will be following the trial outcome from Texas.
And most important, in my small world, I will be riding horses again down there in the sunshine for the first time in 15 years. I can’t wait.
Now back to Breakfast at Christy’s.
Woodhall Hollow @ 15
Oh my! I’d forgotten about my horse craze! I read Black Beauty close to when Ruffian died, and yes, never got over it. I read all of Marguerite Henry’s horse books. Misty of Chincoteague, and so on, also.
And the wonderful little borrowers! I was thinking, “Did I read ANYthing?” and I’m relieved to discover I did.
When I was very young, it was everything Suess. Having kids was wonderful because I could rationalize reading Suess’ works again — as well as other favorites like “Go Dog, Go!”
In early elementary, one of my favorites was Betty Smith’s “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”, along with Pearl Buck’s “The Good Earth”. I also remember devouring Michener’s “Hawaii” the summer I turned eleven, reading it 3 times over the course of three months.
As a teenager I ate up anything sci-fi and speculative, from Bradbury to Vonnegut. I still have a special soft-spot for Harlan Ellison’s works. But my favorite was Arthur C. Clarke, particularly “Childhood’s End”.
Out of Africa !
Helen Keller !
Annie Oakley !
suspect that is a common thread among many of us here
and just seeing the words “summer bookmobile” on the screen – couldn’t you just all remember that wonderful scent ?!?!?
omg – thank you all above for The Lonely Doll – loved it !
Thanks for all the info on Dorian Gray. A remarkable device.
My German grandmother used to call me “the reading rat” when I was a kid. Nice to see so many childhood favorites listed here.
I had favorite library branches as well as favorite books. My other grandma’s hometown library in Taunton, MA; the Audelia Road branch of the Dallas Public Library; the town library where I went to college.
Oh, and the bookmobile!
GrandmaJ @ 97
Since this is a book thread, may I recommend something I’m reading right now that might make your visit to the primate section even more interesting? Our Inner Ape. Bonobos and chimps, compared to each other and us.
Say, I’m putting amazon links here. I know FDL could get a cut – Christy, is there a way for me to tweak my links so if somebody clicks, and actually buys, FDL gets credit? Or should I avoid linking altogether?
I was horse-crazy as a kid, so Wm Farley’s Black Stallion series and Marguerite Henry’s horse books, like Misty of Chincoteague etc.
Before that, it was all fairy tales, all the time. The Red Fairy Book, the Blue Fairy Book, The Green Fairy Book…
Shel Silverstein , Maurice Sendak , Jan Pieronkowski for younger ones .
The Velveteen Rabbit was a fave of my daughter . Also -the quintessential Goodnight Moon .
Hey, I read Starship Troopers when I was a kid!
I really enjoyed Lloyd Alexander’s “Book of Three” series. Very Welsh influenced, and led me to LOTR in time.
CRUD!!! delete my 103 pronto!!!
I’m normally so good with blockquotes.
I cannot edit.
[Mod Note; I fixed it for you.]
Rayne @ 99
I loved Bradbury and Clarke. When I was in high school I read The Martian Cronicles and Childhod’s End. For a long time Childhood’s End was my favorite book.
I don’t think very many girls read those books back then. You must have been an awesome girl!
Books to avoid
My Book House, anyone?
The elephant/telephone poem above reminded me of three humor books I inherited from my Dad that I still read when I miss him:
Colleted Poems of Ogden Nash
Chips Off the Old Benchley- Robert Benchley
Short Stories by S.J. Perelman
Two great kids books:
Polka Bats and Octopus Slacks
and
John, Paul, George & Ben
Sorry, had to add my favs from childhood. Anything to do with animals. All the Big Red books, Lassie etc., horses, and on and on…
But also the Betsy, Tacy, Tib books. Here is my little secret, when I started school I was so shy I did not, and would not talk. At all. They thought I was ’slow’ so they let me be, but I learned to read along with the class. So my days were spent in my closet secretly reading all the books I could get my hands on. Until in 5th grade my secret became know in a written test where my shyness was not an issue, and OOPS, they gave me much harder work to do, and made me talk in class.
It was never the same after that. :-)
Neither of my parents finished high school and were definitely not readers. But my shyness and interest, made me into a reader to this day. Nowadays, I appreciate detective novels, spy novels, and historical mysteries.
becca @ 105
Shel Silverstein’s Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book is a classic
My favorites as a kidlet?
Any fairy tale or legend i could get ahold of. I have a particular fondness for Hans Christian Anderson and his heroines. The Little Mermaid and Clara from The Snow Queen are long favorites.
Birth of the Firebringer by Meridith Ann Peirce. A complete world and culture of unicorns. What’s not to love? My first copy was all but destroyed it was read and reread so often. I didn’t find the last 4 beeks in teh little tetralogy until i was in my late 20s.
Sword-Dancer by Jennifer Roberson. I didn’t understand a lot of the subtleties until later, since i bought it around 8 with my mom on a trip. But when i did? i never let Tiger and Del go.
I do adore His Dark Materials Trilogy too. I heard about the movie a few years ago. I’m glad to see it’s progressing every so nicely. XD
The bookmobile was my haven all the time, so i read a LOT more than this. But these are the ones that stick with me.
Wonderful thread. Inspiring ideas!
I read all kinds as a kid. Addictions were Laura Ingalls Wilder and Nancy Drew. Also, L’Engle, Narnia, and good ol’ Judy Blum.
As for contemporary kid reading, my son (6) LOVES the Mary Pope Osborne “Magic Tree House” series, as do I. Great travels through time, culture & places. Wonderful introduction to history, geography and complex subjects such as war, death, evolution, slavery, prejudice, and ancient traditions, from Greek mythology to literature.
#38 just came out — Dawn of the Red Dragon took us to 1600s Japan and Basho poetry — a delightful way to spend a snow day in MN!
JoyB at #103 … Thanks for the link. I will definitely make note and see if Lois in Texas and I can get ahold of the book. She is a retired teacher (French and ESL) and she and I share our love of reading. Thank you again.
Loved Nancy Drew, but only the old ones — the new ones got progressively more dumbed-down. Dana Girls, Trixie Belden, and a series about a nurse, Cherry Adams — loved them all. I’d forgotten about the Dana Girls until they were mentioned upthread …
Also, wanted to throw out the Phantom Tollbooth and anything by Lloyd Alexander, but esp. the Taran books — Black Cauldron, The Book of Three, the Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, The High King — wonderful. I read a couple of books by Sylvia Louis Engdahl that stayed with me as marvelous as well, though I haven’t re-read them since I was a teenager …
I read and loved the Narnia books as a child but as an adult I don’t like them as much. But Tolkien remains a comfort read.
My son also loves bookstores, and quite easily manages to talk me into buying books there … the whole reading on his own thing is brand new, and its delightful to watch him devour books. He’s reading the Magic Treehouse series, and just loves it: he’s discovered a love of history through those books, and also a desire to become a librarian …
My kids were incredibly fold of Brian Jacques Redwall series. Great humorous read-aloud adventures for 6-12 year olds. Highly recommended.
When I think of “The Little Match Girl”, I think of all of the Iraqis, the Afghans…………
so sad, so senseless.
Riesz Fischer @ 108
Hey, some of us did! I read The Martian Chronicles when I was seven, and never stopped reading sf after that. Childhood’s End, yes, but even better for kids, A Citizen of the Galaxy.
I still love the Sneetches. The best Sneetches on the beaches. And the spooky pale green pants with no one inside them.
I came late to the party of the “His Dark Materials” but I find the trilogy extraordinarily rewarding and rich. I’ve been recommending the books to friends, both with and without children.
Both of my parents were tremendous readers, and I was surrounded by books, both at our home library, at the local library (thank you Multnomah County!) and at any bookstore I could find.
It wasn’t long until I was hooked on hard science fiction (I was a little science nerd), and worked my way through the Tom Swift series to Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, and Larry Niven.
It was only in high school and college that read and understood “real” literature. And I’m finally understanding the appeal of fantasy, the other “f” in “SF&F”.
My favorite book as a child was A Wrinkle in Time.
My sister has my mother’s Book House, a structure that housed large volumes of literature collections, produced in the 30’s.
My mother in law has given us some of her Blackie’s Annuals and Girls’ Own Annuals from the same era.
As for me, there was Charlotte’s Web for years. I was a science geek and loved non-fiction.
Then there were Madeleine l’Engle’s books. Years later, I went on a religious retreat with her: she was every bit as difficult a person as her heroine, Meg.
Oh, I forgot to mention that my son, Monsterboy, wept when we finished the last paragraph of Wind in the Willows.
Chariots of the Gods, The Ra Expeditions by Thor Heyerdahl, and a whole bunch of books about UFO fascinated me for a time. Which lead me into science fiction. Inspired a lot of writing until one of my teachers said one of my stories was too advanced for a kid my age, and accused me of plagerism.
I was always fascinated by anything ancient when I was a kid. The older the better.
My kids liked Richard Scarry’s The Best Word Book Ever and other “The Best . . . Book Ever” when they were 2-3. After we saw Star Wars when he was about 4, my son devoured every morality play science fiction written. He teaches English now, especially Shakespeare.
I liked Jack London, e.g., Call of the Wild when I was young; now it’s Persuasion, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, and of course, P&P and most tv/movie adaptations, except for the silly one with Laurence Olivier
Freddy the Pigand
The Borrowers
One other thing? Does anyone remember this obscure set of kids SciFi mysteries called The AI Gang? A group of kid supergeeks, with parents working on the ultimate supercomputer project.
Espionage, wit and a lot of fun. I only had the first two books of that series and wonder if they ever made anymore.
Alison @ 125
Jealous here
Glad someone mentioned some poetry books.
This one is fun: Mary O’Neill’s “Hailstones and Halibut Bones” (poems about individual colors.) James Prelutsky books are deliciously funny and help kids love words, too.
Children’s books are powerful teaching tools — for children who love to read, learning comes more effortlessly. And it’s no accident that it’s usually rightwingers who fear and try to ban certain books. They don’t want kids to think?
Curious in Central Texas @ 124
I really loved that book, although now I can’t remember it much about it. I just remember that it was one of those that made you think, and it was written by a woman. I think it has a character named Meg, my daughter’s name, but I could never get my daughter to read it. Sigh.
becca @ 105
Yes, yes, yes. Silverstein’s drawing of everyone hanging on the edge of the earth — priceless.
Christy
What a marvelous way to start my morning — thinking about children’s books…and especially you and the Peanut. My now adult daughter and I are anxiously awaiting The Golden Compass which also stars Daniel Craig.
Speaking of movies, for those of you who visit NYC, the movie “You’ve Got Mail” was based on a real store, Books of Wonder, which is on 18th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
My daughter’s first summer/holiday jobs were there. It’s a magical place for kids and one that most visitors miss. It is,however, a must stop for authors & illustrators to sign books.
I raised a reader — there was never a TV in her room & no video games, but she knew I would never say no to a book.
She’s soon headed to law school. A coincidence, I think not. *g*
mack @ 131
Me, too. Here’s her official website: http://www.madeleinelengle.com/
wow
booky people here
how different would our world be, if Bar had read to George, instead of ignoring his pain and letting him blow up frogs
The books, David C. Davis, my father and scholar of Literature for the Young, recommended in the last years of his life reflected his dreams and despair for this country. Here are some books he wanted everyone to read and share with anyone, everyone, of any age:
Patrol by Walter Dean Myers to understand individual responsibility in war;
A day, a dog by Vincent Gabrielli; A Hundred Dresses by Louis Slobodkin; and Across Town by Sara to nurture empathy and social responsibility;
The Middle Passage by Tom Feelings to foster a visceral understanding of the weight of history; and,
the early Dr Seuss morality stories like: Bartholomew and the Oobleck (lying in government), Horton Hatches a Who (it takes a village) and the Greatest American Tragedy, To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street (the disregard of imagination).
Because he lost his capacity to read alphabet writing due to a stroke that occurred as he was watching the Ashcroft confirmation hearings on C-span (see the damage from this administration is personal!), many of these are “textless” books but none of them are just childrens books. Good literature is universal and Cheney and Bush clearly didn’t read enough.
Thank you, Christy, for helping me remember him.
Sharkbabe @ 137
YES. Great comment.
You read “Bush on the Couch,” I presume?
Sharkbabe @ 137
I think Bar taught George how to mess with littl things (and people)
Sharkbabe @ 137
Why would she waste her beautiful mind on something like that?
So many old favorites brought to mind: I love Madeliene L’Engle too, and will read anything by her (not that I’m caught up or have read everything … but). And the Borrowers — same with Margery Sharp, I love her writing, mice or human. And a mention needs to be made of Louise Fitzhugh and Harriet the Spy!
As a teenager I read a lot of sci fi, Asimov and Heinlien esp.
What was he name of the book/story about the lad who lived on an asteroid and loved the sunsets. Somehow a rose grew on his asteroid.
Riesz Fischer @ 108
Oh Riesz, I was a very scary, intense girl — the one ejected from science class in middle school for being “too precocious”. Ended up studying by myself for most of my seventh grade year; after spending 10 minutes doing my work alone in the school library, I’d spend the remainder of the hour reading sci-fi.
“Please, don’t throw me into that library all by myself, please!!” Heh. Suckers.
Oilfieldguy @ 143
The Little Prince
Well, can’t wait until the boy (now six) is old enough for the Pullman series, sounds right up my and his alley.
And sheesh, reading the reviews over at Amazon, the Kristians HATEHATEHATE these books. Which, of course, only makes me want to read them more.
Oilfieldguy @ 143
Ah, The Little Prince!
Rayne and Beth, I would have loved girls like you when I was a kid. I would have thrown snowballs at both of you!
Every week I checked out books from the school and public libraries. My parents bought us books and cousins passed down ones they’d outgrown. Lots of biographies; every Nancy Drew, Judy Bolton, and Cherry Ames I could get my hands on. Grimm, H. C. Andersen, Louisa May Alcott, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, The Borrowers. The “good parts” of Peyton Place and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, well before I understood them. Don’t know why my mom thought the laundry basket was such a good hiding place, as I sometimes helped with that chore.
I read The Diary of Anne Frank for the first time around 6th grade. It was life-changing. Not a fairy tale; the ogres were real. It introduced me to facsism and hate, and I understood them at a visceral level. It also introduced me to a young girl who’s still a heroine for me. Her story made me view the images of the black struggle for civil rights on the news and in the magazines, always disturbing, very differently. And a liberal was born.
As a kid I loved Dr. Seuss, The Wind in the Willows, Girl of the Limber Lost, and Secret Garden.
As a mother of daghters, I’m always searching for books that offer strong female characters.
My kids loved Milly Molly Mandy, a great series for 5-6 year olds to read on their own, or perfect for a read aloud to a peanut. They are sweet, delightful, and irresistable. There’s something very comforting and reassuring about the syntax and repeptitive nature of the writing that makes these perfect bedtime stories.
Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazon series are great books, so well written, wonderful characters, great adventure, my kids have been reading these for years – over and over. Brian Jacques’ Redwall series are a rollicking adventure, beautiful language, and if you’re a foody you’ll love the descriptions of the feasts. One of my daughters wrote to him and begged him to write a cookbook. We’ve tried duplicating recipes by the
They just finished the Golden Compass trilogy and loved them. They’re also reading T.A. Barron’s Merlin series and The Great Tree of Avalon. Artemis Fowel has become a favorite and also The Bartameaus Trilogy.
And I imagine that Beth and I would have made you lovingly regret that first snowball, Riesz.
Oilfieldguy @ 143
The Little Prince! I can never remember the name of the man who wrote it though. But it’s a favorite French tale.
Heading into EPU-land…
I’m a huge reader. I started reading at age 3. My mom thought I’d memorized my books, until she bought a new one, and I read that to her.
I still love the Little House series, and all the Madeline L’Engle stories, though A Wrinkle in Time is my favorite.
My very favorite book, and one I still read is my signed copy of The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. I still think it would be wonderful to run away and live in a museum!
I read everything as a kid. I had to sneak read Dr. Seuss because my mother found him too silly. I grew up in a large family and there was very little private space; so I’d get up veddy early – before dawn, bring my pillow and a blanket to the living room and read for an hour or so until the others got up. Two favorites were The Incredible Cat of Coby Bean and WildWing. Anyone familiar with those? I’d love to find them again.
I read all the Walter Farley’s, all the Nancy Drew’s , then went on the the Three Investigators. I read Tolkein, many times over, thanks to a wonderful teacher who loaned them to me in 6th grade. Then I dug into my parents collection of classics. I remember being fascinated with Manon Lescaux. What was the matter with her? And loved the Count of Monte Christo.
Of course, one of the many perks of being a parent is getting to rediscover children’s lit. All the wonderful books you have mentioned Christy. Pullman was a revelation to me. Also many new fascinating writers. The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funcke was wonderful. Her best book, and spoiled by the movie. The Artemis Fowl series. Oh, and for elementary aged kids – don’t miss William Steig. What a clever writer – think of him as a sophisticated Suess. The Amazing Bone is a good one.
So many good memories here. A series that I haven’t seen mentioned is:
The Saturdays
The Four Story Mistake
Spiderweb for Two
Then There Were Five
by Elizabeth Enright.
My husband walked in, and I told him about this thread. He’s trying to get two young adult fiction books published. He looked at me, asked what time it was, and ran out the door, realizing he was almost late to his fiction writing class!
Good thing there’s fiction (and a comforting book thread).
The world we inhabit otherwise makes me furious. Halliburton – Walter Reed. WTF. Halliburton is everywhere and everywhere a disaster.
(crooks and liars)
http://www.crooksandliars.com/…..s-at-risk/
.aliasofwestgate @ 152
Antoine (?) St. Exupery
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Prince
PA_Lady @ 153
Me too! Loved the book, keep giving it to people I think might appreciate it …
Two books that were so much fun to read in the middle grade school years–Me and Caleb, which was probably politically incorrect as well as gramically so, and the Phantom Tollbooth.
A wonderful book, can be read to say, 9 or up, or read alone by a good reader of that age – AVI’s The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. Unputdownable. A girl has passage booked to the colonies to meet her family, and finds herself sailing on a pirate ship. Terrific, and what a great heroine.
Growing up in Sweden, I loved just about everything by Astrid Lindgren. She captured the carefree adventures of children in rural communities now long gone in books like That Emil and The Children of Noicy Village.
But as great as those easy, happy-go-lucky stories were, I loved her slightly darker books in fairytale settings even more. The Brothers Lionheart is about death and losing loved ones, and Mio, My Son is about having the courage to step out of your safety zone and dare to fight the forces of evil.
Reading Astrid Lindgren books as a child, I always felt the author was talking TO me, not down at me. Showing respect for young readers is a mark of true greatness in my opinion.
A good book entertains you. A great book inspires you to become a better person. (And that goes for blogs too.)
Beatrix Potter – was trying to find a link for an older PBS series about her (fabulous), I found this -
Beatrix Potter Movie
looks like it’s just about her romance with Warne, but tempting nonetheless
Anyone here ever read “Where the Red Fern Grows?” That’s a book my children introduced to me, and we all read as a family. I will always have a soft spot for hound dogs because of that book. My girls and I also loved Secret Garden, and when they were little we created one of our own behind the hedge in our back yard.
Thank you angie! I never was fond of that story, but i remember several adaptations of it as a child in the early 80s. One was animated another was live action. The image of the little boy watering the rose on the asteriod is vivid to this day.
Oddly enough, a japanese mangaka(comic author) did a little bit of homage to it using the Monkey King in place of the Little Prince on a piece of art for the Saiyuki: Reload series. Kazuya Minekura is her name. I love it when fairy tales have a huge reach.
As a kid, the library was my favorite place in the world. All those books, and I could have any of them! It didn’t matter that we were poor… I had all the riches I needed there.
Yes, Sara! Astrid Lindgren’s tales are wonderful.
Hi.
What a great topic, and great choices christy. Loved golden compass and can even remember where I was when I started to be immersed. Loved to read as a child, and loved the feeling of potential that came with every new cover. I, like you, am an unchanging champion of the secret garden, which taught me very early in life the lesson that stays with me forever: Nature Redeems. Even now when I am sad or stressed I think about green and growing things and robins that land a heartspace away and change everything. Thanks for the reminders
Also, as a teenager, I read a lot of books by Mary Stolz which I took out from our local library … thank god for public libraries: I could never have afforded to buy all the books I read, and my mind was certainly broadened by the scope of it all — I read everything: biographies, sci fi, well-written chick lit, mysteries … nearly everything. Not Hardy Boys though: books had to have reasonable girl characters!
Astrid Lingren! Pippi Longstocking is one of my favorites, and another one my son has devoured much to my joy -
Oh comic books!
My kids love Calvin and Hobbes, Krazy Kat, Bone, and have started digging into Mr. inmymind’seye’s extensive Marvel comic book collection.
Ohhh AND loved daniel handler’s lemony snickett series just because they are so much fun to read,
Sara in Stockholm @ 162
Pippi!
Yes to the Little Women trilogy and to Harriet the Spy!
From Frances Hodgson Burnett, I loved 2 other books (than “Secret Garden”): “Sara Crewe” and “A Little Princess”.
Hmm, I wonder if anyone else ever read Henry Gregory Felsen’s “Hot Rod” and “Street Rod”? Here’s part of a review:
My son is asking what I’m writing and he says I must also recommend the wildly inventive Abarat series by Clive Barker(worth the read for the illustrations alone); the very clever Bartimeous Trilogy by Johnathon Stroud(if you’re reading this aloud wear reading glasses – there are numerous hilarious asides from Bartimeaus, a genie, all written as footnotes); and I’m throwing in (for say 13 up) Lian Hearn’s wonderful trilogy starting with Across the Nightengale Floor (a young orphan discovers he is from a family of highly skilled ninja assasins in fuedal Japan – brilliant and moving).
Angie @167
Hi Angie. I’m happy to hear the english versions are as magical as the swedish ones!
jhc @ 164
Yes! This is another wonderful book! I loved it after reading it in high school.
I’m not sure about these books getting turned into films. The first book would make a great film, but the next two, especially the last one, wouldn’t be so easy. And then for the first one, they hired the guy who directed About a Boy to direct it. Judging from the films he’s done so far, he hasn’t got a cinematic bone in his body. But the stills I’ve seen look promising, and Nicole Kidman would be great as Mrs Coulter. And the bear is going to be awesome. Wonder how they’re going to do the daemons.
One more poetry book – “Joyful Noise – Poems for Two Voices” by Paul Fleischman.
It’s about insects – perfect example of how a book lets us into another world magically. Children can read together, or you and your child can read aloud together. The insects’ sounds and personalities are much fun.
I’ve so enjoyed reading others’ favorites on this thread. Thanks Christy.
sorry my 150, didn’t finish the sentence about the Redwall recipes.
We’ve tried duplicating some of them by name alone – with little success.
I can make a delicious trifle though. mmmmmmm ….
Three years ago, I responded to a 8th grader who was telling me the “funny” story of when he’d sat on a bee.
“Oh, you must have danced around just like Ferdinand the bull!” I said, and he didn’t know what I was talking about.
Now, when start a writing assignment, I or a student will reference a children’s book to evaluate what was done well, how the work is organized, how (aside from dialect) dialog shows the “voice” of different speakers, the blend of description and exposition and narration. And they no longer break my heart by not knowing The Story of Ferdinand, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, or The Velveteen Rabbit.
If they want longer works, I point them to Lester del Ray’s The Runaway Robot, Alexander Key’s The Forgotten Door, Gene Stratton Porter’s A Girl of the Limberlost. Finally, they must impress me with their sincere promise of care to be loaned a personal copy from my Reader’s Digest Best Loved Books series (Christmas gift at age 12).
I wish this comment weren’t so long, but I can’t help it. Reader’s Digest condensed books were a treasure as early as 4th grade for me. Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris, The Golden Rendezvous, A Fall of Moondust, Microbe Hunters, Rafe, The Flight of the Phoenix, When the Legends Die, The Kitchen Madonna, Brothers of the Sea, A Ship Called Hope, and Don Quixote, USA.
shrink in sf @
172
I would have LOVED this series as a kid, loved the dark stuff. My kids love the Snickett series now, but it’s funny, they don’t care to read them themselves as much as they’d rather I read them to them. It’s a blast; I can get away with indulging myself at the same time.
The other book that flips me out that my kids LOVED was Jared Diamond’s Collapse. I have NO idea why, but they do; I read it to them every night this past summer while on vacation. We were in the Upper Peninsula at my folks, where sunsets are well after 10 pm and twilight lasts nearly until midnight. It’s impossible to get them to settle down unless bribed with reading to them, even though they were eight and twelve. So I read to them about Easter Island and the Vikings and the Anasazi…they were completely engrossed with the Vikings, had to re-read that section several times to them.
Go figure.
Hey,
Can we have a Firedoglake list of recommended children’s books? I’d love to refer back to some of the recommendations in this thread later on before a library visit ….
They are, Sara.
Her brilliance shines in any language, though I will admit that I understand Swedish and it is more perfect.
And the kid in me today still can’t get enough of Harry Potter……
L’engle.
from age 6? to almost 52….
plus so many listed above- and hooray!!
a few listed above I was not aware of- Callooh! Caliay! I chortle with joy!
Man, this thread makes me feel guilty that I’m letting the boy watch Snow White instead of reading to him. I’m a monster!
Though I did read some of Now We Are Six to him yesterday.
I too hope they don’t screw up the Golden Compass books.
Melissa @ 159
Same here – it’s such a fun book, and written in a way that kids feel like they’re part of the adventure.
Oh, I am loving this thread. So many great books that I remember in it — and a few new ones that I will get to share with The Peanut. Thanks, gang. :) What a lovely way to spend a Saturday morning.
The Pippi books actually caused quite a bit of controversy in Sweden when they were first published in the fifties (or so Ive heard, I wasn`t born yet.) Having a girl character break every rule about how children were supposed to behave took some getting used to!
cleter @ 187
Get thee (and he) to a library! ;)
Rayne, you must live in Michigan too. I live in the Flint area. I don’t think most people know what the Upper Peninsula is!
My ex-sister-in-law wrote these:
ONE STUCK DRAWER. Written and illustrated by Laura Nyman Montenegro. Houghton Mifflin. $14.95. (Ages 4 to 8) The secondhand dresser Sophia loves has one stuck drawer; even so, she doesn’t have the money to pay for it. The secret, of course, is hidden in the drawer. It’s a strange fantasy, illustrated in suitably dark, mysterious shades.
and
A Bird About to Sing
From School Library Journal
Grade 1-2-This book is more of an esteem-booster and a nudge of encouragement for self-expression than a strong story. Natalie loves writing poems but is nervous about sharing them out loud. When she attends a reading with her poetry teacher, she listens to the adults who are gathered there and is given the opportunity to take the spotlight. But stage fright overcomes her, and her words remain unspoken. Feeling sad on the bus ride home, she is inspired by the view from the window and, finding her voice at last, she begins to recite her poem out loud. The adult poets are among the passengers, and they offer rousing applause. The scant story ends with Natalie’s affirmation, “I am a poet, too!” The subdued gouache art captures the child’s changing feelings; the stylized characters are all people of color and several scenes are reminiscent of the beat generation of the ’50s. The print is bold and dark against the soft pictures, and Natalie’s poem is scattered across the illustrations. One of the wise poets at the reading had predicted “When the time is right, the bird begins to sing,” and the delicately colored birds that grace several of the pages carry that metaphor throughout the book. Teachers may find this a helpful introduction to creative writing. A supplemental purchase.
Don’t expect much from the movie, Christy — the studio watered it down to placate the God Squadders. This pissed off a TON of Pullman’s fan base.
Pullman at first tried to deny that this was the case, but later admitted as much.
Rev Deb,
Mice: Do you love Tale of Despereaux? (and i hear that’s going to be a movie, too.)
Also- Gone away Lake & Return to Gone Away-
Love idea of creating own world….
grousefinder @ 94
Ooow, ‘Elephony’!
Red story books! (Well, that’s where I met it – ‘Children’s Hour’ is the name I remember, and my brother has them now, IIRC.) Those were lots of fun, you could meet almost anything in them.
‘Hero Tales from Many Lands’ – they really are from many lands.
Bujold’s ‘five gods’ books.
Duane’s ‘wizard’ books. (Anything by Duane will be good.)
Cherryh’s atevi series is interesting (the ninth just came out).
James and the Giant Peach.
Bill Peet picture books are a sweet way to teach children about peace, the environment, caring for all creatures, and so on. The Pinkish Purplish Bluish Egg – a wise mom and theme of peace. The Gnats of Knotty Pine outwit a hunter; Farewell to Shady Glade about creatures who have to move on when their home is “developed”; and The Wump World in which Pollutians are an ecological threat. (sounds dull- reads fun.)
Bit of nostalgia there for when all mine were younger…
Elliott @ 110
My Grandmother gave me the My Book House set when I was three. Fabulous. The first volume starts with nursery rhymes and progresses through the set to long stories. She also got me A Picturesque Guide to Exporation as a companion set. 20 books for a 3 year old! How awesome was that!
Each time I see an old favorite listed here, I get a warm rush. A love of reading is the best vice in the world!
Christy – I loved the Witch of Blackbird Pond.
One of the best things I did as a mother was to instill in my daughters the love of reading. Reading was central to their early lives – going to the library was a happy excursion once a week. All the local libraries (we lived in MD – Bethesda, Rockville, Potomac) had wonderful children’s sections where you could sit and read to your children. I would start to read to my daughters and soon there would be a circle of five or six other children listening to the story, as well.
Many of my favorite books growing up became their favorite book (and some have been mentioned above):
When they were very young: Blueberries for Sal, One Morning in Maine, If I Ran the Zoo, Yertle the Turtle, The Little Bear series, Where the Wild Things Are, The Stupids Step Out
As they got older: A Wrinkle in Time, Charlotte’s Web, The Borrowers, The Cricket in Times Square, The Chronicles of Narnia (particularly the Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe), Julie of the Wolves, The Bronze Bow,
Island of the Blue Dolphins, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, The Chronicles of Prydain (The Black Cauldron), Jamaica Inn, Dragonwyck
The list goes on…
ruffian @ 196
Also Elizabeth Enright?
The Diary of Anne Frank proves that one teenage girl is more powerful than Adolph Hitler. All girls should read it. Boys too.
Some more ideas:
For youngest readers:
Barbara Cooney’s Miss Rumphius
Leo Lionni’s Frederick’s Fables
Eric Carle’s books
For young readers:
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series
For schoolage readers:
Roald Dahl’s Matilda
witchywoman @ 200
totally awesome!
I loved the illustrations, but the best thing was my Mom reading the stories to us.
The Church in the books, His Dark Materials, is very authoritarian. In fact, in the last book, the Authority makes an appearance as a sort of impossibly old, frail man. But I think its pretty clear that what is attacked in the book is the authoritarian (and hypocritical) nature of the church, especially in regards to science. But I guess, if you’re the church and fancy yourself as an embodiment of God, then it might as well be an attack on God himself. It seemed to be mostly a reworking of familiar myths incorporating some new discoveries and theories in science.
Phoenix Woman @ 194
Um, that’s like removing all references to Sauron and the One Ring from the Lord of the Rings movies. You would be left with some guys in Ren Faire outfits wandering around aimlessly. It would be pointless.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
Another goodie.
Oh, and anything by Margaret Wise Brown. My daughters loved The Runaway Bunny. That’s one I read over and over and over again.
TJ @ 203
YES!
I used to go to local library all the time-all the time… and loved it. Read some book I could never find again about 2 families in Texas and how the “poor” family struck oil and how it changed their life-and not for the best-that really made an impresion on me…anyone have a clue to that book?
Riesz — yes, I’m north of you, only a seven-hour drive to Marquette from here.
Perfect snowball weather, I must say. I might be able to hit you from here. ;-)
carolyn urban @ 176
Thank your son for me; my nine-year-old will be finishing Harry Potter Book 6 within the next two months; we need fresh material between now and the 7th book in July. Some Asian-based material would be good fun.
cleter @ 187
Oh cleter, don’t guilt about it. Disney’s classic “Snow White” is really wonderful, no substitution. But sometime you might want to try reading to him from Hans Christian Andersen or Grimm’s Fairy Tales — depending on how old he is, of course. They are so highly textured, complex, dark at times; point out the contrast between fairy tales that your grandparents knew and commercialized productions today.
Lemony Snickett is a wonderful return to that darker, richer history of tale-telling. Kids need to be able to work out mentally that they will face serious challenges, but that they are up to them.
Rayne-
The Boy just turned six.
Riesz Fischer @ 192
I was a flight attendant for Simmons Airlines back in the day, and spent many a night in Flint! Was trained in Marquette in the Upper Penninsula. Part of the training involved learning where the Michigan cities were on our hand, because Simmons, after all, flew “to more Michigan cities than any other airline!”
I’m from Columbus, OH, but I found Michiganders to be much warmer and engaging. I’ll always have a soft spot for MI.
Gregory Maguire’s Wicked, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister and Mirror, Mirror are wonderful for grownups who enjoyed fairy tales.
. . .those of us of a certain age all read
Profiles In Courage
and did anyone else badger your folks for the weekly installments of these at the grocery store ?
Golden Encyclopedia
It’s funny, I was a total juvenile delinquent but reading was something I always loved and, in the long run, it saved my bacon. I learned a couple of years ago that my mother instilled this in me by reading to me constantly.
Rayne, you’re welcome. But heads up: I read this aloud to my son at that age, and there are a couple bits of teenage passion that I deleted/modified. Stroud’s Bartimeus trilogy is fabulous for that age, as is Artemis Fowl.
Still in picturebook land–
“Guess How Much I Love You” could be read over and over at bedtime. Rabbit characters- would be a nice Easter gift. Just a sweet book.
“Where the Wild Things Are” I don’t think anyone has mentioned. My eldest daughter points to our reading of this for her free spirit.
And I highly agree w above recommendation of Miss Rumphius. “Do something to make the world more beautiful.” Words we could all live by.
Harry Potter … I love Harry Potter, and now have read almost all six to my seven-year-old. We’re getting to the end of book six and I’m putting it off until we can read the … upcoming scene in full without disruption. We’re also reading The Once and Future King — great fun, as long as he doesn’t ask me about medieval British anacharnisms…
dab_from_CT @ 202
Blueberries for Sal! One of my earliest memories is sitting on my Gramma’s lap and listening to her read this. I loved the illustrations – a little chubby-cheeked girl with black hair…
Island of the Blue Dolphins is my 20yo son’s favorite. He still reads it.
cleter @ 213
When I was one, I had just begun.
When I was two, I was nearly new.
When I was three, I was barely me.
When I was four, I was not much more.
When I was five, I was just alive.
But now I’m six, I’m clever as clever.
So I think I’ll be six now for ever and ever.
A.A.Milne
Misty of Chincoteague was another favorite (my oldest was a horse lover) – One year the book came to life when I took my daughters to see the wild horses swimming across the bay (Eastern Shore of MD) something they will never forget.
Christy, I love these threads, the book sharing ones. They are so personal and we get great suggestions.
I re-read Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven every year. I love plucky Taylor and laugh out loud at Kingsolver’s gentle humor and human observation.
When I was a kid, my godfather was an editor at Scientific America, so I got great books from him, most of which were about science and animals and first sparked and then nutured my love of nature and wildlife. One was Rascal, by Sterling North, the story of a kid who finds an orpaned racoon and raises it until it is perfectly clear he must be released back into the woods.
My mystery-loving mind was firt engaged by Black Hearts at Battersea. Of course I read all the Nancy Drew Books.
The Phantom Tollbooth was another fave from the dark ages.
Anne McCaffrey’s Dragon Rider series drew me in later, as did Stephen R. Donaldson’s Tales of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. John Varley’s trilogy Titan, Demon and Wizard, too.
Sprout just got glasses and is finding reading much easier. He loves the Avatar cartoons on Nick, and they have chapter books which we just bought. He particularly loves the Skippyjon Jones books, about a Siamese kitten who thinks he’s a chihuahua, and the Fly Guy books, full of delightful, disgusting, stinky boy things that he loves to read to us. I’m looking forward to introducing Hardy Boys, Roald Dahl and more.
We’re moving in less than a week, so I hardly even have time to read FDL, let alone books, but I got grabbed by Chris Hedges’ American Fascists, about Dominionism (did you know Scalia is one?)and can’t get loose.
And can we just give a little round of applause to JK Rowling while we’re at it? What a fabulous story she has unfolded. What a wonderful readable series.
My son and I have been attending the local bookstore’s Midnight party that lead up to the release dates of each of her books. Kids come in costume and at Midnight they start doling out preordered books. To steps outside into the darkness of the Montpelier streets and see groups of kids, little ones, teens, grownups too, rushing home clutching big fat volumes, wizard hats on their heads and big capes billowing – it’s utterly magical.
And of course, none of these kids is heading home at 1 AM to SLEEP. Everyone immediately digs in and reads as much as humanly possible. Fabulous.
Christy, thank you for such a great topic! There is nothing that makes me happier than a wonderful book and time to read — well, till I get to give a book I love to someone else!
I loved Babar’s adventures when I was very, very young. For those who didn’t experience Babar, he was a royal elephant.
I read every book in my elementary school’s library by the time I was in sixth grade, including the collected works of Shakespeare. There were a few I checked out over and over again — the “Little House on the Prairie” series and “Little Women,” which is still my favorite children’s book. I’ve also been glued into “Harry Potter”. I know the end’s coming. I also know I’ll be rereading all of them in the years to come.
We don’t have kids of our own, but we’ve been lucky enough to give the following away to our friends’ kids:
“Love You Forever”
“Where the Wild Things Are”
“The Velveteen Rabbit”
Believe it or not, I asked the minister to read “Love You Forever” aloud to those attending my mother’s funeral. I’m sure they thought this was odd, but the little song sticks with me to this day.
“I’ll love you forever
I’ll like you for always
As long as I’m living
My baby you’ll be.”
-S
Several years ago I heard Philip Pullman interviewed on the radio. They read a passage from The Golden Compass, the scene in which Lyra is riding on the back of the great white bear, Iorek, in the night, over the snow, with the Aurora lighting up the sky. Lyra looks up and sees hundreds and hundreds of black specks in the sky, which the bear tells her are witches, flying north, flying to war.
I was hooked, and immediately bought the book. I read it aloud to my fifth graders every year, and, in fact, just read the above passage yesterday!
Most interesting about Pullman and his trilogy, is there is a strong anti-church theme in his books. In his interview, he was quite mocking of the Narnia series; for its thinly veiled Christian themes, and especially for what Pullman perceives as its lessons that growing up (and therefore becoming sexual) are equivalent to losing one’s soul.
I wouldn’t be surprised that when the movie debuts, and religious groups get wind of Pullman’s ideas, that there will be a backlash of some sort.
The Yearling, by Rawlings, is a perfectly wonderful classic. I read this book to my class every year, I never tire of it, and I always cry at the end.
I finish the year with Greek Myths to Read Aloud. So many monsters, battles, warriors, bad behaviors, and beautiful maidens! Something for everyone!
Elliott @ 61
They looked SO innocent, too! I love the jewelry scene. They lost themselves in the experience. And then, busted… Any child would relate.
Dare Wright had followup works, did you read The Lonely Doll’s other adventures?
carolyn urban @ 225
Oh, I’d love to do that. Maybe we will this summer …
dab_from_CT @ 223
This was another book that stuck with me long after I read it, as well as Georgie of Assateague and Stormy, Misty’s Foal. When I was 15, I jumped at a chance to go to Assateague with a church group. I absolutely fell in love with it – sand, surf, ponies. My kids and I vacation at Assateague Island every year. (And every year, someone tries to convince me to kidnap a pony!)
cleter — then your boy is ready for some of the traditional fairy tales, like HCAndersen’s The Tinder Box.
JoyB — too funny, small world. My mom’s from Marquette area, married a Michigan Tech grad who ended up working in Columbus when Rockwell was there in the late sixties. Lived in the Gahanna area as a kid; wicked drive from there to Marquette every summer vacation.
Woah, carolyn urban – Montpelier.
I spent lots of time at Goddard College in the day. I had lots of friends who went there.
We used to go to Bread and Puppet Circus in the early days …. brings it all back. I love Vermont and Dr. Dean of course.
Don’t forget the Saturdays books, about a family in New York who live in this fabulous brownstone their dad has fixed up with a trapeze (their mom is dead and he’s overcompensating, clearly ;)). They pool their meager allowances each Saturday so each one of them can have a fabulous adventure on their Saturday.
All of AA milne. To wit:
James, James, Morrison Morrison
Weatherby George Dupree
Took good care of his mother,
Though he was only three.
James James said to his mother,
Mother, he said, said he,
You must never go down to the end of town
Unless you go down with me.
can’t forget Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Felix Salton
David Ehrenstein @204: Agreed. I’ve always wished that Anne’s story was required reading in junior high or high school. If you can read that book and not come away with a profound empathy for humankind, well, I guess there’s no help for you. I still re-read it from time to time, these many years later, and her message loses none of its power.
“Love You Forever”
Strategerie, I cried the first time I read the book to my Sprout, and every time since then. I don’t think it strange at all that you had it read. Namaste.
I also read all the Marguerite Henry books about horses, being horse-mad most of my school days.
Three cheers for the Harry Potter series, indeed!
Littlest cgreen was Harry Potter for halloween, and awaits the last book. He’s 9, has read them all. His other recent reads: Calvin and Hobbes (everything), and a Gordon Parks biography. He loves the Artemis Fowl books too.
Strategerie @ 226
Do you remember when Babar’s grandfather or some old elephant ate the poison mushroom and died??? I remember I was in the school library reading it, I was facing east. I laid the book down on my lap and looked up around the library stunned. STUNNED! Everyone else in the room continued reading quietly and moving about as if the ghastly underpinnings of convulsions and death did not lie immediately beneath the thin library carpet.
The image of the wrinkled and vividly spotted corpse remains with me.
Or did I imagine this? Someone please tell me I did not imagine this scene in Babar. Please let it be true!
JoyB @ 228
yes, the one with the kitten, and you?
Dare Wright
nobody read to us,but i poured over the illustrations in the three children’s books we had. one was a babar book, a second was richard scary book with lots of animals and the third was a book from my mother’s childhood that was about the days of the week and what you cleaned on each day.
if you look at my own illustrations, you can see those three influences.
i learned to love reading from the neighbors. they were very cosmopolitan, being from pittsburgh. they read all the time, even in the bathroom.
i love the golden compass series. it serves as good exercise for the immagination. we all need to read. movies make mush brains.
inmymind: I love Montpelier – funky, artistic, politically awake.
Geez I never got out to see Bread and Puppet, but they are always part of Montpelier’s 4th of July parades.
As for the good Dr.; I have to say we grow some excellent politicians here.
JoyB @ 228
and the lipstick
busted is right!
Elliott @ 239
I didn’t! I need to get on the stick. You’ve reminded me to go back to her.
My favorite book from childhood was called Katrinka, The Story of a Russian Child by Helen Eggleston Haskell and written in 1915. I bought it many years later from an out-of-print dealer. It was written before the Revolution, and one of Czar Nicholas’s daughters, Grand Duchess Tatiana, is a character in it. There were two sequels, Katrinka Grows Up (She becomes a ballerina) and Peter, Katrinka’s Brother (He becomes a revolutionary). Lovely stuff! I still read them now and then, and they transport me to another time, another place.
I never read Nancy Drew or went through a horse phase. My great-grandmother gave me a copy of a Bobsy Twins mystery on a trip when I was little, but I found the kids annoying–though I did wish I could ride a camel (that’s the main thing I recall from the book: they were riding a camel!!! But didn’t seem to properly appreciate. Jaded little brats.)
I read a lot of biographies when I was younger: Annie Sullivan, Juliet Lowe. Perhaps that’s why my mother sometimes gives me books at Christmas, saying she found it a little dry, so I’d probably like it. :-)
My parents encouraged reading a lot–we had really strict tv allowances every summer, and living in SC it was either read indoors or go outside and sweat to death. When we complained that we were bored or there was nothing to do, the question was, “Really? Have you read all the books in the house yet?” Our linen closet was full of books–mostly paperbacks, accumulated over the years.
One of the few things I thank my father for (he really is a terrible person) is that when I had the flu in 8th grade, he brought me the teen magazines I requested featuring Duran Duran, but he also brought me Sinclair Lewis’s “Arrowsmith.” I read it and enjoyed it, (though understood it much better when I read it as an adult) and he created a huge Lewis fan who read his books any time I could find them over the years. (Lewis also presents women in the early part of the 20th century in as real and equal people–seriously, read “Ann Vickers” sometime.) I just really like the views of American society, even though he isn’t the most eloquent writer.
One book that always soothes my nerves is Lewis’s “Dodsworth,” where part of the story is sad, but he finds such peace, such a better life, that I find it reassuring when it seems everything sucks.
JoyB @ 214
Thanks, Joy! I moved here in ‘91 to be with my daughter who was 3. But I noticed the people here are friendly, although they tend to be a little too conservative for my taste. Yeah, whenever we want to show someone where somplace is in MI we point it out on our hands. (Sorry Rayne, I guess that leaves out the UP!)
Many of us here have a “friendly” rivalry with your local university, which shall remain unnamed. 8-)
For Peanut-sized kidlets, there’s a wonderful series of short books called Serendipity books.
The author is Stephen Cosgrove and they contain wonderful illustrations by Robin James. The best place to find them anymore is online at B&N or Amazon.
They address the usual themes of cooperation, kindness, sharing, sibling rivalry etc. but are very sweet stories and each ends with a moral of the story in verse.
My kids (born in ‘80 – ‘85) loved them. I still give them as gifts though some have been ‘updated’ and, unfortunately that hasn’t improved them – you might try eBay for the originals.
Two of my personal favorites were Creole, a story about appreciating others that may be different from you and The Muffin Muncher (re-issued as the Muffin Dragon for some reason), a great little story about cooperation where the Dragon almost destroys the economy of a little village by eating all the muffins they produce – in the end he heats their ovens and has all the muffins he needs.
The entire 15 book set of Oz stories.
Only the ones written by Frank Baum.
Best: Ozma of Oz. Kind and intelligent
ruler.
I still want to grow up to be Ozma.
The real emerald city!!
Strategerie @ 226
Strat: My mother bought a copy of this for each of her grandchildren (and their mommies) when they were born. She also read it to them whenever they visited (when they were little). It always gives my heart a little bump to hear my kids say, “Love you forever.”
Riesz Fischer @ 245
Yes, my being raised as (well, you know) meant that the Michiganders must have been very disarming indeed to have overcome my prejudice! You KNOW we are a bit nutty down here. More so than up there on the rivalry. I know you know that is true. I work in Gahanna, Rayne. It is a small world!
Rayne @ 183
That’s a very scary book to read to kids!! I can’t stand it: it’s too true and unnerving.
The Upper Peninsula is wonderful. I spent the summer I was 12 in Houghton, looking for agates and watching black bears roam for garbage at Copper Harbor and going out for 5 cent soft ice cream cones. (It was a long time ago.)
JoyB @ 238
OMG! No, I don’t remember any elephants dying! I’m glad I didn’t read that one to my daughter.
Meg had a couple of favorite Babar books (which I guess is pronounced ba-BAR, but we pronounced it BAA-bar) and we read them over and over!
Mommybrain @ 233
all you had to write is
“James James Morrison Morrison” and it all comes back
Riesz Fischer @ 251
Keep in mind that I may be insane. The jury’s still out until somebody confirms my memory.
Mommybrain @ 236
I’m glad I’m not the only one! I almost mentioned that this book always leaves me teary-eyed. There is something just profoundly beautiful in this book, how it expresses the love that parents and children share.
What a great idea Christy! I could while away a whole day on this thread. I loved The Witch of Blackbird Pond, too, as well as Nancy Drew and anything by Louisa May Alcott — who was a great role model for young girls. For Alcott fans, I recommend an excellent new book called Miss Alcott’s Emails- a book by Kit Bakke (who was in the Weather Underground in her younger days.) It’s outstanding.
On an entirely different note, my kids loved Bunnicula (a book about a vampire bunny which is funny even to adults), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and There’s No Such Thing as a Dragon.
Oh God. I did it again. I should send $10 to FDL just to make up for my blockquote trouble this morning. I apologize.
Babar — no you didnJoyB @ 238
No, I remember it too — the Babar books are pretty frank about death — remember, Babar’s mom gets killed by a hunter in the first book. And then the grandfather does eat a poison mushroom — that’s how Babar becomes King. You can’t become King unless someone you love dies. And they’re very definitely set in colonial Africa … beautiful, but with some jarring notes to my 21st century eyes …
Mommybrain @ 236
I used to be a nanny and a day care teacher when I was much younger. I still remember one of my co-workers handing the book to me and saying, “You’ll cry.”
“No, I won’t.”
I’m turning the page, reading about the sick mama and her grown son rocking her and singing to her, and I totally lost it. It’s such a sweet story. I’m so glad you love it, too.
Namaste,
-S
Mrs. Piggle Wiggle!!!
Swiss Family Robinson
Black Beauty
Rayne @ 151
Ha ha! Yes. Though honestly, you’d have been more likely to find me in a corner of the library than out in the snow.
I read everything as a kid. I read my way through the entire children’s section by the time I was 8 years old. Then I started in on the SF and mysteries, and then found the history and biography stacks. Then I found Dumas. And fell in love with Russian novels.
I grew to hate kid-oriented nonfiction. It was always superficial and often wrong.
Strategerie @ 258
OMG!!!!
I read this in a Borders a few years ago and cried right there in the store! [quietly] I have not been able to find it, but have been asking people for years. I’m buying this week.
For very little readers, get The Musical Life of Gustav Mole, complete with the tape. It is an absolutely wonderful exploration of music. I also love Ferdinand, which is in English and Spanish.
Strategerie @ 226
Christy–Bob Munsch is a wonderful writer, and everything he writes is perfect for preschoolers.
Some of the world’s best theology is in Giant, or Waiting for the Thursday Boat. Ask RevDeb: I am sure she’d agree.
Babar becomes King when an elephant dies from a mushroom (but I don’t remember the death scene! how vivid that must have seemed to you!) His parents were already dead. Tragique!
OOOh, Bunnicula! My sister looooved that book.
I wanted to be Jo when I was younger. I re-read the Little Women books two or three times. But then, I also wanted to be Diana Rigg…
My love for Firedoglake grows stronger by the hour. The Libby liveblog was epic enough, and then Christy threw out George RR Martin last week, which blew me away. Tolkein is the obvious king, but Pullman is very solid, really great, but Martin is stronger stuff. Dark Materials is YA, kind of like Tolkein, while Martin is slightly more mature but incredible for mature teenage readers. When you talk about Pullman, it’s really YA, and not “children’s lit” and the world of Blueberries for Sal, just to be clear.
Two STRONG recommendations for the Dark Materials crowd: 1. The Perilous Gard, I’m not sure at the moment who the author is, but it was Newberry nominated many years ago I think. (The nominations category is a treasure trove, as always; great books that don’t get the same attention because they didn’t win the grand prize–this search approach works really well for Pulitzer biographies, history, and National Book Awards and Booker prizes as well.) So that’s a slightly obscure one that has managed to stay in print, that you all might love.
2. More mainstream, is the Sabriel trilogy by Garth Nix. I thought this was better by a smidge than Pullman, though less flashy, a little more mature. It’s really good.
This is possibly my favorite topic in the whole world. I have to say that there is nothing better than reading hard through kid lit along with your growing peanut. I played sports and ran around and didn’t read so much as a kid, just working through some of the classics. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was my favorite book. I read a lot of “Childhood Biographies,” a series that is still in print, GWashington as a child, etc., along with Kit Carson…
“Roll of Thunder, etc.” is another series that my daughter loved.
So much more to say, but gotta go to yoga… stick with it TRex.
You’re the best, Christy.
Christy–Have you found Angelina Ballerina?
Perfect for a feisty female whirling dervish.
Mommybrain @ 266
Who didn’t want to be Diana Rigg? She was perfect in the Avengers in so many ways :)
JoyB @ 238
No, the poison mushroom was in it. I just checked it out at amazon.com. Bummer!
There’s a six-book compilation of Babar now. I may have to check it out of the library so I can catch up with Celeste, Flora and Pom, and the rest…
-S
I have to admit that the Captain Underpants series has been instrumental in our son (age 6) being a budding avid reader. They are crude, obnoxious, and gross — and therefore perfectly aimed at the 6 to 8 year-old boy demographic (and my 7 year-old niece loves them too, in fact she introduced them to us). They are also clever, funny, and extremely creative. And my philosophy is that (almost) anything that gets The Boy interested in books is a good thing.
Recommended, if you are willing to put up with titles like Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants, etc.
eGreg, how could I have forgotten Mrs. Piggle Wiggle!! I found her when I was 7 and we had just moved to Boston so my dad could do a Nieman. I knew nobody, had never lived in snow and was indoors for almost 6 months. Mrs Piggle Wiggle saved my sanity. ‘
That was also the year I got my first joke book. Too young, tho, had to have mom explain them all to me.
And for firepups with little boys:
Captain Underpants!!!!!
The captain will make any boy read and read and read!
sdf (Stu) @ 271
.
That was weird synchronicity.
The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope.
If you haven’t discovered it yet….ohhhh, you will love the always irrepressible, lovable pig, POPPLETON.
Riesz — ah, now if you’d grown up here you’d know how to use both hands to point to locations in both Upper Peninsula and Troll-land (under the bridge, eh?).
Hold your right hand, palm up and flat. That’s the Lower Peninsula, with Lansing in the center of the palm, Traverse City near your pinkie, the Mackinaw bridge at the tip of your middle finger– good so far, eh?
Take your left hand, palm up and flat, but at 90 degrees (so your left elbow is out and up), pinkie tip just above your right middle finger. The Keewanaw Peninsula is your left thumb, the Soo towards the tip of your left middle finger.
Good, eh?
egregious @ 248
My kids have always been characters from their favorite books for Halloween. Nobody ever knows who they are – which they love.
My little one many years ago was Ozma! She wore big roses over her ears, wow was she cute. We still have all those Oz books on their shelves after years of culling.
sdf (Stu) @ 271
That was my philosophy too. When my daughter was in middle school she was reading those awful Goosebumps books, which were very simple and fast moving, but I figured OK, as long as she’s reading. When she was in high school she read Dracula by Bram Stoker and she and her friends were laughing about how detailed the descriptions were! I told her that that’s how real literature is. Now that she’s in college she’s reading real literature, of course.
So yeah, whatever it takes to get them reading.
sdf (Stu) @ 271
This was my philosophy with my oldest son. The other two took to reading like fish to water, but he was tougher. Finally, I gave up on all the “approved” reading material, and went with buying books about whatever interested him that week.
In 6th grade, he did a book report on the book he’d read that week: Basic Electrical Wiring. LOL! Once I started buying books he wanted to read, he realized books could be about anything at all, and started seeing reading as something more than a chore to be hurriedly completed.
Rayne @ 276
Lived in Michigan my whole life Rayne — in the mitten — and never knew about the left hand thingie.
And not just Little Women, but all of the related books, Little Men, Rose in Bloom, Eight Cousins.
OK, i’m going to mention a series and you all are going to laugh at me, but a friend of mine (graduated Harvard School of Business recommended it) the Harry Potter series. ***runs and hides***
Alison @
274
Indeed!
Kathryn in MA @ 282
The Harry Potter books are great! I’ve enjoyed reading them as much as my kids have. My 20yo is waiting as anxiously as my 10yo niece for the last installment.
retirin’ in five @ 280
Yeah, we mitten michiganders tend to forget about the UP, which causes some friction with our “neighbors to the north”. I mean, they even talk like Canadians up there!
You know how to spell Canada, right?
C, eh? N, eh? D, eh?
This was much fun, Christie!! I was the one who had a flashlight under the covers and would read until all hours.
I learned to read from my father, who read Beatrix Potter to me every night, Peter Rabbit. I did memorize it, and eventually, I understood the little symbols to be words, it was EUREKA!!
The neighbor mom would have me demonstrate my reading skills to other neighbors. I still am a reader, but I do not consume books like before. . .more “periodical reading” (like FDL, of course).
My SIL also had a children’s book published, by Houghton Mifflin, King Snake. It is loosely based on the hinges of a story of a rat who lived in my yard for a time. In the true story, there is a snake and a rat. Both are fun stories. . .in EPUland.
What you talkin’ aboot, Riesz?
mrEgr read the entire World Book. I only made thru the end of C.
But I did pretty much read the dictionary.
Delightful thread. Love to read books and about books. I’ll come back later and make notes on some of the new (to me) recommendations you guys have made.
Kathryn in MA @ 283
And why not? I’m HBS and I faithfully read all the Harry Potter series.
Were you at the courthouse yesterday?
Alison (251) — It has changed quite a bit in Houghton since you were there; MTU is so much larger than it was. I think I should make a point of getting my spouse up there to visit since he hasn’t been there in a long time, maybe since graduation in 1980. (Married a man like dear old dad, a Tech grad.) Still quite rustic in most of the UP, though.
Beth — ah, Dumas, loved that entire period, but de Balzac remains my favorite, went and bought an antique collection of his works (need to unpack them one of these days…). But I think as a kid I spent a LOT of time on non-fiction, and never in kids’ non-fiction.
My parents bought me an entire set of the Time-Life Nature Library collection on a subscription plan, starting when I was a pre-schooler. Loved to pore over the pictures before I could read; they were like new books all over again when I finally could read a couple years later, reading everything from The Earth and the entire cosmology, the continents, and the entire animal kingdom. I loved them so much I bought a second-hand set for my kids; we just cracked them open last week to talk about the changes to certain classifications since the books were published. Good stuff.
And yeah, I was more likely to be inside with books than outside, too — but if I was outside, watch out. I made it count.
Oooops, re apologizing for enjoying Harry Potter – obviously i didn’t read the thread first! The details alone are so amazing.
Oh, dear, I’ve been outside on this lovely, warm day taking down Christmas lights and very brown roping and missed the book chat. As a YA librarian and someone who is reading and rating books for the 2009 Nutmeg Book Awards here in CT I offer three too good to miss:
Daniel Half Human and the Good Nazi (Chotjewitz)
Day of Tears (Lester)
The Teacher’s Funeral (Peck)-
And I love your list, Christy. Pullman is one of our students’ favorite authors!
Great Lakes explorer Paddle to the Sea has reached retirement age.
Hello, egregiois!! **smooches** No, wish i could be at the Courthouse – i love that you blog about it so i virtually can. No, i’m at work as a Kelly girl and the company i work for has just agreed to hire me . i will accept with caveat that i get to go to YKos2. See you there?
I honestly don’t remember a time that I could not read. My mother tells me she found me reading the newspaper at the age of three. I don’t recall how I learned to read, and neither does my mother. So, yes, I was one of those bokworms. I loved anything by Louisa May Alcott – Little Women, Little Men, Eight Cousins, A Rose in Bloom. I was a horse girl too, so the Walter Farley books rocked my world. And the Oz books.
The A.A. Milne books for sure – my husband has memorized many of those poems, and recites them to the kids from memory – Sir Thomas Tom, Sir Brian, Bad King John.
The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber – my husband has memorized the first 3 chapters.
archy and mehitabel by Don Marquis
Definitely A Confederacy of Dunces (one of my favorites ever)
A Wrinkle In Time and the subsequent books
Since I’m so late to this thread, everyone has mentioned all the best ones.
But my favorite of all was the humongous Random House Dictionary. It was my “Google” as a kid – anything I wanted to know was probably in there.
Now we read or recite out loud to our own kids every night. Even my fifteen-year-old son insists on it! It’s funny what books will ‘flip the switch’ for a kid and turn him or her into a reader for pleasure. With my 15-year-old it was the Hardy Boys in 2nd grade. He could read but wasn’t interested in books. His favorite cartoon was “Scooby Doo” (which I loathe with the heat of a thousand white-hot suns) and I asked him one day what it was that he liked about it. He said “I like how they solve the mysteries”. So I gave him a Hardy Boys and he was off and running. With my youngest son it was Captain Underpants and then Beverly Cleary.
My husband loves the Lad, A Dog (Albert Payson Terhune) series.
And I still have that Random House dictionary.
Long-time lurker, couldn’t resist this thread. Grew up in the middle of the woods in northern Minnesota. We had one black and white TV that received 2 channels from Duluth. I read everything I could get my hands on. My all-time favorite childhood book was Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking-Glass; I read them endlessly.
Also: Beverly Cleary, Carolyn Haywood, Robert McCloskey (Homer Price), AA Milne, Madeleine L’Engle, Nancy Drew, Louisa May Alcott, Margaret Sidney, Jim Kjelgard (Irish Red), and so many more.
Another favorite was Maud Hart Lovelace and the Betsy-Tacy books, set in Minnesota.
Kathryn in MA @ 296
CONGRATS! Yay new job.
Yes, see you at Y2K.
egregious @ 289
Oh, I forgot about the World Books! I read those too – it was the other Google for me besides the Random House
greegie, wonderful!!!!
bookwoman @ 294
This is the perfect thread for you!
Recent books that my kids have really enjoyed are by their father’s favorite author, Terry Prachett. It’s the Tiffany Aching series: The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, and Wintersmith. They’re fantasy novels with Prachett’s trademark wry humor, and the kids absolutely adore them.
Are we EPUd yet?
GrandmaJ @ 97
And for those of you who didn’t follow her story, GrandmaJ lost 100 pounds SO THAT she could ride horses ever again. This is a good one.
Congratulations GrandmaJ! You go girl!!!
Kathryn in MA @ 304
Technically PUAC doesn’t EPU, but continues thruout the day.
WOW!!!! Thanks for the background on GrandmaJ, egregious!! That is fabulous!
***slaps forehead*** Right!
Okay, I will reveal my FDL ignorance and ask what does EPU stand for…
Riesz — so you know some Canadian jokes, eh? Have you heard the one about “dating Miss Michigan”? Much naughtier; more hand gestures involved. ;-)
retirin’ in five — really? you never learned that one? Must be all that time I spent during summer vacations with Yooper friends. Go figure.
HotFlash — you know, I think I heard this summer there had been a young guy doing a solo canoe tour of the Great Lakes, following the path of Paddle-to-the-Sea. That was such a great book, read it in third grade while I was attending school in Ohio. I had a much different take on it than my counterparts who’d never seen a Great Lake.
As I’m reading back through the thread to make a list of new books to buy, I was wondering: if we asked, what books would conservatives say they read as children?
I was joking with my daughter the other day that one can tell who (in her class) will become a Republican voter: they always tell you reading is stupid/waste of time/boring, etc.
Alicia — click on my name, scroll down that post to the last table which lists commonly used acronyms to find “EPU”.
Rayne @ 310
Never learned that one. I blame Clinton.
Wow! Congratulations GrandmaJ! That is quite an accomplishment!
retirin’ in five @ 311
Always blame Clinton. My car wouldn’t start yesterday. Guess whose fault that was?
Rayne @ 312
Thanks, Rayne – I had an idea that it referred to EvilParallelUniverse but I didn’t know in what way…much obliged!
Before I go back outside…one more. As I was reading Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator (for you Nancy Drew fans..the main character in this novel is a hoot) my husband kept asking me what was so funny. I laughed all the way through this book. Again, this is a YA book, but still a fun read.
And I’ll throw in my son’s favorite, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy while I’m here. And one the little kids loved when I was a K-5 librarian….Possum Come A Knockin’. It’s got a great rollicking flow and it’s wonderful to read with your littler ones. And, OK, just one more for the little guys. Six Dinner Sid.
OK…gotta go do some work. Have fun everyone! Love all the walks down memory lane.
Rayne @ 310
I was a geeky, nerdy kid needing glasses by high school from too much reading of unpopular texts. And I replicated, enlarging the gene pool with two more such creatures.
Clinton strikes again.
Heaven help me…I really do have to go, but read The Book Thief…if you don’t cry at the end you aren’t human. And, for me, a book MUST have a wonderful ending or the rest of it is diminished. Enjoy your Saturday and cross fingers for a guilty verdict.
PALady @311: Interesting question. Was exchanging comments upthread about The Diary of Anne Frank. And the thought came to my mind that if more people read that book when they were young, there’d be lots fewer College Republicans.
Shifting to books I discovered as an adult: Are there any Luciaphiles out there?
Melissa @ 258
Thank you for confirming and elaborating! I think there is value in some stories not being sugar-coated.
Man, I have GOT to get my house ready for company in 5 hours. And get out of my pajamas. Christy, how COULD you?
Best morning in quite a while!
Okay, why do you start these threads so darn early on Saturday mornings (Pacific time), so that I have over 300 posts to read through before getting to the bottom?
After I finished with Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Cherry Ames, Trixie Belden, etc., between the ages of 7 and 11, I discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs. Tarzan and John Carter! Just the thing for 12-year-old girls!
Plus really old translations of French adventure novels, like The Three Musketeers and The Man in the Iron Mask. The more modern translations changed the “thee”s and “thou”s to “you”s and it didn’t sound right to my 12/13-year-old inner ear.
And Louisa May Alcott, especially Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom, which I must have read 20 times each.
My daughter (now 25) loves The Velveteen Rabbit, but I was never able to get all the way through it without bawling my head off. She had to learn how to read it herself.
Lad a dog was a series???
I cried reading the one I read- it was scottish history and dog love all rolled up together….
I still can remember the feelings.
I will definately be looking those back up this summer!
Celtic Music @ 318
That’s what made me wonder. I remember reading To Kill a Mockingbird, and really understanding for the first time being outraged and offended by racism, and determined to stop it as much as I could.
Books cause you to step out of your own life, and into the life of the characters. And those who are liberal/progressive have the ability to recognize and empathize with those who are suffering, be it discrimination, poverty, disease, what have you.
Oregon04woman @ 320
I had a standing agreement with the school librarian from 3rd grade on, that I could exchange my books as soon as I finished them. Within a year, I’d read all the Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Trixie Belden, and Boxcar Children mysteries. Then on to Agatha Christie, and the Dumas’. I still love reading The Man in the Iron Mask and The Three Musketeers.
The Velveteen Rabbit always makes my daughter cry. Once someone asked her why she’d keep reading it, if she knew it made her sad. She just replied, “Because that’s what good books do – they make you feel.”
I remember the Betsy and Edddie books by Carolyn Haywood as the first books that were worth the effort of reading on my own. After that I was a confirmed reader. They’re for about second or third grade. They’re fun stories without the nastiness in some children’s books, such as the Arthur stories. With Arthur books and TV shows I always think with friends like those, who needs enemies.
I shared the Haywood books with my daughter when she was younger. We realized that since the libraries were weeding them from their collections, we’d have to buy them if we wanted to be sure we’d be able to share them with another generation. We got all of them off eBay, mostly exlibrary copies.
well…
the 3 Pippi Longstocking books, of course
Mrs. Piggle Wiggle trio – kids love ‘em
and a lesser known but compeltely inspiring to girls, the “Betsy-Tacy” series…also from Minnesota but a nine-teens thinly veiled autobiographical series of a girl from kindergarten through marriage who was really smart, adored reading, had wonderful friends and a busy life….as a kid, reading her books inspired me to read Ivanhoe, the Bronte sisteres, etc. because she did…they are WONDERFUL
Madeleine books
lyle, lyle crocodile
harriet the spy
Christy, delurking because your topic resonates so. Velveteen Rabbit, and Beatrice Potter, plus Where the Wild Things Are were very early faves for my kids. Later, they very much liked the Ursala LeGuin’s EarthSea Trilogy and Card’s novels about Ender. I have political problems/issues with some of Card’s stories but liked the Ender stories
ruffian @ 323
Oh, there are tons of Terhune books – not all about the same dog, but his intimate knowledge of and love for dogs, and his keen observation of human nature are a joy to peruse.
One of my brothers did a book report on an imaginary book, including a bit at the end about looking forward to the sequel.
It was pretty good, just that there was no such book! I expect kids couldn’t get away with this in the internet age, too easy to check.
Heidi is a favorite of mine. It was read to us in second grade by our beloved teacher — Miss Angelini was her very apt name. I wish all children could be exposed to this beautiful book. As a child I took it in without thinking about it, it was only later that I realized its depth. It is one of works of literature that are better read to children so that they can reflect on them, though they might not choose them themselves.
Heidi was made into a wonderful Japanese anime that really preserved its spirit of the book by the same artist who did “The Grave of the Fireflies.” Alas, it is not available with English subtitles and probably never will be.
Miss Angelini also read us Bible Stories (it was a Britsh School overseas and they were read as part of our cultural education, not as religion), and Charles Kingsley’s The Heroes of Greece, and George McDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind (first five chapters), as well as Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web, then newly published.
At home, Alice and Wonderland was another favorite book to hear read aloud; and, of course, Kipling’s the Jungle Book and Just So Stories were staples of our childhood in those pre-politically correct days. These are esteemed in India, so I don’t think they should be discarded because today we object to Kiplings imperialism.
My mother read me Shakespeare’s sonnets, poetry by Blake and Robert Burns, and bits of Euripedes and Homer, when I was too young (four or five) to object or be anything but rather puzzled. “Oh rose thou art sick, the invisible worm …”
My grandmother, a former elementary school teacher, used to recite by heart, right off the bat, long poems by Walter de la Mare and other writers for children while she was making the bed or doing other chores — “The Lost Doll” the grandmother with her “slippery knee, knee, knee” the “Gingham dog and the Calico cat.” I guess these had been staples of the curriculum in the 1920s and 30s
As an adult, reading to our kids, we discovered the inimitable E. Nesbit and laughed til we cried.
Everything Graeme Base does is beautiful. His highlight books are Animalia (an ABC primer) and The Eleventh Hour (a study in cryptography for pre-teens). Many, many hours to be lost in his illustrations.
OMG! Thanks to Reddhedd and all FDLers for the list. The only title that I haven’t seen yet is Time Stops for No Mouse and its sequels. These stories are set in a world where all characters are rodents and birds, but living out an Earth-like melodramatic existence. Hermux Tantamoq is a watchmaker mouse who must save a beautiful aviatrix mouse from an evil kidnapper! What a hoot! Now, back to lurking…
I do hope somebody has mentioned Make Way for Ducklings. That’s probably why I always wanted to live in Boston [and did for 17 years with the little ones].
harold @ 332
I remember that! …”Side by side on the table sat” – can’t remember where it came from.
egregious @ 335
I remember that one too!
What a great ride on the way-back machine!
Ooooooh, books!
I grew up reading; by the time I was 10 I had read through the entire children’s section in our local library. My favorites were the Boxcar Children, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, Alfred Hitchcock’s Three Investigator series, Burnett’s Little Princess (read over and over again) and all the usual horse books. Once I’d read through those, the librarian took pity on me and introduced me to the Mrs. Pollifax books by Dorothy Gilman. I adored the Little House series and read them over and over again.
Today my favorites are by Elizabeth Moon and Kim Harrison and Lilith Saintcrow and L.M. Montgomery and J.K. Rowling and Tamora Pierce and David Weber and Robert Heinlein and Lois McMaster Bujold and Robin McKinley and Anne MacCaffrey and Dick Francis and Earl Emerson and J.A. Jance and Jonathan Kellerman and and and. Laurell K. Hamilton and Mercedes Lackey are not-so-secret vices. My daughters have grown to be bookworms as much as I am; I read them the Little House books and many others when they were small; I am indebted to J.K. Rowling, because it was Harry Potter that convinced my younger daughter to leave behind the little kid books and make the jump to full novels.
And yes, we’re running out of bookshelf space again.
Heidi was my maternal grandmother’s favorite book.
Rayne @
310
Yes, I’ve heard that one. There’s a similar one about the close relationship between Michigan and Florida.
Delurking, and probably too late, because I love this thread (as I love all of Firedoglake–for which, deepest thanks and appreciation!)– and it seems nobody has yet mentioned my two dearest mid-childhood books, both by T.H. White: The Once and Future King and the less known but equally wonderful Mistress Masham’s Repose. Glorious! In Mistress Masham’s Repose a little girl with glasses named Maria (first heroine I ever met in those days) discovers a community of Liliputians. I can still remember how enchanted I was to read it– more than half a century ago!
Read Make Way for Ducklings to my little guy too — still a wonderful read.
Did anyone ever read a book called — I think — The Kelpie — set in 18th Century Scotland? I read it in Buffalo NY the year we lived there, had it out from the public library there — and we moved away and I’ve never found it since.
Char @ 341
I’m readng The Once and Future King to my son now; Mistress Masham’s Repose I loved so much I begged my step-grandmother to give it to me, which she did with some reluctance.
Char @ 341
I’m reading The Once and Future King to my son now — he wanted to read about Arthur, having been introduced by the Magic Treehouse series. And Mistress Masham’s Repose I loved so much when I was a kid I begged my step-grandmother to give it to me — which she did with some reluctance. I think I also owe her my copies of the Lord of the Rings …
Swans of Ballycastle. Anyone ever read that? A series of biographies for young people, turns out they all had a red binding but it took me years to find that out b/c I always kept the dustjackets carefully. The All-White Cat, first book I ever read that made me cry, started crying about the middle and cried through to the end. Cannot locate it now, it was a library book and that was before I knew to remember authors.
When my parents bought the World Book set I found an error in it, sent them a letter and got a nice reply saying they’d make the correction (they had the wrong value for absolute zero). Read it pretty well through to R, then just skimmed, so don’t ask me about anythign starting with S.
Someone mentioned the Many Lands series, that was on the shelf forever. My parents probably got it before I was born, along with a series on child psychology. I read that, too, picked up a few pointers *g*. Another series, Things to Make and Do — wonderful projects for kids and adults, too. Mostly I just read it, my mom wasn’t big on letting us do projects because it usually involved a mess.
“The Spaceship Under the Apple Tree”
Louis Slobodkin
My first SF novel (I could find them in the bookmobile by the atom symbol on the spine) was “Trouble on Titan” by Alan E. Nourse. I found a copy on Ebay last year – still a good read.
My father didn’t read to me but he recommended most of my early reading. He loved Verne, Dumas, Twain, and something I remember as “The Young Adventurer Series” about 18th century America.
I will admit to loving the “Classics Comics” series.
Don’t forget Half Magic by Edward Eager (and all his other books). Just reread this childhood favorite of mine and was impressed with the freshness and lack of cliches in Eager’s characters.
One last thought before the thread totally dies: one of the wonderful things about re-reading Laura Ingalls Wilder is how non-bigoted she is. Her family is saved by a black doctor; she cries watching the Trail of Tears … her father is constantly outraged at injustice to all people. I was thinking about Babar and some of the other old books mentioned upthread and how we love them but have to say “oh well its of its time” when we cross some cringe-making moment — but the wonderful thing about Laura Ingalls Wilder is that you never run across that in her books.
I’d forgotten about The Witch of Blackbird Pond. I’d read it years ago and loved it. I also loved The One-of-a-Kind Family series
Little House books
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
Lotte’s Locket
The Phantom Tollbooth
Fifth Chinese Daughter
and every child should read up on Greek mythology.
Forgot Anne of Green Gables
and I loved Pippi Longstocking, too.
Mommybrain @ 233
NYMary @
14
Oz books are an absolute essential. I devoured them as a child and read them all to my daughter one winter (more years ago than I care to disclose) when we were snowed in on top of a West Virginia mountain. After Baum died, John Neill wrote a few more, as did others including, I believe, his daughter. But the 14 Baum books, Wizard through Glinda, are the best!
egregious @
335
Is that the book about the ducks that live in a hotel lobby’s fountain? I always liked that one.
His Dark Materials is a sad example of the dangers of writing defined length series. There is an narrative arc that carries adventure stories. This arc is deeply ingrained in Western culture and goes back centuries. Pullman’s first book is wonderful, truly amazing stuff. The second book fills the usual role of the middle book(s). The story turns darker, the threat increases, allies are found and forged into a team to oppose the threat.
The final book is always the most difficult. To complete the arc, the finale must show the pivotal battle, usually a victory, often a costly one, over the threat. The threat has to be real enough to engage the reader, but not overwhelming, or its defeat is not believable.
The characters also must achieve victory in a believable way.
Pullman’s problem in ending his trilogy is that he left his characters behind. As the series progressed, he drew away from his characters and moved more and more to his philosophical explication of Milton’s poetic ideas. The final battle was between forces, not characters. In short, the guiding structure leaps out of the pages and characters become two-dimensional representations of ideas.
The first two books are excellent and well worth reading. The final disappoints, the trilogy collapses under the weight of Milton writ large, leaving the series as an magnificent effort that should be applauded, even as it fails short of its promise.
PA_Lady @ 352
No, Make Way for Ducklings is where the Mama Duck leads seven ducklings to Boston Common and gets the Boston Police to clear the traffic so they can cross the roads.
Dru @
77
Right, you read two or three at a time to lessen the impact of getting to the last page of a really good one.
hpschd @ 346
When I was 8, my mom had a boyfriend who belonged to the Science Fiction Book Club and gave me boxes and boxes of SF anthologies from the 40s to the 60s. I was hooked through the bag and am to this day.
Isn’t it sad coming to the end of a book? I’m caught between reading as quickly as possible because I want to know the end, and the emptiness which comes with a finished book…
Anybody still here? I just woke up after two days of working as a volunteer for the NZ Ironman….really overslept after being exhausted.
Anyway, I loved the Betsy Tacy Tib series by Maud Hart Lovelace. I’ll go see if anyone else on the thread has mentioned it. It begins as a young children’s book, when Betsy is young. As she grows up, the sentence structure becomes more sophisticated, the pictures become scarce. So the books grow up with you. I highly recommend them for young girls. (It is about girls growing up in Minnesota in the early 1900s).
Cricket in Times Square helped me learn to eat with chopsticks.
Thanks to Google, I was able to remember the title and author of a book I’d loved; The Lost Queen of Egypt, and Ebay helped me find and buy a copy. Expensive but worth it.
The Silver Sword
Otto of the Silver Hand
Thanks. I confused it with John Phillip Duck, which is a newer book.
The smartest decision that I’ve ever made was to kill my TV. I didn’t shoot it, which is what I wanted to do. I gave it away instead to a new neighbor who wanted but couldn’t afford one. Instead of wasting away in front of the tube, I read, read, and read some more. I wish I’d divorced my TV before my daughter was born. Parents and children don’t spend enough time together. Instead of wasting the little time that they are together by watching TV, parents and children should read and share thoughts about what they’ve read.
One thing is certain, no matter how gifted a child may be due to genetics, he or she never will become a critical thinker and good writer unless he or she reads, reads, and reads some more. EZ access to so called higher education isn’t an adequate substitute. I know this to be true because I teach in a law school.
Watching TV has to be one of the major reasons why Americans have become so dumbed down and susceptible to manipulation by the MSN & Faux News.
Delurking (finally) to add my favorite book of childhood: “King of the Wind,” by Marguerite Henry. Newberry winner in 1949. Finctionalized bio of the Godolphin Arabian, ancestor to the modern thoroughbred, and the young boy who tended to him his entire life. I seriously cannot read it without getting teary. To this day.
Would be a good adventure story, with heart, for boys … and, of course, a total slam dunk for pony mad girls.
Safe to say the Peanut will be a reader. Sounds like you’ve broken the trail. Won’t it be fun to see where it leads? My daughter, nearly 9, is now a voracious reader whose idea of a fun Saturday is browing the stacks and cuddling up in an old chair at The Tattered Cover here in Denver. Happily, we live just five minutes away. :)
It’s not highbrow, but right now she’s enthralled with Warriors, a series that does for cats for what Watership Down did for rabbits. (Right now she’s curled up in her bed listening to Sirius Classical Favorites, reading Book 3. I couldn’t be more proud. :) Am hoping she’ll enjoy “Tailchaser’s Song” by Tad Williams when she’s a little older.
Oilfieldguy @
68
Dorian Gray is a novel by Oscar Wilde. The idea is that Gray was a handsome young man who never aged. As all around him grew old and their looks faded, Dorian remained youthful. Turns out that as a young man he had a portrait painted of himself. The portrait was hidden way in his home. The portrait aged instead of him. So in common use, it refers to something or someone that doesn’t show their age, with the implication that there is evil involved somehow.
You’ll have to read the short novel to find out how it ends.
Delurking (again) to mention James Schmitz’s Witches of Karres, a YA SF favorite of mine. Note that Mercedes Lackey (et al) has a sequel, the Wizard of Karres, well worth the read.
dab_from_CT @
202
A Wrinkle in Time, Charlotte’s Web, The Borrowers, The Cricket in Times Square, The Chronicles of Narnia (particularly the Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe), Julie of the Wolves, The Bronze Bow,
Island of the Blue Dolphins, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, The Chronicles of Prydain (The Black Cauldron), Jamaica Inn, Dragonwyck
The list goes on… My Side of the Mountain, Onion John, Anne Frank, Sounder, Five Boys in a Cave, there was one about escaping over the Berlin Wall…I’ll find it among my parents’ collection
We read the same books. Books about how to live a conscious, considered life that made us see more than what was in front of our mouth, that taught us we could do something, help others…..
Palli
I’ve just glanced at the thread (late as usual on Saturdays) and realized I’m not the only person left in world who’s read Fifth Chinese Daughter. I wound up at a women’s college (although not Mills) partly because of that book.
I also loved the Joan Aiken books, Wolves of Willoughby Chase and so on. Wolves features a much better dispossessed heroine than A Little Princess, as far as I’m concerned.
I spent my childhood arguing with librarians who thought I was too young for the books I wanted to check out. The greatest gift my word-loving parents gave me growing up was a house crammed with books and no restrictions explicit or implied on what I was allowed to pick up and read. And they read to me: I’m 49, and I still vividly remember my mother reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to me when I was quite small, and knowing that she was enjoying it at least as much as I was.
Well, that was a little TMI. Good thing I’m down here in EPU territory. I’m going back through the thread and see what books I missed.
Elyse @ 349
I loved that book and so did my oldest daughter.
Another very fun series to read with children is The Adventures of Tin-Tin. Very tongue and cheek, lots of adventures, great illustration.
NormalLiberal @
366
I also ended up at a women’s college (also not Mills) although I don’t remember that book being the reason why. (How do I end the quote?)
Delurking — and bringing up the rear — with:
-Charlotte’s Web (the gold standard that none can touch).
-Vintage Nancy Drew, when she still wore frocks and drove around in a roadster.
-Dr. Seuss (along with Charlotte’s Web, the best introduction to the sheer joy of using language creatively).
-The Little House, cited above. Simply beautiful.
And more that I discovered thanks to my own Peanut, when she was a peanut:
-Blueberries for Sal and One Morning in Maine, both by Robert McCloskey (less well known than Make Way for Ducklings, but wonderful).
-George and Martha series, by James Marshall (the sweet stories of two best friends).
-The Cut-ups series, also by Marshall.
-Miss Nelson series, by Harry Allard, illustrated by James Marshall.
Elyse @ 368
Elyse, what stuck with me out of Fifth Chinese Daughter was how relevatory Mills was for Jade Snow – at last, a place where a dozen other peoples’ lives weren’t automatically more important than hers. It’s strange, I haven’t even thought about the book for ages, but I remember reading it over and over.
Not that I shared her experience – I was the wildly spoiled youngest child and only daughter, and never did my parents or brothers suggest there was anything I couldn’t do because I was a girl.
I’ve read the thread now, and it’s been a wonderful reminder of lots of books I’ve loved over the years. Thanks to all.
Mason @
361
I have to agree with you. Almost three years ago, we decided to stop paying for cable. Too expensive with too little content.
We do watch DVDs and instituted “Bad Movie Monday” – our weekly viewing (and jeering) of two terrifically awful movies, complete with popcorn and punch that now has a weekly attendence of about 20 people.
Now that we’re not exposed to the dreck that is modern television, we spend far more time reading or playing games or talking. We’re doing things together, as opposed to simply being in the same room with one another. I wish I’d done it sooner.
The Witch of Blackbird Pond — I loved it too! Nat Eaton saying to Kit: “I hadn’t got two miles (or whatever distance) down the river that day when I realized I’d left the real witch behind.”
Sigh!
All Edward Eager books need to be added to your list. Half Magic, Magic by the Lake, etc. Most are back in print. I got them for my daughter and now they’re some of her favorites.
Also, when your daughter’s a little older, two books about the Gilbreth family; the the original Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on their Toes. Ernestine Gilbreth just recently died at 98, what a century she saw, huh?
Late in the day lurker here too.
I was able, many years later, to personally thank the school librarian who handed me ‘The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe’ when I was 9. That book turned me into the avid bookworm that I still am today. I told her I felt that my love of reading that started that day, was the foundation of the success I had later in life.
Other great favorites, re-read many times – Little Women, Secret Garden. Also, anything by Lloyd Alexander, whose storytelling has only gotten more masterful with the years.
Loved Nancy Drew too.
grousefinder @
79
We got The Last Book as an ARC at the bookstore where we worked. Sold many copies (kept the ARC for myself).
There are many books-especially at the ‘young adult’ level that I can remember some of the plots, but not the titles, or even characters, I’m going to have go to the children’s librarians at the downtown library and pick their brains.
I’m in a mood to re-read them and see if they’re as good as my 9 year old brain rememb ers them to be.
I think we all forgot A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I bought a fresh copy recently because I couldn’t find my old one and wanted to read the details of the apartments they lived in. I’ve had a rekindled interest in NYC architecture, thanks to Time and Again.
Commenting like a member of the House in those deserted C-SPAN scenes, per usual …
Part of the everything I used to read as a child were books that had a kind of geographical interest. A favorite author (and illustrator) was Lois Lenski, among whose titles I remember best are Strawberry Girl, Blue Ridge Billy, and Bayou Suzette. When the books were written, they were considered pathbreaking for their depictions of children in realistic circumstances—which is to say that some were poor, and lived in migrant worker families, and the like. Not having read any of her books in years, I do wonder how they stand up today.
If you can find it,J.M.Barries Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens with illustrations by Arthur Rackham is just the best.
Happy hunting.
Personally, I’ve had a thing for librarians for as long as I can remember. Mostly of course it is their close association with and insider knowledged of the Grail of books. With very few exceptions in my experience, a librarian is someone to be cherished and exhalted. As just one example, they were the source of one of the first serious push-backs I can recall against the “Patriot Act.”
Childhood reading seems awfully far away. I remember running through Swiss Family Robinson at least a dozen times, but when I checked it out years later it seemed pretty darned sappy – and of course the Disney treatment didn’t help!
But Milne and Barrie were also hits and I have happily returned to the former at least, with kids and on my own.
And, a few years back, it was a delight to share White, Snicket, the first Pullman, and several Rowlings with our youngest. I greatly miss that, but continue to explore recommended books for the younger set on my own, with sensors out for the next round of youngsters to read with. One of life’s great experiences.
It’s awesome as always how many respondents FDL has, and once again I could not process even a fraction of the preceding comments. But I’d put good money to the idea that another of my favorite childhood books has not yet been mentioned: W. O. Douglas’ “Of Men and Mountains.” This is a great bio of the terrific Justice of the Supreme Court, to mention just one of his vital Fed Govt roles. FTC commissioner, perhaps – and a danged good trust-buster? We could sure use him now.
But, sadly, when I went back to the book a couple years ago it was a major disappointment. I think you have to be a little more innocent or something!
Christy at 31 – I don’t know how I originally heard about the film, but I’ve been following related news for quite some time now (Google News Alert – I know, I get carried away, but I’ll do almost anything for a good book) and I love looking at the stills. I have been surprised by some of the casting, often happily so: I think Sam Elliott as Lee Scoresby is brilliant.
Solves the whole problem if you read to your preschoolers. Mine don’t even remember exactly how they learned to read, they just transitioned smoothly from being read to from books like What Do You Do with a Kangaroo? and Liza Lou and the Yeller Belly Swamp to reading to themselves because the books went faster that way.
Maybe it encourages them to think for themselves, too. Although I will admit all of us still have a weakness for a good children’s book as adults. Good memories.
Mr. NJP and I don’t have kids, but we are doting uncle and aunt to his sister’s two wonderful kids. We’ve bought them books for birthdays and Christmas since they were very, very little. I had a great book, Choosing Books for Children, that I had used in my work as a museum educator, and a long memory of much loved books from my own childhood, when I was a voracious reader. I also had taken a children’s literature class in college [not related at all to my architecture major], and learned of many other wonderful books that I hadn’t read, and what makes certain books appropriate for a child’s developmental level.
Our niece and nephew are 15 and 13 respectively, and are thoughtful, intelligent, and witty [when they aren’t pushing each other’s buttons]. Reading makes a huge difference.
Please read to your children. And volunteer at schools to read to other people’s children. Give to charities that make books available to low income families. In my work as a grant writer I came across a truly horrifying statistic: middle class children spend about 1750 hours reading books but low income children spend about 25 hours.