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[luminousmarble]

As I am shortly to pack up this computer, one last post for the road, or for where I put off responses because it's just not as easy without the ability to multi-tab.

Tell me about your favorite books as a kid!

Some of mine, from various ages: I liked Frog and Toad and Frances and Ramona; I liked Anne of Green Gables well enough, but I liked the

Comments

[fyrie]

Ooh. Good question :D I had abridged versions of The Swiss Family Robinson and Great Expectations, which is loved. The former more than the latter, because at that age, the idea of living on a tropical island still sounds like Jolly Good Fun. I was also a voracious Blyton fan, especially the Mystery series and Naughtiest Girl in the School series. Secret Seven and Famous Five less so, but I still read them all ;)

[luminousmarble]

Oh, Swiss Family Robinson! I read that one a lot, too, though I always wished for more girls in it. :p (Especially because I was all like well, what about when they grow up?)

[fyrie]

I never thought that far ahead, I'm afraid. I was too busy considering how I could build a treehouse in the tree outside my bedroom. That and Coral Island gave me slightly odd ambitions as a kid.

wordy person is still wordy, sorry

[thistleingrey]

I'm skipping italics (against type, HA) for quicker entry.

Yes to Betsy-Tacy and Island and Girl with Silver Eyes (but not the rest, though Ramona was okay). For me add Lloyd Alexander's Prydain and Westmark, though I barely remember the latter now; The Mouse and the Motorcycle; Hardy Boys but for the most part NOT Nancy Drew or Bobbsey Twins, tyvm, of the '60s rewrite vintage; A Swiftly Tilting Planet but not its two predecessors; Mrs. Frisby; Where the Red Fern Grows (first of a handful of books ever to make me cry). I liked a bunch of Lois Duncan's books, most memorably Stranger with My Face, and found Starring Sally J. Friedman As Herself fascinating--totally other. Nonfiction: Ann Petry's bio of Harriet Tubman, which I chose for a book report (upsetting the teacher several ways--she thought a parent had imposed it); Torey Hayden's One Child, which was lying around from my mother's psych classes, and fascinating, again, rather than something whose content I loved

Re: wordy person is still wordy, sorry

[thistleingrey]

OH. Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates! And Little Women and the first two parts of Gulliver's Travels (I couldn't make head or tails of the book's second half till much later). All three were republished on the same Windmill Classics imprint.

Re: wordy person is still wordy, sorry

[luminousmarble]

Oh, Ralph S. Mouse! They've re-covered all those books and they aren't nearly as cute as they used to be.

[imaginarycircus]

I also love Frog and Toad. I love the 1971 Snow White with Grimm's text and Nancy Burkerts gorgeous water colors. The Secret Garden and The Secret Language. Madeleine L'Engle's books. When I was 13 I switched to reading "LITERATURE" and was reading my way through Thomas Hardy and Jane Austen and Tolstoy and etc. for the next ten years. I missed a lot. Thank God HP sent me back in the other direction.

[imaginarycircus]

OH! THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH! \o/

[luminousmarble]

I never realize I love Frog and Toad until I pick one up and see the simplicity, but also how much the author is offering a story and letting a little kid make meaning of it on his/her own.

[imaginarycircus]

And I love toad in his old timey bathing suit!

[praetorianguard]

Um, A Wrinkle in Time (but not the next two); tons of Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew (with some Cherry Ames and Bobbsey Twins thrown in); Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, indeed, though I was better friends with Anastaia Krupnik than you were; some Ramona; The Girl with the Silver Eyes and The Dollhouse Murders, and some Zylphia Keatley Snyder for good measure; Judy Blume over and over; the Little House books (but Anne only once because I thought it was boring; I also couldn't get through Little Women); lots of Gordon Korman; lots of Roald Dahl; an awesome book about a bunch of girls in the '50s who solve crime; something called "Miss Jellytot's Visit"; and an endless round of Sweet Valley High and Babysitter's Club books. When I was very small: Pooh and Beatrix Potter

[praetorianguard]

I totally forgot Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and Mary Poppins. :P

[luminousmarble]

I read loads of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. And I had so many Potter books; somebody once told me that they thought the real charm of those books is that they're right-sized for kid hands, and thus, they become favorites because so many other things are not right-sized when you're small.

[coervus]

Apart from the obligatory Dr. Suess, fairy tales, and HP:

I was all over Roald Dahl, P.D. Eastman, and Louis Sachar's books. Beatrix Potter and Redwall also! The Chronicles of Narnia, The Dark Is Rising, Little House, Chronicles of Prydain, Amelia Bedelia, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, The Indian in the Cupboard, My Side of the Mountain, Berenstain Bears, Where the Red Fern Grows, Black Beauty, Julie of the Wolves, Bridge to Terabithia, Adam of the Road, A Wrinkle in Time, From the Mixed-Up Files of...Frankweiler. And I adored Mandy by Julie Andrews.

So lots of Newbery winners, apparently. But then there were the piles of secondhand Baby Sitter's Club and Goosebumps books which I devoured, haha.

[luminousmarble]

I pretty much never read Dahl until I was older, but almost all of the rest of them I was all over! Except animal books. Except for Watership Down I have a marked aversion for books about or starring animals. :))

I loooooved Baby Sitter's Club (which are being updated and re-released!) and I remember that when I was a little kid I would try to read my way from the beginning to end of the Newberys, but I kept getting stuck on the stupid ones. :p