Plan B Forum

Stolen from a blog I enjoy, a one question meme:
What were your favorite books from your childhood?

The Boxcar Children
Loved those books and still do. Got my 59 yo husband hooked on them.

Trixie Belden
I wanted to be her so badly.

Island of the Blue Dolphin
Ah yes….

A Nickel for Alice
Still have a copy of that.

A Knight Came Riding
Still have a copy of that too.

The Tripods
Husband loves those too.

Robin Kane Mysteries

Phyllis Whitney youth mysteries
Meg Mysteries.

My Friend Flika
And the others in that I believe were
Thunderhead
The Green Grass of Wyoming


Grimm's Fairytales

I am sure I will think of more.

What are yours?

I wasn't a reader very young, grew up in a house with no books. Neither my father nor mother read.

The first book I remember reeding was "Lord of the rings", since then I seem to have been constantly reading.

I wasn't a reader very young, grew up in a house with no books. Neither my father nor mother read.

That is something I hear a lot from people. It is difficult for me to imagine since my parents, though not educated beyond high school, were both readers, my mother in particular. I bought piles of books from whatever that service was we bought from in elementary school.

I don't read nearly like I did when I was young and in early adulthood.

Kudos Gob for overcoming that obstacle.

Thanks TPFKA@W, funnily I think that being such a late starter helped turn me into such an avid reader. I've been making up for lost time since.

This is the first book I remember getting from a library and reading...



<Preemptive strike> I remember it well because it was just last week. ...

There's a monster at the end of this book.

Charlotte's Web (I still have the battered old paperback I bought at a school fair)

Mud, Mud, Mud

Goodnight Moon

Anything by Beatrix Potter, but especially the Tale of Jemima Puddleduck

The Nancy Drew series

The Trixie Belden series (but I preferred Nancy)

The Little House on the Prairie series (I used to save my allowance to be able to buy the next book in the series, every summer, when we went to our house on Cape Cod)

The Witch of Blackbird Pond (my all time favorite)

The Chronicles of Narnia

The Secret Garden

The Chronicles of Pyrdain (Taran Wanderer, the Black Caldron, etc)

The Black Stallion series

The Hardy Boys series

Any kind of biography -- there was a series of elementary school levels bios that I read feverishly. They had a check list of all the bios they published on the end papers, and I loved to check more off the list (on the ones I owned not the library versions). I distinctly remember being annoyed that there weren't more bios about girls/women (the ratio was probably about 5:1 males to females)


So yes, I was a reader. I've always been a reader. I was lucky my parents and grandparents were readers and the concept stuck, firmly. Gob, it may be worth it to go back and try some of the classic children's books from your era -- there are some gems not to be missed. I still own almost all of these books (I've given some to the boys, and more will follow), and every so often I pull out one and re-read it --- its such fun to spend an hour remembering what it felt like to read them as a kid!

Nice idea Guin, the "Just William", "Jennings" and "Billy Bunter" books were all the rage then amongst my peers.

My childhood favourites that still have a place on my bookshelves.

The Secret Garden
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Black Beauty
Watership Down

I had a great start as a young reader, my parents were both avid readers and they had a huge library of novels and reference books. We were also given book tokens every christmas by our Aunt, one of the greatest pleasures of the christmas break was taking the book tokens to the shop and buying a new book or two.

How could I forget Black Beauty? Read that over and over, as well as Bambi, and 101 Dalmatians.

Early on, the Black Stallion and Bobsey Twins series were among my favorites; later on I loved Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, along with a variety sci fi/fantasy books. In later elementary school, I moved on to Dickens (spurred on by reading A Christmas Carol initially, and also playing the Artful Dodger in a community theater production of Oliver) and other British books like Stoker's Dracula and Shelley's Frankenstein (sinced i loved the movies).

Green Eggs and Ham

I left off the rabbit books: Watership Down, Rabbit Hill, and the Velveteen Rabbit.

Guinevere wrote:Any kind of biography -- there was a series of elementary school levels bios that I read feverishly. They had a check list of all the bios they published on the end papers, and I loved to check more off the list (on the ones I owned not the library versions). I distinctly remember being annoyed that there weren't more bios about girls/women (the ratio was probably about 5:1 males to females)

I read that series, too. It did have Clara Barton and Marie Curie, as I recall. I also remember the bios of Thomas Edison and (of all people) James Whitcomb Riley. Can't recall any others, but I do recall reading one or two a week through third grade.

My other faves:

A Wrinkle in Time
Charlotte's Web
The "Tripod" series @W mentioned (I remember getting them from the library when they first came out)
Everything ever written by Ray Bradbury
Tales of Edgar Allen Poe

And Abigail Adams, Julia Ward Howe, and Lucretia Mott.

I have one or two of them somewhere -- I can't recall the publisher, but maybe I can find it on line.

I read all the time when I was young; much more than I do now. I even arranged my bedroom so the hall light reflected on my mirror and to the head of my bed so I could read at night...


Winne the Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner
When We Were Very Young, Now We Are Six (a new copy of which my mother gave me on my 24th birthday...)
also Winnie Ille Pu (given to me freshmean year in HS when I was taking first year Latin...)

The Joyce Payton Series ( which my mother had read when she was a kid)

all the Beatrix Potter books

Oliver Twist, David Copperfield (starting about 6th grade)

My Friend Flicka and the two sequels

Black Beauty

the Little House on the Prarie, and a couple of sequels (I forget which)

tons more that I'll think of later!

Crackpot wrote:There's a monster at the end of this book.

I had to read that to my son every night (and in the Grover voice too). My daughter had to have me read Hop on Pop and of course she had to jump on me every time I said Hop on Pop.

My childhood books were Curious George. Loved that monkey and the stuff he got into.

Oh dear - I watched "Enid" last night (marvellously well done) but I'm so glad there were things in my childhood that I didn't know - what a bitch Enid Blyton was and what Uncle Mac looked like......

I started reading early and was punished in school for reading all the books for the year by trading with others in the class before the word "go" was uttered by Miss Page.

I read all the non-fiction books my Dad got from the library - motor racing (Juan Manuel Fangio, Nuvolari, Moss - ah smell the petrol!); warfare; birds; planes; athletics; soccer etc. He had no education to speak of but read a lot. All three of us used to read at the table at the evening meal.... rude buggers.

A very incomplete list
Everything by Dickens
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (probably the most perfect book ever written)
The Water Babies - Charles Kingsley
Black August and everything else by Dennis Wheatley
Five on a Hike Together - Enid Blyton (how odd I never read any others of hers)
Stand by for Mars! - Cary Rockwell
The Black Arrow - RLS
Windsor Castle - Harrison Ainsworth
The Cloister and the Hearth - Charles Reade
Black Bartlemy's Treasure - Jeffery Farnol
The Narnia books - CSL
The Hobbit and LOTR - JRRT
All of the Jennings and Derbyshire - Anthony Buckeridge
All of the William series - Richmal Crompton
Many of the Biggles (Flies Undone) series - Capt. W. E. Johns
All of the Swallows and Amazons series etc - Arthur Ransome
Yes Kristina - Pooh, House at. and When We were Very Young and Now we are six (still great)
The Bitty and the Bears series - Lady Elizabeth Gorell

I loved them all (and still do)

Meade

Among others:

A Zoo in my Luggage.

Gerald Durrell (brother of Lawrence Durrell)

Pearls Arms and Hashish; Diary of a Red Sea Smuggler

Henri DeMonfried

Barnaby

Crockett Johnson

yrs,
rubato

We were too poor, we wrote our own books.