Childhood Favorite Books

[Sooh - Member]

Hello everyone! 

 

I was thinking earlier about what I wanted to discuss the most with you guys, and I thought it would be fun and interesting to see what sort of books everyone loved as a child. The books we loved will probably be somewhat influenced by the culture and country we grew up in, but I'm interested to see which books have transcended borders and become international.

 

I'll start by mentioning a couple of mine. Obviously by growing up in Norway I heard a ton of Norwegian folk tales, and also tales from Norse Mythology, but when I sat down to read myself I liked to read books that I could imagine myself into.

 

Astrid Lindgren is an author who is well known, at least in Scandinavia. I loved her books about Pippi Longstocking and Ronja the Robber's Daughter. I used to run and play by myself in the woods around here, pretending to be one of those characters, or a hybrid of both. If you don't know them I can talk some more about them. Just ask. 

 

In the library they had the "Little House..." books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I suppose those books are the start of my love of historical novels. They used to have these stamp cards in the back of the books where you could see who had taken them out of the library, and I think I probably filled out most of those cards for those books. I read them again and again. They were translated to Norwegian obviously, but when I was in the US as an adult I got the full set of Little House books in English, and I still read them from time to time. 

 

 

Have you heard of these books? What are some of your childhood favorites?

[Mrs. Cindy Gill - Donor]

little house may be my favorite book series of all time. I like little women as well but nowhere near the level of perfection

Edited March 10, 2015 by Mrs. Cindy Gill

[nicana - Member]

I loved the Little House books! I was a huge fan of the series and the TV show. Pippi Longstocking was also a personal favorite. I always tried to make my braids stick out like Pippi's. Lol Other favorites of mine were the Judy Blume books. I think Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing was the first one I read. My most favorite though was and still is The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare. I will still read that one from time to time.

Edited March 10, 2015 by nicana

[Basel Gill - Member]

As a kid, I always enjoyed A. A. Milne's classic Winnie the Pooh stories. That and Where the Wild Things Are.

[Ryrin - Club Leader]

My Faves: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and the Trixie Belden series.  I didn't like Nancy Drew.

[Mrs. Cindy Gill - Donor]

I liked the hardy boys

[Mrs. Cindy Gill - Donor]

and classics comics which totally count

[dawnflower8 - Member]

When I was little, my favorite books were the Magic Tree House books and the Rainbow Magic books - two extremely repetitive series where every book had the same plot - and there were around 100 of them.

[Songstress - Moderator]

I totally loved Nancy Drew.  And The Secret Garden, as I recall.  Charlotte's Web.  Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.  Anything I could get my hands on by Judy Blume (so long as my mother never read them! )

 

But the ones I remember absolutely LOVING and always wanting to re-read someday were "The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel)" and "The Westing Game" by Ellen Raskin.

[Sooh - Member]

I used to love reading the Nancy Drew books and Hardy Boys too.

 

I was in a book club that mailed two books ten times a year. It was a great day when those packs of books arrived (and then I read them in like two days and had to wait another month at least for the next package).

 

They were aimed at preteen-teen girls and some of the books they had were the Babysitters' Club and Sweet Valley High.

[Basel Gill - Member]

OMG Tress, I forgot about The Rats of NIMH. I reread that one quite a few times.

[WildTaltos - Donor]

most of the stories i grew up on werent books, just people telling stories.  considering then only read so many books growing up, guess my favourites are the ones i reread the most and  those are the old cycles.

[Aniere - Member]

When I was a kid, there was a point where I didn't care much for reading, but the books I DID read almost became a part of me. I read seldom, but when I did I became obsessed. I loved Magic Tree House and I read a few "Ghosts of fear Street" by R.L. Stine which were pretty scary at the time. xD My favorite of all time was Socks by Beverly Cleary. Actually, I quite loved Beverly Cleary for some odd reason, but I can't remember what books of hers I actually read. Really, any animal books were fun to me, I used to carry around a Cat Encyclopedia and draw the pictures in it.

[Wren Sedai - Member]

Phantom Tollbooth - Norton Juster

Curse of the Blue Figurine - Johnny Dixon
Narnia - C. S. Lewis

Redwall series (up until 9th grade when they began to wear thin)

Where the Red Fern Grows (I read this a billion times in 6th grade)

Stuart Little?

The Hardy Boys

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Alice in Wonderland

I have a few fairy tale books in storage that I have tracked down because they were just that awesome.

[Wren Sedai - Member]

I also read War and Peace in 6th grade, not because it was assigned to us, but because Charlie Brown read it and I had to know what kept him up late at night.  My teachers were never sure what to do with me.

[Wren Sedai - Member]

Wrinkle in Time
The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander

*brainstorming*

[Panchi - Member]

I didn't really read much books before grade 5 because my mother thought (and still thinks) that reading is the worst hobby possible. When I was in fifth grade, she started taking me and my brother to libraryso that we would read books instead of watching TV.

 

Initial favourites (fifth grade March to June)

Mahabharata

Nancy Drew

Hardy Boys

 

Favourites grade 5 to grade 6

Harry,Potter

Eragon

Artemis Fowl

Percy Jackson

 

 

Can I as current favourites too considering that I am still a child?

[Sooh - Member]

We're all still children I guess when it comes to books

[Mrs. Cindy Gill - Donor]

why not?

[Millon - Member]

Where the Wild Things Are, Oh the Thinks You Can Think, Saggy Baggy Elephant.....I wasn't much of a reader as a kid. Hell, I didn't really become a reading enthusiast until WoT believe it or not.

 

There was one book I got for Christmas though. Was a pop up book for the night before xmas and a cassette of the story being narrated by Wilfred Brimley. I don't know what it was about the book but I was simply FASCINATED by it. I couldn't stop reading it and playing with all the different tabs and such. Super cool thing about it! I was tellin the missus about how much I loved this book and she must have told her cousin about it because i got it for xmas from her. I have my favorite book back!

 

There was another book I had as a kid that I can only just remember the cover off. It was a large redbook and it had four different stories in it. There was a story about a fire engine. It makes me sad when I think of it because it was my favorite book. I remember asking my dad to read this book to me the most often but i can't remember anything of what it was about or what it was called. Only the image of the cover. Like so many other memories I've lost. 

[Daruya - Member]

Wish for a Pony

Cargo of Horses

(and others along those lines, set in England)

 

Trixie Belden

Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books

Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys

Fury (about a horse)

Blitz (about a horse; a real heartstring tugger)

Misty of Chincoteague & subsequent books

Gypsy from Nowhere (and sequels)

 

I also liked the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

 

As you surely noticed, I read a lot of books about horses or that had horses in them! LOL! 

[Mrs. Cindy Gill - Donor]

mom

prolly shouldn't haveade me read black beauty. I dasnt get attached to

horses after that.

[Ithillian Turambar - Member]

Hmmm ...

 

The Little Wooden horse is the first book I remember having read out loud to me. I have a copy in hardback.

I taught myself to read more betterer using the Rupert the Bear annuals ... they had rhyming couplets and full story paragraphs for each picture.

Famous Five and Mallory Towers

The first book I read that could be classed as young adult fantasy was The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. If Rowling thought writing a character's death was bad she should have taken a look at this book. I think I cried.

The Snow Spider and Emlyn's Moon - both beautiful books

The first book I ever bought for myself was The Hounds of the Morrigan

I love The Blue Sword with a passion

 

I've never read The Hobbit.

[Kaylee - Member]

Nancy Drew and the boxcar children are what i grew up reading.

[Basel Gill - Member]

Nancy Drew and the boxcar children are what i grew up reading.

When I was in grade school, the school library had about twenty of the original Boxcar Children books from before the series got continued by other writers. I remember going through them all two or three times before I moved onto middle school.