December 10, 2011
dear clusterflock
Favorite children’s book?
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I loved The Hobbit as a kid, although it’s not necessarily a children’s book. I also loved that mouse with a motorcycle book, although I can never remember the name of it. And, I loved My Side of the Mountain. Probably my favorite.
The Twin Witches of Fingle Fu
The Ice Cream Cone Coot and Other Rare Birds
Amelia Bedelia series
The Duchess Bakes a Cake
In a class all their own: Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking-glass, both of which obsessed and continue to obsess me.
Then . . . oh, my. L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. And yes, Little Women. Marguerite Henry’s books.
So many.
It’s fun to ponder this. Some of my favorite books from childhood were not specifically (nor exclusively) children’s books, and there are children’s (or “young adult”) books I discovered and came to love as an adult. In the second group I’d include Alan Garner’s The Owl Service and Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle, together with The Hundred and One Dalmatians.
Right now my favorite book to read to the Iz is The Paper Bag Princess.
I can’t wait to read her The Hobbit and A Wrinkle in Time.
A Cricket in Times Square and The Secret Garden.
The Witches.
Michael, I’m smiling now, recollecting the books my dad read to me when I was six or so. His idea of appropriate literature for a little girl ran toward ripping yarns. Treasure Island: that I recall vividly. I had nightmares about Blind Pew. And “The Hound of the Baskervilles” kept me awake many a night.
Sheila, I’d probably have already started if I thought she’d get even half as much enjoyment from it as I would. As it stands she can almost make it through half a chapter of Winnie the Pooh before she’s ready for something else.
I think Daddy enjoyed reading Treasure Island more than I enjoyed listening to him read it. At least when I was six.
The stories of Jack London were pretty great.
I’d forgotten about Jack London. The cabin he lived in while in the Klondike is near my mom’s house (my mom lives nowhere near the Klondike, but the cabin was moved at some point so people who didn’t like the cold could see it).
Good Night Moon
Teddybear Baker
Ox Cart Man
The Cut-Ups
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nihm
Where the Red Fern Grows
My Side of the Mountain
Something Wicked This Way Comes
I have recordings of Cindy reading many kids books to Mia and I still listen to them.
I really liked that Jack London story “To Build a Fire,” but I was glad that the dogs knew the guy planned to kill them to warm his hands in their guts and ran away. Also, I forgot Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which I loved then and still do for more reasons.
I forgot about Where the Red Fern Grows, Daryl. That will break your heart.
I have memories of Daddy reading bedtimes stories. I don’t remember any particular story. I vaguely remember the book, I’m sure it is still in their house in a box somewhere. I don’t believe this is it, though it is a close approximation.
As soon as I learned to read, I devoured. I remember a series of books Mom bought a “subscription” to, called something like the “You Are There” series. (You Are There, with…Thomas Alva Edison…or Winston Churchill…or The Pony Express, etc.) I loved those books. They came every month or so for some time. around the time I was seven.
I don’t remember the first book I read that might have “counted” as “subversive” to my parents beliefs. I devoured those, too.
Years later, the first time I read Vonnegut, say, or Tolkein, or Heinlein or Arthur C. Clark. I learned I was on the road to certain destruction. When I was a senior at Pocahontas High School, I read everything on my English teacher, Mr. Amos’, “borrowing shelf” by Ray Bradbury.
The Sign of the Seahorse by Graem Base – the artwork blew me away when I was in kindergarden, and I’ve always had plans to give it to my own kids someday.
Deron, yes–Where the Red Fern Grows was, oddly perhaps, my introduction to loss that is bigger than I am. Maybe it seems strange (or privileged) that this would come to me in a book, but I was about ten when I read it, and funerals and heartbreak seemed at the time to be silhouettes on a horizon. So when the boy lost his hounds, the woods were suddenly empty. Many children’s books carry the emblems of change better than anything else, it seems.
I went through an obsession with “Dog Books,” as I called them after that. Big Red and Son of Big Red, for instance (lots of “Son of” books, like Bob, Son of Battle). Silver Chief and Silver Chief Returns ( lots of “Returns”). Kazan, the Wolf Dog…. I still have a stack of those books in the closet. They remind me of a time when I planned to buy much of Canada at the three cents per acre advertised in the back pages of Outdoor Life and Field and Stream. You remember the ones: A big Bass is rising to snap up a frog lure as a black bear prepares to slap him from the water.
How has no one yet mentioned my favorite, The Phantom Tollbooth? Best, best ever.
If you’re looking for my favorites from my younger years, I’d go with any of Tomie dePaola’s writings, such as The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush or The Legend of the Bluebonnet.
Also, The High Rise Glorious Skittle Skat Roarious Sky Pie Angel Food Cake came out when I was a little too old for it but that never stopped me from reading and rereading it…
The Indian in the Cupboard
Anything by Ellen Raskin, particularly THE WESTING GAME! A book that it is an actual tragedy there is no movie of.
Any of the Graem Base books, as Josh mentioned. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful books beyond measure.
From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
As some have noted, it’s an interesting distinction as to which books we enjoyed as children and which as adults. Nowadays I think Owl Service, for example, is just about a perfect book, but the ending perplexed me when I was a teenager. And maybe there’s a difference too between what we read as “children” and what we read as teens. I loved Heinlein’s ’50s science fiction novels for boys (especially Tunnel in the Sky) in probably 6th and 7th grades. When I was younger than that I loved Phyllis Whitney’s mysteries. I too read Wrinkle in TIme, probably in 6th grade, but I’m not sure I read anything else by L’Engle for several years. I guess I started reading Arthur C Clarke and Ray Bradbury in 8th grade (or maybe 9th) and read a zillion science fiction books in high school. It was summer after 10th, I think, when I read Lord of the Rings; Gormenghast would have followed that in 11th; and maybe in 11th also came along Ballantine’s new “adult fantasy” series, playing off Tolkien’s popularity. It was probably 6th or 7th when I read Call of the Wild and loved it, and I guess it was about the same time when I read some of Kjelgaard’s animal books too. (Daryl’s Big Red may be a Kjelgaard–I can’t swear to it.) Probably before I went into science fiction, I went through a biography period, reading mostly from a series of highly fictionalized books about the childhoods of famous people, many by Augusta Stevenson. (I particularly enjoyed the Knute Rockne book.) I think I read Alice in Wonderland in high school, and loved it, and never read Winnie The Pooh until high school, when I read it because I played Christopher Robin in 11th grade: we did the short Pooh play for several elementary schools.
As an adult–as a retired librarian–what books have I loved? Well, gee whiz, even though I absolutely despise talking animals, I think Charlotte’s Web is one of the premier books of the 20th century, far superior to most “classics” for adults. It works because EB White is a superb writer–and yet its existence has never moved me to read Stuart LIttle or Trumpet of the Swan. The Book Thief, published within the past decade, I think, is a first-rate book for junior high-ish kids. Louis The Fish by Arthur Yorinks may be my favorite picture book. Where the Wild Things Are is classic of course. L’Engle’s Arm of the Starfish is a fine fine thriller. There are probably more good books for the under-18 crowd than for adults.
I do like Trumpet of the Swan. The swan doesn’t talk in that. He just plays the trumpet. It’s sad! I want to read it right now.
Make Way for Ducklings!
I remember Make Way for Ducklings from Captain Kangaroo.
Coop–Charlotte’s Web–yes, can’t possibly leave that one out. Also, those Susan Cooper books are great fun; at least I had a great time reaing them to Flannery. It’s funny how Potter took off and you don’t hear much about Susan Cooper.
Amanda Mae, I searched for the Indian in The Cupboard just a few days ago. It was one I loved.
Five Children and It, by E. Nesbit something something but try to get the one with the Victorian pictures and not the modern hellish one. Such a fantastic book, I think of it often.
Anyone know Noises and Mr. Flibberty-Jib? It’s great. He can’t stand all the noise in the city, so they move to the country, where there’s a bunch of other obnoxious noise. Turns out he just needs to wear his mittens and eat his roast beef and everything works out. Life’s little lessons.
Don’t Call Me Little Bunny by Grégoire Solotareff.
Other items from the kid-to-adult continuum that I enjoyed (and still do): MAD magazine and various comic books. I never cared for comics intended specifically for children, such as Little Lulu. I was pretty much into superheroes, although I was a traditionalist and pretty much stuck with DC.
Magazines dedicated to monsters were pretty good, too.
Also, do boys gravitate toward Dog Books? I lot of us girls read Horse Books.
Me in fourth grade when the teacher read Where the Red Fern Grows to us: I’m not crying.
Is Roget’s Thesaurus a children’s book? My parents gave me a copy when I was in fifth grade, and I would read it for hours.
The BFG.
Also: The Giant Jam Sandwich, Where the Wild Things Are.
Does Adventures of Huckleberry Finn count? Does Ender’s Game?