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Favorite Children's Books

posted at 11/11/2008 12:19 PM EST

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Michael_Dirda

First post: 10/31/2008
Last post: 11/30/2009
Total posts: 534

This coming weekend I'm going up to New York to be on a panel at Books of Wonder devoted to the late Joan Aiken's Armitage Family stories. Delightful is the overused word that comes to mind to describe them. Over the course of 50 years Aiken wrote periodically about the various light-hearted, magical escapades and entanglements to which the Armitages were prone (especially on Mondays). Her humor is dry and understated; her writing crisp and elegant. However, the stories were never collected till now. No Aiken fan will want to miss The Serial Garden.

Of course, many readers know Aiken mainly through The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and the subsequent Dido Twite adventures in an alternate 19th-century England. My youngest son, now 18, once declared these his favorite childhood books, at least before the age of 12. Since then I suspect he'd choose the Sherlock Holmes adventures, Robert Heinlein's science fiction, or H.P. Lovecraft's horror stories.

I, myself, would probably pick Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan novels, then Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth and The Mysterious Island. That is, if I didn't opt for an entire series such as the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift Jr., and -- my favorite -- the Rick Brant "electronic" adventures. I know a retired honcho from the Pentagon who owns the complete run of Rick Brants -- and still reads them occasionally. For comfort, I suspect.

Which makes me ask: What childhood books meant the most to you? Which do you hope your children or grandchildren will enjoy? Why did these particular titles appeal to you so deeply? Please share some of your memories -- and recommendations.

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Hello!

posted at 11/12/2008 10:16 AM EST

jeffelkins

First post: 11/12/2008
Last post: 11/12/2008
Total posts: 4

So glad DRR is open for business! Mt Wednesdays were empty :)

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Re: Favorite Children's Books

posted at 11/12/2008 10:21 AM EST

jeffelkins

First post: 11/12/2008
Last post: 11/12/2008
Total posts: 4

Replying to:

Robert Heinlein's science fiction, or H.P. Lovecraft's horror stories.I, myself, would probably pick Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan novels

ERB was a childhood favorite to be sure. His Barsoom and Pellucidar series also were standouts, with Pellucidar offering a crossover; "Tarzan at the Earth's Core." Also, These books are now in the public domain, available free for your Kindle or Sony Reader!

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Re: Favorite Children's Books

posted at 11/12/2008 10:21 AM EST

cherreturns

First post: 11/12/2008
Last post: 11/12/2008
Total posts: 1

I'm a child of the 80s, and my favorite children's books were "Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great" (and the rest of Judy Blume) and the Ramona series by Beverly Cleary.
The Amelia Bedelia books were also great fun. Sharing these books with my children is actually one of the things I look most forward to about parenthood.

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the smell of a madeleine!

posted at 11/12/2008 10:25 AM EST

sstackwick

First post: 8/26/2008
Last post: 5/4/2009
Total posts: 8

Michael,
Your mention of Jules Verne, and especially "The Mysterious Island", has thrown me back to childhood indeed. What child would *not* want to grow up to be as smart, resourceful and brave as those stranded soldiers?

Will I be disappointed if I read it again? I hear there are newer, better translations out now.

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Children's Books

posted at 11/12/2008 10:33 AM EST

Patcat1

First post: 11/12/2008
Last post: 11/9/2009
Total posts: 60

As a very young reader (8 or so), I loved THE VELVETEEN RABBIT, a story that still leaves me with embarrassing tears in my eyes. The lovely pencil illustrations accompanying the first copy I encountered of this story impressed me a lot. It wasn't until many years later that I realized the drawings were by Maurice Sendack.

I moved steadily through the Bobbsey Twins, and the Hardy Boys, and some series about two sister detectives. But the series I really loved was the Freddy the Pig books by Walter Brooks. Brilliant pig.

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Narnia

posted at 11/12/2008 10:35 AM EST

csherr

First post: 11/12/2008
Last post: 11/12/2008
Total posts: 1

I loved the Chronicles of Narnia, even though they weren't contemporary but were already old when I was a kid. School-aged kids defeating huge armies filled with experienced warriors who had magical powers! What's not to like?

And Madeline's l'Engle's "Wrinkle in Time" series. For essentially the same reasons. Children defeating evil that is apparently MUCH stronger than they are.

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children's books

posted at 11/12/2008 10:37 AM EST

MaitlandFlorida

First post: 11/12/2008
Last post: 11/30/2009
Total posts: 6

RL Stevenson, especially the pirates. My father had been in Samoa during WWII and used to visit his grave. Got me reading him as a result.

FW Dixon, all the Hardy Boys (and Nancy Drew when I finished them. My 9 year old just read one, I think there are now in excess of 130 volumes

Tom Swift, first the son and then when I'd finished all of him the father's adventures

Joseph Altsheler -- his series about the boys in the Civil War

Earnest Thompson Seton -- Sam and Yen in Two Little Savages, even named my oldest son Sam after the book

Many others as well, but a half century remove it's hard to remember

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Verne, Conan Doyle, Hardy Boys, but caution,

posted at 11/12/2008 10:40 AM EST

CIARACAT

First post: 11/12/2008
Last post: 10/12/2009
Total posts: 12

I also read many pulp type detectives, thrillers, and cowboy books. I have a small hobby of adding, to my library, books I read at different stages of my life. Recently one of my aquisitions startled me with it's overt racism.

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favorite children's books

posted at 11/12/2008 10:59 AM EST

babs1

First post: 5/7/2008
Last post: 6/6/2009
Total posts: 4

I'm in my mid-50's just to give you a perspective. Grimms Fairy Tales were probably my favorite for a long time. I don't recall being scared of any of the stories. Of course, I read all the Nancy Drew books, but I would finish one in a day, and then I'd put it on the shelf next to the others. I don't remember re-reading them like I did the Fairy Tales. In college I took a children's lit class, which really opened my mind to some great reading, including just about everything by Maurice Sendak, Beatrix Potter, and of course, in my opinion, one of the greatest stories, "Charlotte's Web."

Mr. Dirda, perhaps you could pose this question another way, and ask what are your favorite children's books that you've read as an adult. Some of my favorites are: "The Biggest Bear," "The Runaway Bunny," (I'll say it again) Beatrix Potter (I can hardly read Jemima Puddleduck without bursting into tears) - just study her illustrations that accompany her stories.

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too many...

posted at 11/12/2008 11:02 AM EST

reader14

First post: 3/13/2008
Last post: 9/21/2009
Total posts: 24

A couple that I remember - The Forgotten Door by Alexander Key. I think I'm still looking for that idealistic society that Jon came from. And My Side of the Mountain - a story about a different kind of escape from my present situation. Escape and revenge came up often as themes in my childhood reading...
I loved the Count of Monte Cristo, for instance.

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Re: Favorite Children's Books

posted at 11/12/2008 11:25 AM EST

andrewkp99

First post: 11/12/2008
Last post: 11/12/2008
Total posts: 1

One of my favorites was Roald Dahl's "Danny the Champion of the World" - a great story of the relationship between a boy and his father, and lots of adventure as well. I was a big "Hardy Boys" fan too. I will also put a word in for "Treasure Island", which I read as an older child (aged 40!), and enjoyed every minute.

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Favorite Children's Books

posted at 11/12/2008 11:30 AM EST

Edorampo

First post: 11/12/2008
Last post: 10/14/2009
Total posts: 21

Looking back at my childhood reading it's become clear that images had more power than words. Drawings from "Astro Boy," a comic series begun in the early '50s in post-war Japan had quite an impact on my childhood. The comic strip (which later became a popular TV series) was created by Osamu Tezuka, Japan's Walt Disney. He is also the creator of "Kimba, the White Lion" (that obviously inspired Disney;s "The Lion King" but never acknowledged). His work has deep roots in buddhism. Incidentally, Stanley Kubrick tried to hire him as art director for his movie, "2001: The Space Odyssey." He was too busy at the time so he declined the offer. I attended his lecture at the Kennedy Center years ago during which he explained the roots of manga all the way back to around 1000 AD, around the time Lady Murasaki wrote "The Tale of Genji."

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Runaway Pony, Runaway Dog

posted at 11/12/2008 11:32 AM EST

Blarney

First post: 11/12/2008
Last post: 12/11/2008
Total posts: 3

This book brings back many nice memories for me. It was a book I bought myself with money I earned doing chores. It was a selection from a book order in third or fourth grade.

It's a good story, but the illustrations (paintings) are magnificent. It's a beautiful hardback book by Ruth and Latrobe Carroll from 1963.

And, I still have it.

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Arthur Ransome!

posted at 11/12/2008 11:38 AM EST

dcbyday

First post: 8/13/2008
Last post: 11/12/2008
Total posts: 2

The Arthur Ransome series of books about kids and sailboats, Swallows & Amazons, Picts & Martyrs, etc., was my favorite in a landlocked and benighted part of the Midwest. I read them all, and then suddenly they disappeared from the library shelves. I didn't discover till much later that they had been removed because Mr. Ransome was a British Communist, and McCarthyism and the John Birchers had a strong grip. The books have been reissued in paperback by Godine, and I am pleased to been able to purchased nearly all of them, and re-read them, too. When I retire, I hope to at least try to learn to sail.

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Waldo2babcock

posted at 11/12/2008 11:43 AM EST

waldo2babcock

First post: 11/12/2008
Last post: 3/15/2009
Total posts: 9

The book that lifted me out of myself most when I was a child was The Wind in the Willows. I came to many children's books when I was an adult, but I knew how I would have felt about them when I was a child---for good or ill, I've always carried my past around with me. My two most favorites are "Up a Road Slowly", by Irene Hunt, and "Where the Lillies Bloom", by George Beverly Cleaver. Among my favorite picture-story books are: The Story about Ping", by Marlorie Flack, any book by Lois Ehlert, and a new one by Susannnah Bloom, "A Splendid Frien, Indeed. And, of course, the Frances books by the Hobans.

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childhood favorites

posted at 11/12/2008 11:59 AM EST

MouLif

First post: 11/12/2008
Last post: 9/26/2009
Total posts: 4

While growing up in India read a lot of Enid Blyton books - Famous Five, Secret Seven, Fatty series- enjoyed them just as fun stories to read. However Enid Blyton is not popular in US - some latent racism in her books, one of the reasons? not sure. Also read the Grimms fairy tales in beautifully bound, illustrated volumes. Handling the volumes was an integral part of the pleasure of reading them. I still remember reading the first of Sherlock Holmes stories and then eagerly trying to get my hands on the rest of the stories I was yet to read.

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waldo2babcock

posted at 11/12/2008 12:05 PM EST

waldo2babcock

First post: 11/12/2008
Last post: 3/15/2009
Total posts: 9

Oops-- that's 'Bill' Cleaver, not 'George'.

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Born female in Seattle in 1950...

posted at 11/12/2008 12:10 PM EST

jhbyer

First post: 11/8/2007
Last post: 8/9/2009
Total posts: 2390

...my earliest favorites were simply the only two titles my family owned.

My old-fashioned parents refused to read them to us, but our nice Mom did read us the daily paper's "funnies", so by four, I was able to slowly devour "Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes" and our two volume set of Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm.

Grimm's Fairy Tales are unforgettable for their depiction of a world unsafe for us kids, a world redeemed only by poetic justice. Does not "The Little Match Girl" epitomize the "cold, cruel world"? It may be the saddest short ever published in the West, yet it taught me that a grown-up cared enough to write it "down". Of course, I thought it was true, before I learned worse truly does happen.

At 8, given a public library card, I read oodles. My favorite series were all the delightful Moffat Books by Eleanor Estes, some of Laura Ingalls Wilder's 19th century American pioneer tales, and Lois Lenski's Strawberry Girl, Blue Ridge Billy and others about children my age in the impoverished South.

I hated "The Secret Garden" which seemed self-consciously written for children by an adult I weirdly concluded didn't like children. ???

As a preteen, I loved Sherlock Holmes and Nancy Drew. What topped my list, however, was the elder Dumas' romantic adventure, "The Count of Monte Cristo".

Not until high school did this bookworm find another love like The Count. I'm a bit embarrassed the revisionist "Gone with the Wind" swept me off my teenage feet. "Wuthering Heights" remains beloved for its deeply realized atomosphere of youthful longing.

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Favorite Children's Books

posted at 11/12/2008 12:16 PM EST

Iconodule

First post: 11/12/2008
Last post: 11/29/2009
Total posts: 160

My earliest favorite was an anthology of stories and poems, read to us nightly by our parents. I liked it mostly for the original artwork. For preliterate children I think that is important.

We moved to Europe in the mid-1960s when I was 7. At first, the only English-language books my mother could find were Enid Blyton "Noddy" books, which I enjoyed. My own children thought they were dreadful.

I also loved Nancy Drew but had access primarily to my mother's books, published in the 1930s. These taught me an eccentric and archaic vocabulary which I used (unintentionally) to hilarious effect---"snappy roadster", "in cahoots", etc.

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