Your Turn
With the death of Jan Berenstain, it made me think of children's books and I would love to know the your favorite of all time and what the favorites are now for kids today.
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As a little girl, my favorite books were the Ramona series by Beverley Cleary. I love her. I've read all of her books.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I won't feel right if I don't include how much I loved and love Judy Blume's books as well.
My favorite books were the Berenstain books and a cute animal version of the 10 Days of Christmas when I was really little.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in junior high I read I Am Fifteen and I Don't Want to Die every single day. Still one of my absolute favorite books. Also love Number the Stars.
Loved Chris Van Alssburg books!!
ReplyDeleteMy baby is currently obsessed with The Very Hungry Caterpillar and I Love You Through and Through. I have them memorized.
ReplyDeleteI remember learning to read---- and it was the Berenstain bear books! RIP
ReplyDeletea family friend said something about their 9 y o daughter. She said she prefers her Kindle because she doesn't like the way books FEEL. I almost died!!!!!!!
Harold and the Purple Crayon. Set a great example of what you could do on the living room wall with a box of crayolas and a little imagination.
ReplyDeleteOoooh, the Susan Coolidge ‘Katy’ books were among my favourites. Also, the Louisa May Alcott books. I read quite voraciously as a child.....I still love being taken into different worlds just like I always did then. And like RenoBlondee, I also enjoyed the Ramona books.
ReplyDeleteI loved Robert McCloskey's Homer Price books, Jean Craighead George's "My Side of the Mountain," Oliver Butterworth's "The Enormous Egg," and E.B. White's "Charlotte's Web."
ReplyDeleteYertle the Turtle by Dr. Suess
ReplyDeleteYertle burped and the whole thing came crashing down, remember? The little people hold it together. Love that book!
This thread is making me all warm and fuzzy.....and OMG, pilly.......reading is very much enhanced by the feel of the book and the excitement of turning each page. That poor child!
ReplyDelete@pilly - that is so, so sad.
ReplyDeleteMine: Laura Ingalls Wilder & Judy Blume
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom was a favorite of my small person.
The Velveteen Rabbit, and Ferdinand the Bull were my absolute favorite books when I first learned to read. Anything by Brian Wildsmith, too. His artwork is extraordinary.
ReplyDeleteI also adored Richard Scarry's books.
Oh! And Miss Nelson is Missing! Viola Swamp was the bomb! The stuff of nightmares, truly.
Don't even get me started on all the books I loved once I hit elementary school. :-)
Another is Bertrand Brinley's The Mad Scientists' Club." Favorite Dr. Seuss books were "To Think That I Saw it On Mulberry Street" and especially "Bartholomew and the Oobleck."
ReplyDeleteFolks, if you haven't read that last one you don't know what you're missing.
I loved Shel Silverstein and Robert Munsch books when I was a kid. When I got older it was Babysittters Club books all the way.
ReplyDeletePre-teen books - Judy Blume books. All of them (with special honors to Forever - not because it was good, but because I will never forget getting caught with it by my mom)
ReplyDeleteElementary school - Encyclopedia Brown. I'll never forget The Great War = WW 1.
Pre-school - Wacky Wednesday
Please tell me that those books are all still being read!
As a child I had a big book with Hans Christian Anderson stories in it that I LOVED (I still have that book today although it's pretty worn). The Steadfast Tin Soldier was my all-time favorite from that book and I remember staring at the photos as a child.
ReplyDeleteNow that I have an 8 year old we love anything by Mike Thaler (he writes the "Black Lagoon" books- Those are hilarious.) I also enjoyed the "Bad Kitty" books by Nick Bruel (although she wasn't overly crazy for those). My daughter is fond of the Magic Treehouse series by Erin Pope Osborne and she just started reading the "Warriors" books by Erin Hunter.
My favorites were Where the Wild Things Are and the Grimm tales. As I got older, it was Stephen King novels.
ReplyDeleteANYTHING by Shel Silverstein!!! My favorite was always "Where the Sidewalk Ends." It is now my youngest daughter's favorite.
ReplyDeleteThis one is a bit more recent, but I've read it to all 4 of my children for the past 15 years, "Guess How Much I Love You."
Oh, and of course, I've always loved Aesop's fables.
@Ida YES, Richard Scarry! I couldn't remember his name. That was another one I loved.
ReplyDeleteAnyone else read the book "Go Ask Alice"? I was obsessed with that book when I was in my early teens
Green Eggs and Ham.
ReplyDeleteI loved the Judy Blume books.
ReplyDeleteAndrewBW, my favorite children's book has always been And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street. Such a fun book. The Polar Express is fast becoming a favorite to read to children.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was little Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lingren and my Richard Scarry dictionary (which I still have. When I was a pre-teen I loved the Dark Forces books, there was one about a scary storm and a freaky magician.
ReplyDeleteAnything from either Dr. Seuss or Richard Scarry.
ReplyDeleteAnd two random-author books that I still own:
1) Andrew Henry's Meadow
and
2) Wicked Pigeon Ladies in the Garden.
@msfairydust
ReplyDeleteYes! I loved that book. I was shocked at the ending when I was a teen.
@Seachica - Encyclopedia Brown - yes! Did you ever read Brains Benton?
ReplyDelete@pilly": As Harold Ramis said in Ghostbusters, "Print is dead." That was 1984, and he was right! But holding a book, riffling through the pages and enjoying that smell is integral to the experience, no?
ReplyDeleteSo many great ones have already been mentioned; I'll add "The Wind in the Willows," (Kenneth Grahame,) "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler," (E. L. Konigsburg,) and "Rascal" (Sterling North.)
I'm a little older than a lot of you so the books you all mention weren't around when I was a child (Berenstein Bears, Dr. Seuss, etc.) I absolutely LOVED the Louisa May Alcott books and of course, Anne of Green Gables.
ReplyDeleteWhen my nephews were small they loved the Richard Scarry books - kept them enthralled for HOURS.
my favorites growing up:
ReplyDeleteanything by Beverly Cleary, the Wayside School series, Pippi Longstocking, The Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum, so much darker than the movie)
Must've read James and The Giant Peach and Stuart Little about two dozen times each before I was ten.
ReplyDeleteAnother book I liked, mainly for the illustrations was something called _21 Balloons_, read to our class by my 4th Grade teacher. I am convinced that the guys who made the movie _Up_ knew about this book. Probably dated now, but the illustrations are really good.
Noisy Nora by Rosemary Wells was my favorite book as a kid and I still have it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noisy_Nora
ReplyDeleteSweet Pickle books were a big one for me too. And of course Judy Bloom. I must have read "Are You There God, It's Me Margaret" a million times.
Oh yeah and there was the Sweet Valley High series that I couldn't go a day without reading.
Aww, I miss being a kid. I miss the book mobile!!
Holy cats, I think everyone's already named my favorites...Shel Silverstein, Lois Lowry, Lois Duncan, Judy Blume -- LOVE FUDGE! -- Beverly Cleary, Encyclopedia Brown, E. L. Konigsburg, the Dark Forces books (I'm stoked that others remember this series...I liked the one about the girl who wanted to be an actress and got mixed-up with a Satanist)...
ReplyDeleteAnother favorite was The Witch of Blackbird Pond, but I'm blanking on the author...
Anything Astrid Lindgren. "Ronia, The Robber's Daughter" is one of my all time favourite books!
ReplyDelete@AndrewBW - no, what is Brains Benton?
ReplyDeleteAh, I forgot about Pippi Longstocking! I'm still yearning to find Villa Villakula so I can live there.
Richard Scarry's Best Word Book Ever. It sparked my imagination like nothing else. Every page was a different scene: Family house in the morning, a farm, the market, a dinner table. And I would make up adventures for the characters on each page. Oh, that and I learned a few words on the way.
ReplyDeleteI'm probably the oldest person here, so most likely none of you are familiar with the Five Little Peppers and the Bobbsey Twins. The Peppers were my favorites, as long as they stayed poor. Once they became rich, not so much. I also liked Nancy Drew.
ReplyDeleteMy kids liked Judy Blum, Richard Scarry, Shel Silverstein. I liked them too. :)
My folks got me a complete set of children's literature, I couldn't read fast enough.
ReplyDeleteI loved the Judy Blume books, and stuff like the Hardy boys, actually everything!!
My house is full of books. Favorites I'll read again and again.
Beverly Cleary! I am planning a trip to Portland to see the bronze statues in the park dedicated to her.
ReplyDeleteShe really inspired me to read.
My favorite book as child was a Dutch book called „kruistocht in spijkerbroek” (crusade in jeans). It’s a brilliant historical novel for kids that’s still fun to read when you’re all grown up. Just like Harry Potter now...
ReplyDeleteWait. Duh, R.L. Stine and Ten Kids, No Pets.
ReplyDeleteI have bought each child in our family the Robert Munsch series each time a baby is born I give the "I'll love you forever" book to their parents, it started when my daughter left home for the very first time, at the airport I handed her the book with a message I wrote inside. I quote it to my granddaughters all the time.
ReplyDeleteLoved the Little House on the Praries series, Anne of Green Gables and Louisa May Alcott books. My sister used to read Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz to me before I could read. It was a while before my reading tastes veered solidly into the 20th century LOL.
ReplyDeleteAny other, um, mature readers remember the "Best in Children's Books" series? I loved those as a kid, too.
ReplyDeleteSome of my fondest memories are being in the children's section of the local library. It had this really, really thick bright yellow shag carpet (it was the 70's lol). There I read Suess, Babar, Scarry, etc. and later graduated to Nancy Drew, Baum, and Lloyd Alexander.
ReplyDeleteMy kids loved the Magic Time Machine series. Right now my youngest (17) is reading the HALO books based on the video game (at least he's reading, right?) and Huckleberry Finn in school.
My son is REALLY into Cordouroy right now. He loves that bear. My favorite though is The Giving Tree. I cry everytime for that dam tree. Beautiful metaphor for parenting. . . I get it now.
ReplyDeleteOh, and when my kids were in elementary school they loved loved Bunnicula, about the vampire rabbit. Great book, very silly.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was very little, I loved the Francis books (Bread & Jam for Francis, Bedtime for Francis, etc) - so much that I actually found them in Spanish versions for my son. I also loved the Marvelous Mud Washing Machine by Patty Wolcott... Sparked so much of my imagination...
ReplyDeleteWhen I got older, I adored Madeleine L'Engle (A Wrinkle in Time, A Ring of Endless Light, etc). I actually wrote to her and she responded!! I eventually transitioned to smut (Sweet Valley High), but man did books have a big impact on my young life. Which reminds me, I have to order my son some new books...
Growing up (and even as an adult) it was/is the Chronicles of Narnia, hands down
ReplyDeleteI tried to read my son the Velveteen Rabbit and Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, but I totally cried during both of them. He was a little freaked out, so I put them in a pile for Daddy to read to him. I stick to Richard Scary and stuff I can handle. I'd like to say it's because I am 6 months pregnant right now, but this was before I was pregnant...
ReplyDeleteCurrent favorite are "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus" and "Llama, Llama Red Pajama." Oh, and Dr. Seuss!
ReplyDeleteSyko, I remember the Five Little Peppers and the Bobbsey Twins! I was a totally voracious reader as a kid, and most of what I read has already been listed above. I especially liked all the original Laura Ingalls Wilder books (I say "original" because there are knockoffs now that supposedly tell the stories of her daughter, her mom, her grandmother, etc., but I suspect they're nowhere near as good); going back and reading some of them as an adult helps you spot a whole lot of things you missed as a kid, esp. in the last couple of books when Laura's a teenager!
ReplyDeleteSomeone that never gets mentioned anymore is Frances Hodgson Burnett--while I was so-so on Little Lord Fauntleroy, I loved The Secret Garden, but my favorite (which I won in a library contest) was and is A Little Princess, because, being something of an outsider and occasionally bullied, I could relate to at least some of what Sara Crewe went through, and hoped that I could have as glorious a comeback as she did. (I also really wanted a black velvet dress like Sara's in the worst way, but my mom thought children shouldn't wear black, damn it.) I can't think of either of those last 2 books w/out the Tasha Tudor illustrations, either, which capture the spirit of the books so well.
Oh, and Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret was the hit of my 11th birthday party; I was just hitting puberty when Judy Blume came on the scene.
ReplyDelete@ParkerNosey--Have you seen this? (re Giving Tree) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYQavD9mSIc
ReplyDeleteI loved Amelia Bedelia, Corduroy, the Spot Books, and of course the Bernstein Bears...
My mother never let us read Judy Blume for some completely ignorant reason.
ReplyDeleteRoald Dahl.was my absolute favorite. I lived ask of his books, especially Matilda and The BFG.
ReplyDeleteWow...auto correct above...should read loved all of his books.
ReplyDeleteLeo The Late Bloomer
ReplyDelete@redronnie
ReplyDeleteI'll love you forever is the book my mom read to me every night until I got sick of it. I adore that book.
@syko
I have all of my mom's Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drews. She wrote her full name, address and age in them, so I feel like I am holding my mom at 11 in my hands. They also smell like my grandma's house.
Sigh.
What great memories.
LOVED LOVED LOVED-The Little House on the Prairie Series, Baby Sitter's Club and Judy Blume books.
ReplyDeleteFavorites now that I am a parent-Harry Potters, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Percy Jackson Series and many many more.
Growing up, I loved the Bernstin Bears and when my kids were younger, so did they.
I was a nerdy bookworm as a kid. Loved to read just about anything and everything.
ReplyDeleteMost are mentioned--Dahl, Burnet, Lundgren, Blume, Anne of Green Gables, Little House, Jean Craigshead-George.
My daughter would say JK Rowling and Brian Jaques.
@Seachica - Brains Benton was another series about a boy detective genius like Encyclopedia Brown, except that they were full novels rather than short do-it-yourself puzzlers. The first was by Charles Spain Verral and subsequent ones by George Wyatt.
ReplyDeleteThe Berenstain Bears are high on my family's list. So sad to hear of her passing.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite books to read to my children: without a doubt: CURIOUS GEORGE!!! Love that little monkey!!!
I always loved Little Red Hen, which was a golden book. Later, loved Pippi Longstocking, little house books ,Anne Frank. My kids loved the shel Silverstein books ,which I hated, so naturally they read them to me ad nausuem, lol
ReplyDeleteI have to add a few more now that I think. I agree with so many of you on Judy Blume, which was a favorite of mine. My mom wouldn't let me read them either, especially Forever and Wifey.
ReplyDeleteMy kids love the Little Critter series. Some other faves are:
Don't Let the Pigeon Ride the Bus
Twas the Night Before Christmas
Stanley's Party (a MUST read about a dog that decides to throw a shindig when the masters are out!)
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
Little House on the Prairie series
And my boys love the Matt Christopher books-he writes great stories about young kids in sports-all kinds. Love these!
OK, coming out of lurker status for this one! I'm a teacher, and I love reading books from my childhood to my students. My favorite is Liza Lou and the Yeller Belly Swamp, by Mercer Meyer. Close behind are The Giving Tree and There's a Monster in My Closet.
ReplyDeleteI was a book worm as a young girl (read SUPER unpopular lol) and read everything I could get my hands on. My favorites were: Are you there God, it's me Margaret?, the Sweet Valley Twins series, Nancy Drew, The Giver, Number the Stars, The Diary of Anne Frank, Muggie Maggie, and when I was a kid I read The Berestain Bears and Madeline books.
ReplyDeleteMy all time favorite book, E.B. White's Charlotte's Web! I like of E.B. White's writing though. I also loved Dr. Seuss' The Places You'll Go.
ReplyDeleteI forgot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince.
ReplyDeleteA.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh books. I gotta get my Eeyore fix.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI have always been book obsessed and I LOVE children's books. I hope to write one, one day. Hard to pick one, although you guys mentioned a lot of my favorites.
ReplyDeleteHoratio, Mister Dog, Amelia Bedelia, Curious George, Dr. Suess, WTWTA, The Giving Tree. I loved Judy Blume (Just as Long as We're Together was my fav and I probably read it 1000 times) & Beverly Cleary. Mom turned me onto Nancy Drew. The Velveteen Rabbit & Charlotte's Web made me cry uncontrollably, but yet I read them over and over again.
I could talk about this all day long. Books were an escape for me as a kid. :)
I have to laugh when I think about "I'll Love You Forever." I learned about that book in HS and bought one for my niece. My sister and I cracked up reading it. The sentiment is nice...but the mom crawling into the grown ass son's window at night to watch him while he sleeps???? CREEPY!
I LOVED all books as a kid. If I didn't have a book with me, my parents knew I was up to something or I was sick.
ReplyDeleteRecently...when my niece; who is now 13; was little, my favorite was...If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. I still love Harold and the Purple Crayon and can recite One Fish,Two Fish mostly by heart.
I forgot ...Goodnight Moon.
ReplyDeleteThe Weston Game.
ReplyDeleteSwiftly Tilting Planet
A Ring of Endless Light
Down a Dark Hall
Sounder
I could go on for days.
Lelaina, my son and I would howl at the picture of the mom on the ladder!
ReplyDeleteI still have my Nancy Drew books. I wanted to be a mystery "author" one day. I also had an Alfred Hitchcock book. And I read Ellery Queen novels when I was a tween. Also read The Exorcist at age 9.
I did love Harold and the Purple Crayon, and almost any Little Golden Book. My mother used to read to us Shut Up and Eat Your Snowshoes by Jack Douglas.
Some of my best memories of my eldest niece and I were reading the Beatrix Potter books together. Especially The Tale of the Two Bad Mice. She loved how I pronounced HUNca MUNca. My son liked the Beatrix Potter books as well. Oh, and they both loved Pat the Bunny. That book makes me laugh. When you look at the picture of the baby, it looks like blood streaming down its head.
Goodnight Moon and Guess How Much I Love You were favourites when he was little. He loved The Tale of Despereaux (SO much better than the movie - movie was nothing like it) and Because of Winn Dixie, both by Kate DiCamillo. Right now he's into the Percy Jackson series. He also likes something called Bone - it's basically a hard-back comic book.
KLM, I'm jealous! I still re-read "A Wrinkle in Time" every couple of years-- I have my battered childhood copy. :)
ReplyDeleteI also loved many of the authors and books that have already been mentioned: Judy Blume, Beverly Cleary, Laura Ingalls Wilder, R.L. Stine, "The Babysitters Club." I could go on...
Syko, i think we're about the same age; you're not the only one in this age group reading CDAN. "The Little Prince" for me.
ReplyDeleteI loved the Madeline books. Charlotte's Web. Chicken Soup with Rice. Bobbsey Twins. Johnny Tremaine. A Wrinkle in Time. The Runaway Bunny and Harold and the Purple Crayon - I must have wanted to run off and have adventures and then come back home.
ReplyDeleteThere is a book from the last 10 years or so called Charlie Parker Played Bebop by Chris Raschka. You have to read it out loud, in the cadence of bebop. Love it.