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cacian
05-05-2013, 01:34 PM
what is your favourite children/childhood story and why?

I would say mine are all of Beatrice Potter's series. I can still visualise the drawings from when one I was little :)

The Atheist
05-05-2013, 03:48 PM
Treasure Island

The best boys' book ever written. Action, adventure, pirates, betrayal, courage and the most heroic boy in literature.

I still love it!

Volya
05-05-2013, 04:08 PM
The Moomins!

hannah_arendt
05-06-2013, 03:36 AM
The Moomins of course:)

kev67
05-06-2013, 03:40 AM
The Hobbit. I read it a dozen times.

hannah_arendt
05-06-2013, 03:43 AM
The Hobbit. I read it a dozen times.

I`ve read it as a teenager for the first time.

ladderandbucket
05-06-2013, 05:51 AM
Around the world in eighty days - Jules Verne.

Delta40
05-06-2013, 06:42 AM
The Children of the New Forest - Captain Marryat

chrisvia
05-06-2013, 08:40 AM
Le Petit Prince. One can read it and experience new meanings throughout a lifetime.

Seasider
05-06-2013, 08:41 AM
1.Emil and the Detectives
2.Treasure Island
3.Little Women
4Jane Eyre

Much too old for The Moomins and I hated The Hobbit when I read it at 20

hannah_arendt
05-06-2013, 09:39 AM
1.Emil and the Detectives
2.Treasure Island
3.Little Women
4Jane Eyre

Much too old for The Moomins and I hated The Hobbit when I read it at 20

Why did you hate "The Hobbit"?

Calidore
05-06-2013, 09:49 AM
I remember reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and A Wrinkle in Time over and over.

Going back even further, the Sesame Street book The Monster at the End of This Book, in which Grover desperately tries and fails to stop the reader from advancing toward the end, was a huge favorite, and is still good for laughs as an adult.

mona amon
05-06-2013, 09:54 AM
The Three Fat Men by Yury Olesha.

Melanie
05-06-2013, 10:19 AM
My father's childhood book, "I Don't Want to go go Bed" by Ruth Kauffman (Altemus "Wee Books for Wee Folks")...it's close to an antique now and has sentimental value.

Volya
05-06-2013, 10:53 AM
Much too old for The Moomins and I hated The Hobbit when I read it at 20

Too old for the Moomins! :O
I read them now and still love them!

cafolini
05-06-2013, 11:51 AM
From that early in life I don't remember which one. I read many, all in Spanish. What I remember vividly is The Adventures of Tom Sawyer which is a more mature book and influenced me the most; all versions.

hannah_arendt
05-06-2013, 12:02 PM
From that early in life I don't remember which one. I read many, all in Spanish. What I remember vividly is The Adventures of Tom Sawyer which is a more mature book and influenced me the most; all versions.

Are you a Spanish native speaker?

cafolini
05-06-2013, 12:34 PM
Are you a Spanish native speaker?

LOL More than it seems so.

MarkBastable
05-06-2013, 04:32 PM
I hated The Hobbit when I read it at 20


I hated it at thirteen or fourteen. And ever since.

OrphanPip
05-06-2013, 04:39 PM
My favourite books as a child were my scholastic children's illustrated dictionary and my encyclopedias. I was a boring, neurotic child.

cafolini
05-06-2013, 08:43 PM
Excuse me, big news. Obese monger Rush Limbaugh falls.

Varenne Rodin
05-07-2013, 03:57 AM
One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.

sonia bhardwaj
05-07-2013, 09:02 AM
My favourite children's book or story is two one is Cinderella and Little ... It is one of the most relaxing and hypnotic bed time books ever written.

cacian
05-07-2013, 11:53 AM
One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.

I do not know this one it is quite a title for a fish ;)

cacian
05-07-2013, 11:54 AM
From that early in life I don't remember which one. I read many, all in Spanish. What I remember vividly is The Adventures of Tom Sawyer which is a more mature book and influenced me the most; all versions.

what about in Spanish have you read any ?

cafolini
05-07-2013, 12:15 PM
La hormiguita viajera, Platero y yo, etc., etc. Then I remember my paternal grandfather who invented a story for me. It was about a donkey who learned not to eat, and the problem was that a few days after he learned, he died. Then there were stories based on, for example, "...piden pan. No les dan. Piden queso, les dan un hueso y les cortan el pescuezo. But apart from this recollection and some others from my maternal grandfather, I was not influenced very much by them.

Varenne Rodin
05-07-2013, 01:15 PM
I do not know this one it is quite a title for a fish ;)

It's a Dr. Seuss book. It probably shaped my whole life. "From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere."

Lokasenna
05-07-2013, 01:31 PM
Ah... Hobbit-bashing... **wipes a tear from the eye**

For me, the two I most remeber from my childhood were The Wizard of Oz and The Lost World - both of which I loved, and continue to love. One of my mad uncles also gave me a copy of The Silence of the Lambs for my ninth birthday - I think he was actually rather put out by how much I enjoyed it.

Seasider
05-07-2013, 02:09 PM
I remember listening toThe Lost World on the radio aged about 10 and being completely mesmerised by it.But I don't think I ever read it

coeus
05-07-2013, 06:29 PM
My favorites as a child were:

Where the Red Fern Grows
Bridge to Terabithia
Charlotte's Web

JuniperWoolf
05-07-2013, 08:08 PM
The Secret Garden. Mary didn't take crap, I liked her. I did not like Anne of Green Gables, although it would probably be considered another one of my primary childhood books because my mom really liked reading it to me.


For me, the two I most remeber from my childhood were The Wizard of Oz and The Lost World - both of which I loved, and continue to love. One of my mad uncles also gave me a copy of The Silence of the Lambs for my ninth birthday - I think he was actually rather put out by how much I enjoyed it.

Ah, I found a copy of Hannibal under my mom's bed when I was little (I was a snoopy kid). I had an uncle named Richard Harris who recently died, so I thought it was some mysterious book written by him that she put it under her bed to keep it from me (I was also a stupid kid). I caught on that it wasn't by him as soon as I realized we'd have more money if it was, and it was my favorite book for a while. My mom is a huge reader, but she's a bit creepy, so reading very graphic books was nothing new to me. She didn't like cleaning very much, so the floor and tables were always littered with books about Jonestown, serial killers, real cannibals, ect., and most of them had pictures. I wonder how that impacted my development.

qimissung
05-07-2013, 11:31 PM
Nah, Jun, your mom was just being a good parent, exposing you to the variety of literature the world has to offer. :D

I loved The Secret Garden, too, and I liked Mary, but mostly I loved it for the deep suspense which was new to me as a kid, the discovery of Colin, and the fact that she had a secret garden. I would adore to have a house with a secret room or tunnel.

The Good Master and Tom's Midnight Garden. You don't hear much about these anymore, but they are really good. The latter is yet another book about a kid who had his own real secret world away from adults and the prying eyes of the world, the lucky kid.

The Trouble with Jenny's Ear, about a girl who could read people's minds. The Incredible Journey, which was and is, awesome.

A Boy Ten Feet Tall. My brother gave this to me when I was about ten. It is about a boy who has an incredible journey of his own. I was slightly obsessed with journeys.

And Caddie Woodlawn, also excellent.

Golden Dog. The best. book. ever.

These are all still good books, if anyone wants to give one of them a look. I think it's time for me to reread the last two.

Calidore
05-07-2013, 11:58 PM
Maybe this should become one of the monthly reading polls.

qimissung
05-08-2013, 01:52 AM
Not a bad idea, Calidore.

MarkBastable
05-08-2013, 02:26 AM
Ah... Hobbit-bashing... **wipes a tear from the eye**


I'm afraid that, in my case at least, it's worse than that. It's hobbit-ignoring.


When I was a kid - so, under ten, say - I really liked the Bobby Brewster series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._E._Todd). Also The Cave Twins, which was my favourite of the Twins series (http://www.angelfire.com/az/ladybecca/twins.html), which I devoured.

Of the more well-known classics, I was a huge fan of the Narnia series.

Darcy88
05-08-2013, 02:37 AM
The Jungle Book definitely. My father used to read it to me all the time when I was a kid. The copy we had also had amazing illustrations.

Adolescent09
05-08-2013, 08:18 AM
In no particular order except for (1).

1) The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me
2) A Cricket in Time Square
3) Treasure Island
4) The Giver
5) Island of Blue Dolphin
6) The Wind in the Willows
7) Winnie the Pooh (original, not the picture books)
8) A Christmas Carol
9) George's Marvelous Medicine
10) The Scarlet Pimpernel
11) Wuthering Heights
12) Where the Red Fern Grows
13) Little Men
14) The Secret Garden
15) To Kill a Mockingbird
16) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
17) Alice in Wonderland
18) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
19) Richard Scarry's Bedtime Stories
20) The BFG
21) Aesop's Fables
22) The Hans Christian Anderson's collection

22 books for this 22 y/o man! It's just a small taste of the wonderful children's classics I've had the infinite pleasure of reading. The amount of good children's literature is unlimited!

Adolescent09
05-08-2013, 08:23 AM
It's a Dr. Seuss book. It probably shaped my whole life. "From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere."

Have you read "Oh, The Places You'll Go". Reading it used to calm me down and give me hope when I had psychotic panic attacks.

PeaceLoveAndTea
05-09-2013, 09:49 AM
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. Aaaah, I loved those books. I "inherited" them from my uncle when he passed on when I was 6. I took to reading them right away. I still have the same set in its own little box packed away in the basement because they started falling apart :'(

wordeater
05-09-2013, 10:49 AM
My favorite children's author remains Roald Dahl with books like The BFG, Matilda, Danny, the Champion of the World and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

My second favorite is the Swedish Astrid Lindgren with Pippi Longstocking, Emil of Lönneberga, Ronia the Robber's Daughter and The Brothers Lionheart.

Bleeding Pawn
05-09-2013, 03:23 PM
*****

Bleeding Pawn
05-09-2013, 03:26 PM
I won`t say these classics are my all time favourites because it is unfair to select a few from all the gems that I had come across during my childhood days but would rather list them as the ones which I had read more than when compared to other classic story books.They are:

1- Treasure Island
2- Five on a Treasure Island
3- The Happy Prince (short story)
4- The Secret Garden
5- Heidi
6- Anne of Green Gables

As a non-classic fiction short story, I liked The Dog Who Wanted to Die( author?)

Snowqueen
05-10-2013, 05:46 AM
There are lots of stories that I liked when I was a kid, but some of them are still my favourites; King Solomon’s Mines, The Lost World, Rostam and Sohrab, Alif Laila(One Thousand and One Nights), and a collection of Urdu tales Shahkar Kahaniyan.

Jackson Richardson
05-10-2013, 07:37 AM
Only one mention of The Wind in the Willows. Love it. So did my mum, and I read it to her when she was in a care home for the last months of her life. We both cried at The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

(Shuffle feet. I liked The Hobbit and preferred it to Narnia. But I don't care for the theology of the atonement in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.)

Whifflingpin
05-10-2013, 01:03 PM
Wind in the Willows is still one of my favourites.

I think Violet Needham was probably my first "favourite author," but only a couple of her books would still be considered for my personal top 200 list.

Coral Island still cuts the mustard (whatever that means)

I only recently discovered Astrid Lingren, and I think her books are wonderful. They make my grandchildren laugh out loud.

Peter Dickinson's "Tulku" & "The Blue Hawk" should be on the list.

And why no mention of Nesbit or Joan Aiken?

cacian
05-10-2013, 02:05 PM
La hormiguita viajera, Platero y yo, etc., etc. Then I remember my paternal grandfather who invented a story for me. It was about a donkey who learned not to eat, and the problem was that a few days after he learned, he died. Then there were stories based on, for example, "...piden pan. No les dan. Piden queso, les dan un hueso y les cortan el pescuezo. But apart from this recollection and some others from my maternal grandfather, I was not influenced very much by them.

hormiguita is that an animal/insect of some sorts?
Platero is that a long version of Plato in Spanish?

cafolini
05-10-2013, 03:12 PM
It's Roto Rooter in the fungus. LOL
Don't you dare commit suicide on LitNet.

LadyLuck
05-10-2013, 04:42 PM
Mine has always been The Wind in the Willows. I starting sharing this story with my children when they were quite young because it was a personal favorite.

qimissung
05-10-2013, 05:07 PM
I love The Wind in the Willows, but I didn't read it until I was an adult. Same with the Narnia books. I found The Silver Chair at my library and loved it, but had no idea there were others until I got to college. I felt rather cheated, I must say, but I quickly rectified the error.

Gilliatt Gurgle
05-10-2013, 09:50 PM
Where the Red Fern Grows Wilson Rawls

Adolescent09
05-12-2013, 04:22 AM
I love The Wind in the Willows, but I didn't read it until I was an adult. Same with the Narnia books. I found The Silver Chair at my library and loved it, but had no idea there were others until I got to college. I felt rather cheated, I must say, but I quickly rectified the error.

I loved The Last Battle, The Magician's Nephew, and The Horse and his Boy.

I have no clue as to why The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe was so popular. I read them years ago, but from what I recall I enjoyed the above three works much more than The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. The only book in the series I either didn't read or completely forgot that I read was Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia.