your most favourite children's story

[JuniperWoolf]

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]

Nah, Jun, your mom was just being a good parent, exposing you to the variety of literature the world has to offer.

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]

Maybe this should become one of the monthly reading polls.

[qimissung]

Not a bad idea, Calidore.

[MarkBastable]

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. Also The Cave Twins, which was my favourite of the Twins series, which I devoured.

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

[Darcy88]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

*****

[Bleeding Pawn]

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]

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]

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]

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?