Children's books

[Sybarite]

Elsewhere, I mentioned that I'd just bought a copy of Alison Uttley's A Country Child. Strictly speaking, it's a children's book, but one of those that has had a crossover audience for many years.

A semi-autobigraphical account of a year in the life of a young girl, growing up on a 19th-century farm in Derbyshire, I first read it at school. I disliked it then, but feel a nostalgic pull toward it now ? the chapter about Christmas remains in my mind.

Which made me think of the books I loved as a child.

To start off, I remember with fondness various Frances Hodgson Burnett titles ? The Secret Garden etc ? plus Pollyanna, Susannah of the Mounties, Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons titles, the Biggles books and loads of Enid Blyton. Later, I adored Emily Neville's It's Like This, Cat.

But in recent years, I've realised the pleasure of going back to The Wind in the Willows and Alice in Wonderland and reading them anew.

It left me wondering what WLF posters consider to be classic children's fiction; which were their own favourite children's books then ? and which might they still read now?

[Mirabell]

I love children's literature!

Especially

Randall Jarrell's The Bat - Poet.

Winnie-the Pooh (amazing amazing amazing)

Astrid Lindgren's Ronja, The Robber's Daughter (I have to reread it once a year to feel good)

My favorite passage in Ronya, quickly translated from the German:

And then spring crashed like a cry of joy into the woods around the Mattisburg. The snow melted. It ran in streams down from all the mountainsides and burrowed its way down to the river. And the river roared and frothed with all its eddies and swirls and sang a wild spring song, which never fell silent. [?] The long, terrible winter was over. [?] And here she was now and plunged into spring. It was so glorious all around her that she, too, was abuzz with its plentiful glory and she shrilled like a bird, loud and screaming, until she had to explain it to [her friend].
?I have to make a spring scream, or else I will burst. Listen! Don?t you hear the spring??
For a while they stood there, silently, listening to the twitter and the rustling, the roaring and the singing and the rippling of tiny streams in her wood. All the trees and all the water and all the green shrub were full of life, from everywhere at the same time the strong wild song of spring boomed.
?Here I stand and I can feel the winter trickling out of me,? Ronja said. ?Soon I will be light enough to fly!?

Oh, anything by Dr.Seuss

Otfried Preussler!! His Krabat (english title: Satanic Mill) is a magnificent book, totall amazing. its about a young orphan who starts working at a mill where dark magic and witchcraft are at work. Its reads like an old fairy-tale. It compells and enchants the reader.

As a boy I loved Felix Dahn's Struggle for Rome. It's an amazing, riveting account of an historical event, shock-full of suspense and twists and great characters. It's also, sadly, sexist and very very racist. Very...germanic-friendly.

I am a huge fan of Hans Christian Andersens fairy tales. HUGE FAN. I have a thick book full of them and I am constantly reading and rereading it.

Last month or so bought myself a new edition of the german translation of Emil i L?nneberga, a wonderful wonderful wonderful book. curiously in english only small volumes (in German its collected in two 200page books.) seem to exist such as Emil in the Soup turreen

Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth



Harriet the Spy
The Borrowers

[Sybarite]

Actually, I'd forgotten that, in recent years, I've got a few Asterix books in German and French, plus Emil und die Detektive.

[abecedarian]

Oh boy, this could take a while!
I've been blessed to enjoy an extremely extended childhood in regards to books, thanks to my large tribe of children and our homeschooling lifestyle.
Some of my favorites are:
Indian Captive by Lois Lenski...read it atleast 6 times by the time I left elementary school..then introduced to my own kids years later

Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder..ditto.

The Girl With Seven Names
Benji's Hat -Irene Hunt

Benjamin West and His Cat Grimalkin-Marguerite Henry

Yonnie Wondernose
Henner's Lydia.. both by Marguerite DeAngeli

Carry On Mr. Bowditch-Jean Lee Latham

Anything by Dr. Suess..

The Story of Ping-Margorie Flack..who also wrote a series about a little Scottie dog named Angus that was pretty cute

Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain-Verna Aardama

Meanwhile Back at the Ranch-Trinka Hakes Noble...Early reading rainbow book we love

If You Say So, Claude- Joan Lowry Nixon..cracks me up every time

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening-Susan Jeffers...beautiful interpretation of Robert Frost's classic poem

There's more.. but I'm still sleepy..

[Ramblingsid]

What about Alan Garner's "The Owl Service" - is that a young person's book?

It's certainly quite brilliant and literally magical.

I'm a huge fan of Alan Garner particularly "Strandloper".

[abecedarian]

What about Alan Garner's "The Owl Service" - is that a young person's book?

It's certainly quite brilliant and literally magical.

I'm a huge fan of Alan Garner particularly "Strandloper".

Is the Owl Service related to his Wierdstone of Brisengamen? I seem to remember owls being part of that storyline. I read it sometime in my mid to late teens. Good one too, as I recall.

[sara]

To all those great books you 've mentioned, I'd like to add Ian Falconer's Olivia (the first one, from 2000), which is my personal favourite and one of the cutest and most beautiful things I've ever read.

[Karen]

I'm a huge fan of children's books, too.

From my childhood: Pippi Longstocking, Alice in Wonderland, Anne of Green Gables, Little Women/Little Men/Jo's Boys, and Dr. Doolittle, even though that one was not PC. It was later purged of its racist references, I believe.

From reading with my own kids and working as a Children's Librarian, the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman (I love this), The Indian in the Cupboard, and Harry Potter, though I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit it.

I'm actually reading a children's book -- it would have to be a child over twelve, I think -- right now because we had it in the house and it almost fits with my reading around the globe project: Forgotten Fire, by Adam Bagdasarian, about the 1915 Armenian massacres. It's a survival story, and vividly written.

[Ramblingsid]

I will have to include these two books in my list of favorites even though I can't remember the titles and authors and certainly not because of their literary merits but simply because of the memories I have of reading them to my youngest (and spoilt) daughter when she was little(r)

One I know is called Boo! (cant remember the author) and is about a naughty little pig that scares all and sundry by creeping up behind them and shouting - until that is he gets his cum-uppance. Reading this with my daughter generally involved lots of shouting!

And I am not sure of the title of the other one. I call it the Ugly Beast. Its about some forest animals who are scared by a huge monstrous animal (which they call the Ugly Beast) and who one by one gang up to ask it to leave - but when it comes to it haven't the heart and are nice to it instead. They then realise it's only a baby when its re-united with its mother. And that it's got a father that's even bigger and noisier. Reading this one involved me having to put on a different voice for each of the the animals and what's more having to remember and get it right every time which voice went with which animal.

Hey ho! Life isn't all bad is it? There are good times as well, and memories to cherish.

[Irene Wilde]

It left me wondering what WLF posters consider to be classic children's fiction; which were their own favourite children's books then ? and which might they still read now?

From my own childhood -- "The Secret Garden," was way up there, and the "Little House" books, and "Kidnapped" was great adventure.

From my child's childhood -- Cornelia Funke's "Dragon Rider" and "The Thief Lord," and (can I get away with an OMG! here), honestly and truly, Gail Carson Levine did a book for Disney based on the Tinkerbell character called, "Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg." Full-confession, I was crying as I was reading the end to my daughter. And dammit, I cried on the final book of "A Series of Unfortunate Events" which is an odd little children's series that seemed to start out as one thing but evolved into something much more by the time it got to the end.

[jackdawdle]

It left me wondering what WLF posters consider to be classic children's fiction; which were their own favourite children's books then ? and which might they still read now?

i remeber spiderman pitted against doctor octopus and the fantastic four against galactus. oh and there was spiderman versus superman which was a stretch but i'm a fool for hero worship and such.

[Karen]

I forgot to add Roald Dahl -- a master!!

[Hamlet]

Occasionally I've reviewed some of the early fiction I was exposed to, or even, didn't get around to reading and have listened to people extolling the virtues of since.

Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame is the primary work I enjoyed, by far, the most.

The Machine Gunners by Robert Westall, often a set a school-text, that every English school boy would have come into contact with in the 1970s or 1980s, mine was the latter, and left an impression. The shocking fact about TMG's on revisiting it is how it is pretty violent and has a gritty realism about it. It makes me think that children's fiction may have been toned down, as a trend, continuing into the present.

TMGs, set in Newcastle Upon Tyne is about a group of schoolboys who collect the broken parts from enemy fighters and bombers which have crashed during WWII, but it turns into a darker narrative which seems, at least in part, to be about neglect. When the boys recover a machine-gun from a crashed German bomber, which has been overlooked because it came down in some woods, the story and it's complications kicks in. But look at the scenes of fights and bullying, an interesting and surprising read.

I'd read more of Westall. They say 'never go back' but sometimes it pays off.

Alice in Wonderland, alas, I have still not read it, but intend to. I've seen a copy in The Works bookshop, a shop that does have a few interesting finds. I'm learning to appreciate Charity Shops as well as a source of some hidden gems.

What did you read -SF buff, comics, classics, Harry Potter?

[Liam]

I've merged Hammy's post with Sybarite's original thread about children's fiction.

*A quick note to posters: the continental sub-forums are reserved for introducing/discussing specific books: for example, The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth G, etc.

General threads go in the General Discussion section: Chick Lit of the 1980s, etc.

[pigeonweather]

Having spent the past decade reading to my child every night, my list has been modified by my sense of read-aloud-ability. Some of the books I loved as a child have gone well out loud (such as the Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander, everything by Maurice Sendak) while plenty of others I've read haven't fared as well (Harry Potter, Rick Riordan, Artemis Fowl - the child loves them, but egads!). My favorite newer ones (newer to me at least) have been the Lemony Snicket books, almost everything by Roald Dahl, 'Holes' by Louis Sachar, and 'Coraline' by Neil Gaiman (which, to me, reads like it's an all-time classic)

[Word Countess]

Whinnie-The-Pooh! Oh, I was so dearly happy to see that listed! It still stands among the most beautiful stories I loved as a child. I also quite enjoyed 'Laura Ingalls Wilder' and 'Beatrix Potter'. I'm quite young so JK Rowling's work also played a large part of my childhood. I have children of my own now, and treasure such literature peices that you have all mentioned quite deeply. They are all timeless. And one thing I love about timeless work is that it becomes a heirloom that can truly be passed from generation to generation.