Your favorite book as a child?

Loved Ender's Game (and still do love it).

Another good one was the Redwall series.

Favorite Child's book
Early: Little Toot the littlest tug boat comes of age

Later: Incredible Journey two dogs and a cat left behind by a family move track down their family

When it came time for my first book report (fifth grade) I read Seven Came Through, the true story of Captain Eddie Rickenbacker's 28 days at sea after his plane was shot down in WWII. Seven survived, one was lost.

Now I read primarily books of survival through impossible odds.

Anything by Christopher Pike.
"Where the Red Fern Grows"
"Incredible Journey"

oh and i had a very very old copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy.


I read my father's old Biggles books when visiting his family

The Moffats

My favorite book in fourth grade;our teacher would read to us everyday after lunch.


Who else but a member of the Moffat family could, during kindergarten recess, accidentally hitch a ride out of town on a boxcar? Or wind up trapped in the breadbox outside the delicatessen store? Or kindly offer to escort the Salvation Army man to his destination--only to accidentally bump him out of his own horse-drawn wagon? The Moffats is a paradigm of old-fashioned family fun. Four children and a hard-working widowed mother live together on New Dollar Street in the village of Cranbury. Their seemingly quiet lives are studded with almost daily unexpected adventures, with droll results.
This charming book has been making readers smile for over half a century. It reflects a gentler era, when the jolly chief of police had time to sit on the curb to hear a little girl's "crimes" and a little boy's escapade on a train was not cause for media panic, just a simple redirecting by the agreeable engineer. Eleanor Estes, author of the Newbery Honor book The Hundred Dresses, and Caldecott medalist Louis Slobodkin (Many Moons) make a lovely team in this story of benign humor and sweet times.

Mad reader that I am today, I don't remember really loving the books I had as a child, except possibly for that sort of pale blue oilcloth one. I did like the Black Stallion series by Walter Farley, and sort of got into some simple history books in my grade school library, but I seem to be isolated in space as one person who never particularly liked mother Goose or the few fables I ever ran across. I did read the Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drews and have to give them some credit for an adult crimefiction interest of sort of a spare sort.

The first book I fell in love with was The Virginian, by Owen Wister. That had a kind of spareness, looking back. I loved it because it had sex in it, well, not so's you'd notice, it was just a very mild blink to romance but it got me, at 13. I read it five times.

Ok, when I was a teen from about 13-15, we lived at my aunt's and didn't have a lot of money as my dad was employed well and then the company folded and then went without for much time. So I was relegated at first to the books in my aunt's house or handmedowns from my dad, and the Virginian was one of those. That was when I read Zane Grey and some damn thing about Wyatt Earp. Never did finish that. In the meantime, at fourteen, I was still thinking of entering the Seventeen magazine contest for doll costumes.. no, I didn't, but a friend did. (Can I possibly be remembering that correctly???)

What next, Battle Cry, and Exodus. (What a Girl I am, well, I am, wait, I also read Seventeenth Summer by Maureen Daly and others by her..

OK, Maureen Daly clued me in that it was ok to have these funny physical feelings. And that was just about the time I went to work after school and weekend at a local hospital and proceeded to get real life crushes.

It's interesting to me now, though, that that sort of odd diet of books at my aunt's - she didn't read anything but Reader's Digest - formed by books picked by a tool and dye guy who I'd love to know now, he had an interesting position at Douglas Aircraft in the forties [he died the day after the plane that they had worked on so hard was finished, sorry, can't cite the number this minute, have pictures. It was in 1944. He was head of tool and dye (I think) and functioned as a liason to management. Decades later, within my time, higher ups from Douglas called on my aunt, which brings up another whole subject - there is a museum in Santa Monica about Douglas, I guess I should go talk to them; in any case, he did a lot of hiking-exploring in the west and his small book collection and rock samples started to reflect that - gave me an initiation into a male point of view, which was just one more thing in my mind besides everything else a girl of my time was observing. Still, I think it was fairly useful that I was so bored that I read those books, after I organized the button box. Again.

So... what, from my view, I never had a book that engaged me in particular, as a child. I always had to make a jump to consider being the protagonist, whether it was Nancy Drew or Wyatt Earp. Some jumps took more of a leap than others but they all were leaps. That might have been good.

My parents read to me a lot when I was young. The "Space Cat" books, and "The Incredible Flight to the Mushroom Planet" bring back fond memories.

When I could read for myself, "I Marched with Hannibal" was my favorite.

"The Golden Key" by George MacDonald. I still get an otherworld feeling just thinking about it.

Books that made the biggest impression on me in grade school were:

Charlotte's Web
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Suess
Little Women
Treasure Island (took me a looong time to read) LOL

In higher grades:

The Scarlet Letter
Red Badge of Courage
Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones (a book about teen pregnancy)
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn
1984
Soylent Green

BBB
The Good Earth by Pearl Buck.

BBB

Favorite Childhood Book Found: Witch of the Glens


Hi,

I first stumbled across your post as I was searching for "Witch of the Glens" about a year ago. I was looking again a few nights ago, FOUND IT, and since the link to your post came up again in my search I thought I would let you know that the book is available for $12.95 at the following site:

CLICK HERE FOR WITCH OF THE GLENS

My copy is sitting right in front of me as I type this.

It was out of print for many years, and when I searched I would find people offering it for $100 or more. Usually a lot more.

This was my very favorite book for years and years, and I am so happy to have a copy of it now. I'm off now to lose myself in the glens once again. I just wanted post this because it's so wonderful to find a much-loved book and I thought someone else who loved it would be as happy to find it as I was.

I only registered here to be able to post this and probably won't be back much (so many bulletin boards, so little time ), so if anyone "knows" the original poster, Kirsten, would you please let her know her "absolute favorite" childhood book is now available at the site posted, and at a very good price?

Thank you!

As a child I absolutely loved all the roald dahl books, especially 'Matilda' and 'The Witches'. I also loved Enid Blyton's 'The Magic Faraway Tree'. As I got a bit older I enjoyed reading RL Stine's Goosebumps and all of Judy Blume's books.

You're the man for me sir.
That is the only one that stands out for me from childhood, although I did go through a Jack London phase.

Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson is one that I buy for younguns nowadays.

Ooh, I agree! I had a set of his books that I read a lot, he wrote such strange and haunting stories. I also loved any books about siblings that have adventures with some kind of magic in them... Edward Eager, E. Nesbit, Joan Aiken, Alan Garner, Susan Cooper...anything my dad gave me that he'd read as a kid! Loved the Moomin books!! Anyone else read those?

edited . . . like you didin't know . . .

The books of Edward Eager, such as "Half Magic," about children who discover magic. I now realize that they were heavily influenced by E. Nesbitt who wrote many similar books, such as "The Five Children and It."

EDIT: fer dog's sake, now i'm repeating myself . . . senility creeps in this petty pace from day to day . . .

Wow, Brandon and I both read Edward Eager! We'll have to remember this common ground and never pick on each other over on the Politics Forum... :wink:

Lord of the rings.
henry and ribsy ( a boy , his dog , and a paper route )
iceberg slim - pimp, the story of my life
mad magazine

as a little child:
guess how much i love you
the very hungry caterpillar

later:
the famous five
tkkg