Thanks, Dung Beetle! I still have a set of them at my mom’s house, I’m going to have to go dig them up and read them again!
The Edward Eager novels.
Half Magic. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0152020683/104-8456636-3278328
Knight’s Castle http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/015202073x/104-8456636-3278328
Magic By The Lake http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0152020764/104-8456636-3278328
The Time Garden http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0152020705/104-8456636-3278328
Seven Day Magic http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0152020780/qid=1075479557/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/104-8456636-3278328?v=glance&s=books
The Well Wishers http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0152020721/qid=1075479557/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/104-8456636-3278328?v=glance&s=books
Always delightful, never “too sweet”–just the thing for a kid you don’t want to drown in sugar.
:smack: How could I forget Where the Wild Things Are! I loved that book!
Thought of some more:
Good Morning Farm (I can’t remember the author) about a dog that goes around the farm saying Good Morning to everyone. My mom knows it by heart!
The Monster at the End of this Book: Staring Grover by John Stone. I read this one to my nieces everytime they come to visit. It’s our favorite book!
There’s a Wocket in my Pocket is my all time favorite Dr. Suess book. Again it’s a favorite with the nieces as well.
Newer favorites include:
Desser: The Best Ever Cat by Maggie Smith. DO NOT read this book if you don’t like to cry! G It is one of the best books I’ve ever read.
Catwings by Ursula K. Le Guin. The whole series is wonderful and so sweet.
As I grew older I fell in love with author Lurlene McDaniel. That woman can make a girl CRY!
Someone mentioned Bread and Jam for Francis but my fave in that series was A Bargain for Francis where she buys an old cracked tea set for a dime.
I LOVE this thread!
I read those books shortly after they started appearing as a serialized cartoon in Boys Life. The first sci-fi I ever read. Thanks for the flashback!
I adored Momo’s Kitten by Mitsu Yashima when I was a child. I don’t think anybody has mentioned the utterly fabulous Chris Van Allsburg…I used to love leafing through The Mysteries of Harris Burdick and making up stories to go with the pictures.
If anyone’s looking for a kick-ass contemporary YA book to read, I have to recommend City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau. There’s a sequel coming out in May (People of Sparks). Doon and Lina live in Ember, a city lit solely by lamps; as blackouts grow in frequency, they must discover a way to save their city.
Finally, I must plug the “Stump the Bookseller” service at www.loganberrybooks.com . If you’ve got the gist of a story but can’t remember the title, you can submit a stumper for other people to try to solve. Hint: Lots of titles come up repeatedly, so use the search function to see whether your books is on the Solved Mysteries page.
Reading through the Solved Mysteries is also a highly addictive way to create your own booklist.
A few recommendations:
First,a lot of the books in this thread, while wonderful, are a bit advanced for a beginner. That’s fine, but I wanna point you to a great current picturebook author whom I adore: David Wiesner. His books often have few or no words in them, but have very evocative and funny pictures, and are great for “reading” with a kid who doesn’t know how to read yet: you turn the page and let the kid tell the story. Especially good for this is The Three Pigs, Tuesday, and Sector 7. Check some of his stuff out of the library, and you’ll be delighted.
For the parents out there who have a geeky side, another recommendation. This isn’t a picturebook, despite our attempts to get the author to publish it, but I know you’ll love it: The Very Hungry Monster. Scroll down to the third picture in the thread to begin. 
Daniel
I was (and still am) a voracious reader since the age of four. Before that I would accost my parents and cousins to read to me. The Three Little Kittens was my all time favorite Little Golden Book. I also had an anthology called Choose Your Own Bedtime Story that was a favorite, although I don’t remember a lot of specifics about it now. There was a story about Yeti, a fable about how butter and cheese were invented, and a tale about Dylan the Dragon, who was ugly and brown and scary looking. Then one day it began to rain, and he save the frightened villagers from a flood, and the rain washed away the brown mud from his beautiful blue and green and golden scales. . . I loved that book.
Other favorites
The Hardy Boys
Nancy Drew
The Chronicles of Narnia
Julie of the Wolves
Island of the Blue Dolphins
A Wrinkle in Time and its companion books
Anything by Lois Duncan
The Hero and the Crown
The Song of the Lioness
Anne of Green Gables
The Dark is Rising Sequence
Where the Red Fern Grows
The Three Investigators
It’s funny, but since I’ve become an adult, I’ve gone out an purchased a lot of these books to have at home. My bookshelf is about half and half split between adult and kids novels, which is kind of funny considering that I don’t have children!
booklover, I was just looking around at the Loganberry books site, thinking about a book I read as a kid that I’d like to read again. Unfortunately I had so little to go on that I didn’t think they could help me. Seconds later I ran across it! (My heart is pounding.) It’s called Candle in Her Room by Ruth Arthur. My library doesn’t have it but at least now I know what I’m looking for. Thank you!
Dung Beetle call your local library and ask if they do Interlibrary Loans. (Or ILLs) If you’re in the USA most library systems will lend to other libraries for shorter loan periods. But at least you’d get to read the book again! G
I also searched Abebooks.com and came up with this page. Looks like there are several copies available from $35 - $40.
mine:
The Thing At The Foot of The Bed
Oodles of Noodles
Bobby and the Number Line
anything by Eleanor Estes
Revolution for the Hell Of It(well I read it as a kid)
my son’s:
Lettuce Leaf Birthday Letter
Bunnys Night Out
both of us:
Harold’s Tale
Danny and the Dinosaur
nuff said.
Palmer, it may be interesting to point out, was married to Dr. Seuss at the time she wrote this book. She used her maiden name when writing Beginner Books for the Random House imprint co-owned by her husband.
One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish
Rupert the Rhinoceros
Huckleberry Hound Builds a House
The Seven Little Postmen
If I Ran the Circus
Danny Kaye’s Around the World Story Book
The Best Word Book Ever (There’s an original edition and a newer, shorter and more PC version.)
What Do People Do All Day?
Just So Stories
Dr. Dolittle (many in series)
Hardy Boys
Encyclopedia Brown
Charlotte’s Web
Stuart Little
The Hobbit
When I was really young my favourite was Fox in Sox by Dr. Suess
Later I really liked the Fairy Book series edited Andrew Lang. They are all named for different colours: The Red Fairy Book, The Olive Fairy Book etc. They are compilations of fairy tales from around the world.
The first book I remember loving was Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss.
Others, in roughly chronological order:
Happiness is a Warm Puppy
Where the Wild Things Are
The Funny Little Woman
The Grox and Eugene…special plug for this one. Written by a relative of mine, David Perry, it was published in 1973 when I was 6. My grandmother used to read it to me at bedtime, and although I’m sure we had it only because of the family connection, I really loved it then, and still think highly of it now. Very quirky and funny.
Some generic, probably mediocre, “educational” books about topics that fascinated me when I was 7 or 8: Greek mythology, dinosaurs, and the solar system.
The Oz books by L. Frank Baum and, later, Ruth Plumly Thompson. I read about a dozen of them; my favorite was The Lost Princess of Oz.
A Cricket in Times Square
I really enjoyed Betty MacDonald’s stories about Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, but I can’t remember which titles I read.
A Wrinkle in Time: discovered at age 10, this book set me on a long period of Madeleine L’Engle fandom. Over the years my other favorites came to be A Swiftly Tilting Planet, The Arm of the Starfish, and The Young Unicorns.