# Cherished Children's Books **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 20, 2008, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054 "2008-04-20T00:19:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2008, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054/61 "2008-04-22T14:22:17Z")
I grew up reading [Footrot Flats](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footrot_Flats) and the previously mentioned Astrix comics. I think it is no coincidence that I married a kiwi. ---
**Author:** ![freekalette](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/50afbb/32.png) [@freekalette](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/freekalette)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2008, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054/62 "2008-04-22T14:55:48Z")
[QUOTE=The Them] So comic books are allowed? [/QUOTE] Hell, if we’re doing comics I’m gonna say _BONE_!! ---
**Author:** ![freekalette](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/50afbb/32.png) [@freekalette](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/freekalette)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2008, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054/63 "2008-04-22T15:01:53Z")
Whoops! ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2008, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054/64 "2008-04-22T16:57:03Z")
Most of mine have been mentioned… Did anyone else list the Little House on the Prarie books yet? Other fond memories include the Danny Dunn, Boy Inventor books, though they’re very tough to find nowadays, and the Rats of NIMH series. Oh, and whatever you do, don’t hold books back from your children on account of them not being old enough yet. Just put them all on the shelves where they can reach them, and let them make up their own minds about when they’re ready. I discovered some great books that way, as a child. ---
**Author:** ![Leiko](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Leiko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leiko)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2008, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054/65 "2008-04-22T19:24:29Z")
You’ve got to get them Nancy and Plum, by Betty MacDonald. She’s best known for The Egg and I, and after that probably for the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books (also excellent for the children!), but Nancy and Plum is my favorite. It’s about two girls who are orphans sent away to a horrible boarding house for children, who have wonderful teacher and librarian friends but the bad Sunday school teacher (there’s a good one, and then there’s the one who uses liniment and always has a stuffed nose) and an even worse woman in charge, whose niece boards there to but is spoiled while the other children eat burned porridge and stewed prunes full of sticks. They have all sorts of adventures and troubles, and decide to run away. After being caught, they triumph, and the book ends with the happiest ending I’ve ever seen that manages to make me utterly happy WITHOUT feeling sappy as heck. If they don’t have On Beyond Zebra by Dr Seuss now, rush to the store and buy it! Like Nancy and Plum, it’s one of my favorite books in large part because it was one of my mom’s favorites. There’s a really cool set of stories about a wise Chinese or Japanese judge that I liked A LOT as a kid, but I don’t remember the judge’s name so that’s rather useless. The stories are the sort where the wise judge outwits everyone, for everyone’s benefit- I think the Solomon “split the baby in half” is in there. There’s the sound of coins as payment for the scent of food, catching a rice thief, something about a child paying for a broken statue… I bet just a good set of Asian folk tales would suffice. I add my support for The Phantom Tollbooth! I didn’t read these books in my childhood, but as a curiosity last summer/this fall: the original versions of The Rescuers, and One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Both are quite different from the films, though they have the familiar characters- Bernard and Bianca, for instance, though in 101 Dalmatians, Perdita is not the mother dog but another brought in to help nurse the main dog’s litter, and the one hundred and first Dalmatian found is her “husband” dog, who had been taken away from her. (The weirdest book from that set of reading was the sequel to One Hundred and One Dalmatians. The Dog Star stops times for all of Earth except the dogs and a cat who had been declared an honorary dog in 101D, and tries to get them to come to the stars. Um, yeah.) Baby Island, by whoever wrote Caddie Woodlawn. Two sisters get shipwrecked with several babies, on a not-so-deserted island. Has the added benefit of teaching the kids to never go into a sea cave if they don’t know how the tide is. The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, The Wolves in the Wall, and Coraline. Two picture books and a chapter book, all by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Dave McKean. (Not from my childhood, unless you count the ages of 18-19 still childhood, as that’s when I first read them, right after really getting into Neil Gaiman’s books.) Edit: Oh! I just realized you’ve already mentioned Wolves in the Wall. That’s what I get for only checking for Nancy and Plum in the previous posts! George’s Marvelous Medicine, The B.F.G, and The Twits. I love anything by Dahl, but those are my favorites. ---
**Author:** ![HongKongFooey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c4cdca/32.png) [@HongKongFooey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HongKongFooey)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2008, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054/66 "2008-04-22T19:55:15Z")
[QUOTE=The Them] So comic books are allowed? [/QUOTE] Absolutely! Future reader #3 was born this morning - comic books, novels, poems, whatever floats their boat down the road (that doesn’t sound right but i don’t have time to fix it 🙂 ) is fine with me. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2008, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054/67 "2008-04-22T20:04:32Z")
Congratulations! ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2008, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054/68 "2008-04-22T20:33:24Z")
[QUOTE=HongKongFooey] Absolutely! Future reader #3 was born this morning - comic books, novels, poems, whatever floats their boat down the road (that doesn’t sound right but i don’t have time to fix it 🙂 ) is fine with me. [/QUOTE] Congrats to you and your family!! ---
**Author:** ![Olive\_The\_Other\_Reindeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Olive\_The\_Other\_Reindeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olive_The_Other_Reindeer)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2008, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054/69 "2008-04-23T03:29:43Z")
Hubby just bought a copy of a book he remembered from his youth - “Ann Can Fly” by Fred Phleger - on eBay. It’s a book about some girl who got to fly her father’s plane on a trip from someplace in Colorado to someplace called Camp Lake Wood, near San Diego, CA. They stopped at Lake Mead to eat and get gas. It’s a pontoon plane, and they get to land on both runway and water. Look! The plane has landed on water! Look! There’s the Grand Canyon! Look! There’s the camp! Look! It’s written for 5 yr olds, and Hubby bought it for his grandkids to laugh at (probably)! Whatever - it makes him happy 🙂 Olive ---
**Author:** ![Olive\_The\_Other\_Reindeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Olive\_The\_Other\_Reindeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olive_The_Other_Reindeer)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2008, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054/70 "2008-04-23T03:30:49Z")
[QUOTE=HongKongFooey] Absolutely! Future reader #3 was born this morning - comic books, novels, poems, whatever floats their boat down the road (that doesn’t sound right but i don’t have time to fix it 🙂 ) is fine with me. [/QUOTE] Congrats! Want a good deal on a “I can read this by myself” book? ---
**Author:** ![maggenpye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecc23a/32.png) [@maggenpye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maggenpye)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2008, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054/71 "2008-04-23T03:40:12Z")
Congratulations. Poetry? Edward Lear, Spike Milligan (don’t forget _Bad Jelly the Witch_) and Lewis Carrol also did poems. A lot of these are available online and I made up a folder of them for my kid. Spike isn’t out of © yet, so please pay for those. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2008, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054/72 "2008-04-23T06:04:25Z")
Arthur Ransome’s **Swallows & Amazons** stories are pretty special to me. Richard Scarry’s books are great. I think however that his material has been published and republished in a variety of guises, to make a buck out of the franchise. His original stuff like “ **What do people do all day**?” is fantastic beyond measure. ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2008, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054/73 "2008-04-23T11:16:06Z")
I have had **Swallows and Amazon** in the To Read pile for 11 years ( at least.) along with **The [Dark Frigate](http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Frigate-Charles-Boardman-Hawes/dp/0316350095/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208949131&sr=8-2)** for when I am in a sea farin’-piratey mood. Avast! **HongKongFooey** I recommend [Chinaberry](http://www.chinaberry.com) for your quest for Children’s Books. This bookseller changed my entire perspective on parenting. ( YMMV) ---
**Author:** ![Meurglys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@Meurglys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meurglys)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2008, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054/74 "2008-04-23T12:22:15Z")
My all time favourite book was [The Log of the Ark](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Log_of_the_Ark). I still have my 1963 Puffin edition, although it’s seriously falling apart now. I looked at it again recently and found I had marked passages I found too scary to re-read back when I was 6 or 7! But most of it was great fun, with some pathos and sadness thrown in. Wumpetydumps, clidders, seventysevens, the scub (boo!) 🙂 _Little Grey Men_ by ‘ **B.B.** ’ and _The Sword in the Stone_ by **T.H.White** were wonderful too. I must have read each of these three dozens of times each… ---
**Author:** ![Ellen\_Cherry](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellen_cherry/32/3600_2.png) [@Ellen\_Cherry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellen_Cherry)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2008, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054/75 "2008-04-23T14:07:40Z")
Some of my favorites, many of which I’ve already purchased for my children: Anne of Green Gables A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Charlotte’s Web and The Trumpet of the Swan, EB White The Amazing Brain The Borrowers A Wrinkle in Time Little House series Congratulations on the addition of your new little one! ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2008, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054/76 "2008-04-23T14:37:17Z")
[QUOTE=Ellen Cherry] The Amazing Brain [/QUOTE] Is that The Great Brain, by John D. Fitzgerald, or something else? ---
**Author:** ![AlmondJoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@AlmondJoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlmondJoy)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2008, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054/77 "2008-04-23T17:56:13Z")
I know Beatrix Potter is well know but her books were always my fav ---
**Author:** ![NajaNivea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/22d042/32.png) [@NajaNivea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NajaNivea)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2008, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054/78 "2008-04-23T21:41:36Z")
From an [earlier thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=445694&page=1), cribbed from my posts there: I’ll toss into the arena the following: _Hatchet, The River, Dogsong_, Gary Paulsen _Where the Red Fern Grows_, Wilson Rawls _The Giver_, Lois Lowry _Coraline_, Neil Gaiman \*Owls in the Family \*and _The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be_, by Farley Mowat, one of my very favorite writers. _Caddie Woodlawn_, Carol Ryrie Brink _The Cay_, Theodore Taylor Anything by **Beverly Cleary** , but you’ve got to buy them used published prior to 1984. I think that some of them have been “updated” and I don’t think they read as well as they did before. _The Jungle Books_, Rudyard Kipling _Haroun and the Sea of Stories_, Salman Rushdie–this is one of my very favorite books of all time. _Julie of the Wolves_ and _The Trouble with Tuck_. If the kids like dogs or the outdoors, I absolutely ate up anything by Jim Kjelgaard at that age. _Bob, Son of Battle_, anything by Albert Payson Terhune, and _Algonquin, Story of a Great Dog_ For horsey books, \*The Black Stallion \*is great–I think I must have read it a hundred times–but I loved Farley’s other horse books, too: _The Island Stallion_ and _Man o’ War_ and such. Other horse books: Will James’ _Smokey The Cow Horse_, _My Friend Flicka_ and Marguerite Henry’s _King of the Wind_, which I read into tatters, two copies. As far as Marguerite Henry goes, I liked _Brighty of the Grand Canyon_ well enough and really loved _Justin Morgan Had a Horse_, but had little use for the Chincoteague pony books–go figure. PS: Do not get her Steinbeck’s _The Red Pony_ with intentions of a horsey kid story in mind. Turns out I liked Steinbeck and went on to read and love his work, but… damn. These books are almost all old friends. One or two, like _Coraline_, I discovered later as an adult, but I’ve got two bookshelves of children’s literature. I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten rid of a decent book. I’ve even got multiple copies of my favorites, so I can send them out into the world as needed. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![rocking\_chair](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocking_chair/32/2918_2.png) [@rocking\_chair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rocking_chair)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2008, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054/79 "2008-04-23T23:54:29Z")
awwww, congratulations! ones i have read recently are: catwings by ursula k le guin (so cool, winged cats!) skippy jon jones by judy schachner polar the titanic bear and the jester has lost his jingle. both books will choke you up a bit but are very good. ---
**Author:** ![Cunctator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/43a26b/32.png) [@Cunctator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cunctator)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2008, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054/80 "2008-04-24T00:07:56Z")
[QUOTE=Princhester] Arthur Ransome’s **Swallows & Amazons** stories are pretty special to me. [/QUOTE] My first thought was of the Swallows and Amazons books too. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cherished-childrens-books/446054.md?page=5)