I just reread that recently, and cried all the way through. In fact, I still cry when I read it. Love that book. There’s a gift set on Amazon that comes with a replica of the bunny. I like how he’s kind of shabby, but cute, just like that book. In fact, I want this gift set.
(I’d also like to see an epilogue, where the Rabbit comes back to see the new bunny the boy got, and tells him/her about being Real.)
Apparently, the author also wrote a story about the Skin Horse, but it’s out of print, and it seems impossible to find. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is another favorite. My school librarian reccomended it when I was a senior in high school, and it’s always been my favorite. I want to re-read it now, but my copy has fallen completely apart from constant reading. Dammit.
And yes, YES YES to Beverly Cleary. Ramona Quimby is probably my favorite childhood heroine. And don’t forget the Berenstein Bears, or Anne of Green Gables.
Charlotte’s Web is also a good one. I love the original cartoon version, with Debbie Reynolds.
Don’t forget her Henry books–that capture the world of boys just as well. Love Cleary.
Lots have been mentioned–how about a book of fairy tales? The Red or Blue Book? Old fashioned non Disney-fied fairy tales (with pics).
Wolves of Willoughby Chase, The Secret Garden, The Little Princess are all good for both boys and girls (Princess is a bit girly, but Secret Garden is not).
From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler is also very good. Bridge to Terabitha, Up a Road Slowly, Caddy Woodlawn(this one is similar to the Little House books), Julie of the Wolves, Island of the Blue Dolphins, the medieval stories by Gerald Morris are great fun… No more time for now.
I have a recommendation, but I don’t know the name or the author, so I’ll need some help.
A father goes off (to war?) and leaves his children a scavenger hunt. However, he never comes back, the mother loses (washes?) the note that he left with the answers, and all they have to go on is a picture of 4 items (the first a Native-American headress) that he left as clues. Several decades and a few generations later, some kids are playing with the headress and find the next clue. It’s about their search for the prize that was supposed to be for their ancestors years earlier.
I have no idea, but there’s a particular children’s/YA book I remember extremely scanty details about and would love to be able to identify. Mine stars a girl and a (stray?) dog who befriend an elderly or maybe just eccentric neighbor, who frequently makes statements that are sometimes random and sometimes apropos, and falsely attributes them to Calvin Coolidge. As in “early bird gets the worm… you know who said that? Calvin Coolidge!” or “a rolling stone gathers no moss on the north side of the trunk… Calvin Coolidge said that!”
I think I’ll probably have to admit defeat and come to terms with the idea that I’m hallucinating the entire thing, because I’ve asked around several “identify this story” forums, and the result is always a unanimous blank stare. I really, really do remember the Calvin Coolidge thing though. Maybe that came from some other source?
Some out-of-print favorites from my childhood: Me and Frumpet by Evans G Valens. A boy gets a train set as a gift, but it doesn’t come with any people. He makes a person out of pipe cleaners, which upsets his father because it isn’t “authentic”. This leads to a bet between the two of them over how authentic the train set really is. At night, the pipe cleaner man, Frumpet, comes to life and shrinks the boy to his size to teach him how much difference size makes and help him win the bet. It covers a lot of scientific concepts.
The Something Queer series by Elizabeth Levy. Picture books in which two girls solve mysteries. It looks like the same author spun off a series of mystery books starring their dog, Fletcher, and also has a more recent series of kids’ mystery books called Invisible, Inc. My daughter has brought an Invisible, Inc. book home, but I didn’t enjoy it as much, because they have a gimmick of one of the investigators being able to turn invisible, which takes away most of the challenge of investigation. (They’re illustrated by the same illustrator who does the Junie B Jones books.)
Speaking of dogs named Fletcher, How Fletcher Was Hatched by Wende and Harry Devlin. An old dog is feeling neglected by his owner, a girl who now has some baby chicks to play with. So he mopes down to the river, where his friends Beaver and Otter devise a plan to seal him in a giant egg, so that he can hatch and be adored by his owner again.
There’s one book I remember from my childhood. I believe the teacher read it to us after lunch over a period of time rather than me reading it myself, so maybe that’s why I cannot remember the title. It involved a boy who lived inside a tree for something like a year. Just ran away from home and lived inside the trunk of this huge tree in some woods not too far away. MAY have been based on a true story or autobiographical; don’t know why I think that. Does this sound familiar to anyone?
That’s My Side of the Mountain, and it is totally AWESOME. Although I often liked to read the sequel (The Far Side of the Mountain) more just because it had his sister in it. Apparently there are more sequels now, but none received the awards the original did.
It’s by Jean Craighead George, who also wrote Julie of the Wolves.
According to Amazon , Liza, Bill & Jed Mysteries. To be honest, what I’m reading on that link gives me a different vibe than the one I remember… but my memory is about 20 years old, and it SEEMS like this is the book that I’m thinking of. So, I’m going to have my mom check it out the next time she takes my nephew to the library (which seems to be a few times a week).
