In the “Girl Growing Up” genre (which I have a ridiculous fondness for), I’d recommend the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace. They are a little different in that as the girls grow up, the books become more complex: the first, when the girls are 5 or so, is written on a 1st grade reading level and the language becomes more complicated and the books much longer as the girls age. My favorites are the high-school and beyond books–the series ends with the main character’s husband going off to WWI. I find that whole turn-of-the-century time period to be really intriguing: when the books open, in 1890’s small town Minnesota, middle class people are using horse-and-buggies and bathing in tubs in the kitchen, and by the end they own cars and telephones and Betsy’s Kodak is her favorite thing in High School.
As far as other authors I still love: Robin McKinley, who is my favorite forever, is the first to come to mind, but I reread compulsively and there are a whole lot of books that have never gone out of my regular circulation.
Actually there’s quite a lot of very good children’s and YA stuff being written these days, so don’t confine yourself to re-reading. I thought The Hunger Games was very good indeed, and quite enjoyed the bizarre Impossible. I have a long amazon wishlist of YA fiction I want to read that my library is too broke to buy.
I remember likeing the Little House books, but haven’t read one since elementary school. Maybe I’d better check one out.
I remember reading the last one, where she gives birth to Rose. There was something that just seemed non-Little House about it. In the afterward it explained that the writer had died before being able to do a final edit. It was my first experience with the idea that books did not just spring forth fully complete.
Neither does Little Women, which I read decades ago and re-read every so often. It’s better now, because now I understand more about Victorian life and just what the heck a ‘cherry bounce’ was…
Same with National Velvet, which I read back in my horsie-loving days with little comprehension or knowledge of life in a seaside British town in the 30’s. Castle puddings, anyone?
Oh my gosh, I love these too. My favorite thing about reading them as an adult is that even the little girl books, which have very simple language and stories, are so clever and interesting. I would especially recommend these to any parents looking for good read aloud books – they will definitely keep the adult entertained as well as the child.
I just re-read a few Judy Blume classics…Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret? is a little outdated now (thank og girls don’t have to wear feminine pads with belts anymore). But the major themes of adolescence like first crush, first period, etc. never go away, and she approaches them with a lot of humor and charm. Brought back a lot of good memories! Same thing for the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary.
One of my favorite books as a teen was Lois Duncan’s Locked In Time, about a teen who discovers a horrible secret about her new step-family in Louisiana. I still re-read it every year or so.
Apparently they rewrote a line in Are You there God… to change some allusion to putting on a sanitary napkin belt to putting on a pad with a sticky bottom.
Me too. It’s hard for me to make an attempt at this question because so many children’s books are good, and I never stopped reading them. A couple of honorable mentions that haven’t gotten in yet: The Great Brain books by John D. Fitzgerald, and the Lewis Barnavelt books by John Bellairs (starting with The House With a Clock In Its Walls).
Oh, Encyclopedia Brown books. Sobol also wrote some adult mysteries (murders, kidnappings, not stolen bikes or petty vandalism) under the Two Minute Mystery series.
I read a ton of books like this to my daughter while she was growing up. The ones that stand out are the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary. I read the Henry Huggins ones when I was a kid, but most of the Ramona ones (except the first) weren’t out yet. Brilliant books written by someone who knew her kids. The first time I visited Portland for work I drove past Klickitat Street on the way to the airport. Nothing like in the books, of course.
I read her the Oz books and Alice, but I had liked them already. I also read her about 30 Nancy Drews - kind of fun when you get into their boilerplate writing style.
I read a lot of YA lit. My oldest is a voracious reader (we’ve had to limit her reading at times because she tends to neglect everything but the books.) I love to sneak into her book bag and pull out the books that sound good from the front flap. I’ve discovered lots of fun books this way. There are really good books being published currently in the YA genre.
I have to agree that Hunger Games was good. Very original and gripping plot.
Love Dianna Wynn Jones
Love Eion Colfer
Love Meg Cabot
Love Sannon Hale
Love Gail Carson Levine
The classics like Huckleberry Finn and Anne of Green Gables will always have a place in my heart, but I do love discovering new authors in my daughter’s book bag.
Have you read the books Fitzgerald wrote, about his childhood and young adulthood, that weren’t part of the somewhat fictionalized Great Brain series?
Papa Married a Mormon, the first, tells how his folks met, and goes up to the death of Tom Fitzgerald, Sr. The description of his funeral was interesting. A Catholic funeral of course, but the choir was Mormon and learned the Latin responses just for that one service. And the local Mormon bishop preached the homily.
A book I read in junior high, that is now hard to find and rather expensive(I don’t know why) was titled The Happy Planet, by Joan Clarke. It’s about two kids visiting Earth with a science research party, millennia after the Earth was devestated by a meteor shower.
“Papa Married A Mormon” is a touching, heartfelt, very enjoyable read, and also fills in some gaps that “The Great Brain” series had left (in Great Brain, it was just JD and his brothers, while in real life they had a sister, who was never mentioned in the GB series)
I was not aware that there were other books about the Fitzgerald family that John D had written, but I will search them out as I really enjoy John D Fitzgerald’s wonderful way of telling a story.
What, no mentions of Narnia yet? As C. S. Lewis himself once said, any book which is not worth reading as an adult is not worth reading as a child, either. Every time I re-read the Chronicles of Narnia, I find more depth in them. Especially in A Horse and his Boy, which used to be one of my least-favorite in the series, but is now possibly my favorite.