# What were your favorite children's books? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 14, 2008, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456 "2008-01-14T06:35:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456/41 "2008-01-15T13:59:57Z")
_Jacob Two-Two Meets The Hooded Fang_ Lots of Shel Silverstein _Frog And Toad Together_ Dr Suess _Aesop’s Fables_ Narnia Chronicles Lord Of The Rings Encyclopedia Brown Hardy Boys _Blubber_ ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456/42 "2008-01-15T14:47:54Z")
My user name says it all. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456/43 "2008-01-15T14:51:45Z")
[QUOTE=choie] …_Caps for Sale_, by Esphyr Slobodkina. Anyone else remember this? Gorgeous illustrations… [/QUOTE] Yup. I mentioned it in post 17. Always a fun book to read with a little kid, whose face will light up in delight as the cap salesman inadvertently gets his caps back. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Hal\_Briston](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a9a28c/32.png) [@Hal\_Briston](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hal_Briston)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456/44 "2008-01-15T15:26:02Z")
_51 Sycamore Lane or A Spy In The Neighborhood_. Must’ve reread that thing 20 times as a kid. Then I loaned it to Brian Geisenger, and I never saw it again. Bastard! Give me back my book!! ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456/45 "2008-01-15T15:30:46Z")
Forgot _Mrs Piggle-Wiggle_ and _Pippi Longstocking_, and the Half- Magic type books (forgot author’s name). Anyone remember _Snip, Snap and Snur_ and _Flikka, Tikka and Rikka_ (series)? I don’t recall the stories, but the illustrations mesmerized me as a kid. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456/46 "2008-01-15T19:33:30Z")
[QUOTE=Jinx] While I like many mentioned above, no one remembers poor Danny Dunn ☹ Even many libraries have withdrawn this series. “Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine” is the most memorable in the series. [/QUOTE] I do. I was going to reply to this thread specifically to mention the Danny Dunn series. Most of those that I read were library books, and the few I owned disappeared, so about six months ago, I bought 5-6 of the Danny Dunn books (used copies from Amazon Marketplace resellers) for my 10-year old son. He liked _Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine_ well enough, but not enough to read the others (even after I offered him $5 for each that he read). ☹ Anyway, the most memorable books that I read before I turned 13 are: [ul] [li]the “Danny Dunn” series[/li][li]Beverly Cleary books (starting with _Henry and the Paper Route_)[/li][li]the “Oz” books (the Frank Baum ones)[/li][li]the “Pippi Longstocking” books[/li][li]the “Narnia” books[/li][li]the “Encyclopedia Brown” series[/li][li]the “Three Investigators” series[/li][li]_Where the Red Fern Grows_ (our 5th grade teacher read this to us over the course of a month or so; I borrowed it and reread it in one sitting, finishing it under my covers by flashlight)[/li][li]_Watership Down_ (we had to pick a book off of a list for school, and I thought it was about submarines)[/li][li]_The Hobbit_[/li][li]_Lord of the Rings_ trilogy (inspired to tackle this due to the Bakshi movie)[/li][/ul] The “Pern” books, “Xanth” series, Asimov, Heinlein, and the whole world of science fiction didn’t happen until I was a teenager. [QUOTE=Hal Briston] _51 Sycamore Lane or A Spy In The Neighborhood_. Must’ve reread that thing 20 times as a kid. Then I loaned it to Brian Geisenger, and I never saw it again. Bastard! Give me back my book!! [/QUOTE] Funny, I just saw this book on my son’s bookshelf this last weekend, one of the few of my childhood books to survive. Wasn’t one of my favorites, though. ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456/47 "2008-01-15T19:42:14Z")
Oooh ! I’d forgotten all about the Encyclopedia Brown stories! Also, the Roald Dadhl works. Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little were huge for me. I re-read my copies until they were dog-eared. ---
**Author:** ![Lunar\_Saltlick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/977dab/32.png) [@Lunar\_Saltlick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lunar_Saltlick)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456/48 "2008-01-15T19:50:33Z")
I loved _Penrod_, by Booth Tarkington, and _Paddle-to-the-Sea_, by Holling C. Holling. I have a vague notion that both are now considered somewhat less than politically correct, but I may be entirely wrong. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456/49 "2008-01-15T20:22:01Z")
I tended toward the boy’s adventure series: **The Tom Swift, Jr**. series **The Hardy Boys** \*\*The Whispering Box Mystery \*\*(Rick Brant) by John Blaine – I would have loved to have read more Rick Brant, but this was the only one I ever came across, and it was the best of that type. **A Wrinkle in Time** **More Homer Price** by Robert McCloskey **The Happy Hollisters** series, mostly because they were available in the school library. **Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint** (I never read the others in the series, except for maybe **Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine** – but that didn’t leave much impression. And, of course **Great Science Fiction Stories** by Cordelia Titcomb Smith. Here’s the table of contents: Vital Factor · Nelson S. Bond · Pottage [People] · Zenna Henderson · The Roads Must Roll · Robert A. Heinlein · The Stolen Bacillus · H. G. Wells · The Star · H. G. Wells · Nightfall · Isaac Asimov · History Lesson · Arthur C. Clarke · In Hiding · Wilmar H. Shiras · The Martian Crown Jewels · Poul Anderson · The Sands of Time · P. Schuyler Miller · Into Space [from Round the Moon] · Jules Verne · ---
**Author:** ![pmwgreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@pmwgreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pmwgreen)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456/50 "2008-01-15T20:29:29Z")
[QUOTE=kelly5078] The Thorton W. Burgess books were probably my favorites as a small child. Old Mr. Toad, Jimmy Skunk, Prickly Porky the Porcupine, Lightfoot the Deer, etc. My grandmother read them to me all the time. [/QUOTE] I read the Burgess books voraciously when I was a kid, but I had completely forgotten about them until now. You can get them from [manybooks.net](http://manybooks.net) and Amazon is just putting them out as kindle books. Weird. ---
**Author:** ![Plynck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Plynck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Plynck)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2008, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456/51 "2008-01-16T00:19:15Z")
Up through 8th grade: [ul][li]The Chronicles of Narnia[/li][li]Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass[/li][li]Madeleine L’Engle’s books[/li][li]Jane Langton’s children’s books (she lived one town away, and read The Diamond in the Window to our class)[/li][li]Edward Eager’s books[/li][li]Elizabeth Enright’s books (especially those about the Melendy family)[/li][li]Heinlein’s books for younger readers (started me on sci-fi)[/li][li]The Phantom Tollbooth[/li][li]Homer Price stories[/li][li]The Hobbit[/li][li]Cheaper by the Dozen (read in a Reader’s Digest Condensed Book collection at my grandmother’s house in PEI whenever I visited for summer vacation[/li][li]Roald Dahl (I was so amazed to realize as an adult to realize that the same author who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory wrote some of those racy little short stories 🙂 )[/li][li]Mary Poppins[/ul][/li]Surprisingly, not L M Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables), although I have been going to PEI as long as I remember, and there was a photo of the Green Gables house hanging on the wall when I was growing up. Read a little later in High School, but ones which I would have appreciated when I was younger: [ul][li]The Thirteen Clocks (Thurber)[/li][li]The Last Unicorn (Beagle)[/li][li]Where the Red Fern Grows (still makes me cry)[/li][li]The Little Prince[/li][/ul] I know that I’m forgetting a lot… ---
**Author:** ![pmwgreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@pmwgreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pmwgreen)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2008, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456/52 "2008-01-16T00:40:36Z")
[QUOTE=Plynck] [li]Jane Langton’s children’s books (she lived one town away, and read The Diamond in the Window to our class)[/li] [/QUOTE] There’s another book I’d forgotten. Brilliant book. ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2008, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456/53 "2008-01-16T05:20:06Z")
Oh, I almost forgot, Scott O’Dell’s _Island of the Blue Dolphins_. I read that one every now and again. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2008, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456/54 "2008-01-16T06:08:19Z")
Oh, and the _Henry Huggins_ books by Beverly Cleary. Over and over again. Anyone remember a book about a boy whose father or grandfather was a Caribbean or maybe Mexican fisherman? The boy befriends a dolphin, and squares off against a hammerhead shark. The book had very dramatic pencil or charcoal illustrations. ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2008, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456/55 "2008-01-16T21:59:59Z")
For me there was only one. [The Velveteen Rabbit](http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/williams/rabbit/rabbit.html) All other books were a distant second. This is a true children’s book, in that it was read to me before bed over and over again. Books like Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Carroll don’t fit the description of “children’s book” to me, they are at best “young adult” and most of the stuff people were reading in Junior High qualifies as simply literature that you discovered at a young age. ---
**Author:** ![SkeptiJess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@SkeptiJess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SkeptiJess)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2008, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456/56 "2008-01-17T00:45:31Z")
[QUOTE=Plynck] Up through 8th grade: [li]Jane Langton’s children’s books (she lived one town away, and read The Diamond in the Window to our class)[/li][/quote] That must have been neat! I liked those books, but my favorites by Langton were her two about Grace Jones (_The Majesty of Grace_ and _The Boyhood of Grace Jones_). I forgot about them before… Terrific books about a really unusual and interesting young girl during the Depression. Other favorites I forgot before (and which I haven’t seem mentioned yet, or missed the mention of): All of E. Nesbit’s books. Must reads for all you Edward Eager fans – and for anyone else who wants to see how little children have _really_ changed in the last 100 years. Because in these books (written between 1890 and 1910 or so) you will find as recognisable kids as you will find in any Chuck E. Cheese today. All of Rumer Godden’s doll books, especially _The Doll House_. The last words of this book are among the most beautiful ever written. In a children’s book about a family of talking dolls. Really. The best words ever written about grief, loss and recovery. I frequently recommend them to people looking for appropriate non-theistic words for eulogies. ---
**Author:** ![fdrre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7ab992/32.png) [@fdrre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fdrre)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2008, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456/57 "2008-01-17T01:13:57Z")
I like Princess series very much, lovely story ---
**Author:** ![Pixilated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/aeb1de/32.png) [@Pixilated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pixilated)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2008, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456/58 "2008-01-17T01:30:40Z")
Pre-teen: Trixie Beldon series Sherlock holmes Hitchhiker’s Guide the Wrinkle in Time series Teen: Stephen King Ann Rice Edgar Allen Poe Shakespear Norse & Greek mythologies ---
**Author:** ![brownsfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ad7895/32.png) [@brownsfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brownsfan)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2008, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456/59 "2008-01-17T03:02:01Z")
Charlotte’s Web Tarzan of the Apes Penrod Tom Sawyer Peanuts collections Harriet the Spy My dad’s Playboys Our parents never talked to us about sex, so mom talked dad into buying a sex-ed 4-volume set and inserting it into our library under the cover of darkness. It was very clinical, and just had drawings, but it was a godsend to a ten year old boy, oh yeah. I didn’t find his Playboys until I was about 13. ---
**Author:** ![thirdwarning](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecccb3/32.png) [@thirdwarning](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thirdwarning)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2008, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456/60 "2008-01-17T10:11:42Z")
[QUOTE=choie] That’s _Little Witch_, which is on my list too! 🙂 [/QUOTE] Did her witch “mother” turn into an anteater? You could make me very happy here. crossing my fingers [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-your-favorite-childrens-books/433456.md?page=4)