The Great Brain books
The Mixed-Up Files etc.
Encyclopedia Brown
Pretty much anything by Dr. Seuss
Some of the Choose Your Own Adventure-type books
Charlotte’s Web
Things I didn’t read as a child but would have liked if I had:
The Hobbit (and Lord of the Rings for older kids)
Chronicles of Narnia
The Oz books
The Tarzan books (and most of the other series by Burroughs), again for the upper end of your age range; some of them would be somewhat racy and/or frightening for young kids
Others I haven’t seen mentioned yet:
The “Two-Minute Mysteries” books
The Danny Dunn books (these are great if the kid in question has any interest in science)
The Sword in the Stone from The Once and Future King (the real one, not the Disney version)
A Wrinkle in Time
Half Magic
Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates
Tom Sawyer (and Huckleberry Finn)
The King of the Golden River
Oh you guys! *Flat Stanley[\i] No one I know has ever heard of this book and I even thought for a little while that I had made it up. I loved that book!
My list, many have been mentioned before:
Beverly Cleary Books (all of them)
Nancy Drew Series
Charlotte’s Web
Wind In The Willow
Man O’ War (Walter Farley)
Big Red (Jim Kjelgaard)
My Friend Flicka
Chronicles of Narnia
Black Beauty - LOVED this book
Wizard of Oz
Little Women (the whole series)
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms
Watership Down
Misty of Chincoteague (Marguerite Henry) (loved the whole series)
Black Stallion series
Phar Lap
Island of the Blue Dolphins
I could go on and on. What a wonderful thread, Shirley! My whole day feels good now.
A couple more–Lloyd Alexander’s Westmark trilogy–which is a thousand times better than th better known Black Cauldron set, Robin Mckinly’s books, any of them (Although the Hero and the Crown is probably the best place to start) and Jim Kjeelgard’s various dog books, especially Snow Dog.
Cam Jansen
The Boxcar Children
Miss Mallard
Arthur
Roger Hargreaves’s Mr. Men and Little Miss series
Choose Your Own Adventure series (a little different from the others, but it was interesting.)
I agree that the Great Brain and Lloyd Alexander stuff was great. I’m remembering a book I read when I was 11 or so called “The Teddy Bear Habit” about a kid in the beatniks era trying to learn to play guitar-- it was hilarious.
God, does this thread bring back memories. I read most of these. The Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler was great. I liked Encyclopedia Brown, the Danny Dunn series, the Three Investigators, the Beverly Cleary books (Ramona/Henry Huggins/Beezus), and many of the others mentioned. The Great Brain series I especially enjoyed. The stories were actually semi-autobiographical. The author really did grow up in Utah. He also wrote some nonfiction about his family’s life. (The author was the model for the little brother in the books. The older brother (Tom?) was the Great Brain) Although the family was Catholic in the children’s books, as someone pointed out, apparently part of the family was Mormon in reality. (I think one of the parents was Mormon and one Catholic.) I though the nonfiction books were actually better than the kid’s books, even when I first read them in my very early teens. Anybody remember the author’s name?
Oh, Boy, what great memories lie in this thread! I LOVED Encyclopedia Brown - I forgot about him! Gee, where do I start?
A Wrinkle in Time
The Hobbit
The Iceberg Hermit
Watership Down
The Velveteen Rabbit
Call of the Wild
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The “Little House” series
The - Red, Green, Brown, Yellow, etc - Fairy Book
Stories of King Arthur
Adventures of Robin Hood
I’m sure I’ll think of more.
WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above as apparently my cat has learned to type. =^…^=
Reading through the list reminded me of several books I’ve loved because they were mentioned by other people
(special kudos to pldennison for mention of “Le Petit Prince” by “Antoine de Saint-Exupery”)
But then I remembered Treasure Island by Stevenson
I still love that book!
Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
And then Jules Verne of course:
Deux Ans de Vacances
De la Terre a La Lune
Voyage Au Centre de la Terre
Vingt Mille Lieues sous les mers
L’Ile mysterieuse
and H. G. Welles
War of the worlds
The invisible man
And how about Conan Doyle’s series with Professor Challenger?
The Lost World et al.
La franchise ne consiste pas à dire tout ce que l’on pense, mais à penser tout ce que l’on dit.
H. de Livry
OH great, I been away a while and they STILL don’t remember my pass word. Who’s euchy? Is (s)he cool? Hey, shirl, who’s been here since I been gone? I read these when I was around ten or eleven, HUCKLEBERRY FINN ( i am a southren boy) taught me all I know about racists, nasty thing to be, avoid if you can Most of Poe ( scared me!!) Conan Doyle , damn wish I could be that logical bout things,(cept for that spiritualism)Asimov, didn’t make me ‘think’ stead i just was glad somebody ELSE was thinkin that way.OH yeh, for fun there wad the Hardy Boys!! Made me jealouse " Hey, Pop, can we borrow the helecopter tonight? We want to visit our friend in Alaska." Yeh right.
“Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”-Marx
Ha, the ex- children’s bookstore clerk finally gets to show off her knowledge…
Drain Bead: IIRC, the Roald Dahl story you’re thinking of is called “The Marvelous Story of Henry Sugar.”
Random: The author of the Great Brain books was John D. Fitzgerald.
Looks like people have already mentioned most of my favorites. A couple of others that bring back warm memories:
The All-of-a-Kind Family series by Sydney Taylor. (Kind of an urban version of Laura Ingalls Wilder, about five little Jewish girls in turn-of-the-century New York.)
Adam of the Road by Elizabeth Janet Grey.
Bunnicula and Howliday Inn by James Howe.
The Bruno and Boots books by Gordon Korman. Absolutely hilarious.
“The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.”
According to Christi: My all-time favorite book when I was a really littler kid was a book about an Easter bunny who was late for Easter. I think that was the title, in fact, “The Easter Bunny Who Was Late,” or something like that. There were pictures of EB dressed up in all kinds of holiday outfits, trying to offload the eggs he hadn’t delivered at Easter time. If anyone else knows of this book and where I can get a copy, please let me know!
Sounds like “The Easter Bunny that Overslept”: “Having slept past Easter, the Easter bunny tries to distribute his eggs on Mother’s Day, the Fourth of July, and Halloween, but no one is interested. At Christmas time it is Santa who gets him back on track.” www.addadd.com/Used/ lists numerous copies. “The Easter Bunny That Ate My Sister” also looks interesting…