i apologize for my earlier redundant posts. i got excited halfway down reading the other posts, and jumped the gun on replying. I was about to put int mixed up files of mrs. basil e frankweiler, but then i saw poor oldnerd already had it in there. lesson learned:to reaad the posts before replying.
Great topic! i loved reading when i was little (and now, as well) and would spend the summer reading book after book after book, and these titles really really bring me back. i would like to say for the record, that it is so refreshing to see others who read GOOD LITERATURE when they were young, instead of, say, babysitter’s club and sweet valley high, which i abhorred and was scorned b/c i didn’t know what was up with jessica and elizabeth wakefield in sweet valley.
Thanks for restoring my faith in the idea that people aren’t all raised on mind candy.
Almost everynight since my daughter was able to hold her head up while sitting on my lap I have read to her before bedtime. Needless to say now that she is turning seven I have read more than my fair share of children’s books. Just finished Island of the Blue Dolphins and we are currently working on Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Next up is Wrinkle in Time. Please turn off the TV in the evening and sit down with your children (no matter how old) and read with each other. If your child is too young to read, then read to them AND talk about the book. As they get older have them read shorter easier works and finish up with a chapter from any of the works listed here. As they become pre-teen have them do most of the reading and probe them on what they read. It’s probably the greatest gift you can give them.
One of my favorites not mentioned here is The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (Told from the wolf’s perspective). And if you like Stellaluna then pick up Verdi by the same author.
Well I don’t have a favorite kid as I love them both equally!
I have to say Claire (6) loves “The Carasoyn” by George MacDonald; authour of The Light Princess. She likes the fairies! Madeline is always popular too
Andrew(3-3/4 going on 12)still really likes the Three Little Pigs for some reason it’s a perennial fave nite time book. He also likes Curious George.
We are reading the Hobbit together–I have almost every JRR Tolkien book and even go to the NG’s to talk with fellow geeks!
The Dark is Rising series was one of my favorite books as a youngster and I recently came across it in a bookstore, bought it, and read all the books in one night. It’s sitting on the bookshelf waiting for Claire to get a little older.
Well I’m suprized no one has said <b><i>The Neverending Story</i></b> by Michael Ende. Exelent book and good first movie. I also loved the Choose your own adventure series. I think I had all but a few of them, and there was something like 120 or so. I also remember a few Tom Swift and Hardy boy’s novels. but I didn’t ever like Encyclopedia Brown stuff.
but there is one book that I liked and can’t remember the name maybe someone else does. it was a boy and a girl who lived next to an old house that was owned by a rich old guy who didn’t like anyone. well the girl’s father was an archaeologist and she wanted to be one too so she got it in her head to go looking for this guys money. they end up tearing up the lawn looking for it and finally find it in a tunnel only to learn that the guy had burned most of the money. it was also one of those Saturday morning ABC specials if you remember them. anyone know this book?
I would add ‘all of the above’ plus…
for the 8-12 set…
A Wind In The Door (and the series)
A Wizard of Earthsea (and the series)
The Book of the DunCow (weird and wonderful)
Treasure Island!
The Hobbit(Lord of the Rings isn’t a kid’s series imho)
Escape to the Mushroom Planet (Julie Andrews actually wrote this I was told… kinda weird)
Any and all Roald Dahl books but my all time favorite is:
Danny The Champion of the World… Maybe it’s because I can remember my mom reading that to me to show me what a Cockney accent was supposed to sound like. Excellent memories.
Now I’m a dad and can’t wait to begin reading stories to my girl. We’re still on the cardboard ‘baby’ books.
Thanks for the thread. I think I’ll print this out as a shopping list!
One of my favorite kid books was the Snark-Out Boys and the Avocado of Doom! It’s great. I just reread it recently. Anybody else remember this modern classic?
one more i think a lot of people liked a lot:
Harriet the spy by louise fitzgerald
I’m so happy to see someone mention The Princess and the Goblin, but my favorite book growing up was its sequel The Princess and Curdie.
I am also a big fan of many of the other books mentioned here including
Narnia
Hobbitt and Lord of the Rings
Dark Is Rising
The series from page 1 by Lloyd Alexander (includes Black Cauldron - you know the Disney movie)
Any mythology or fairy tale compilations I could get my hands on
The Hardy Boys (I read all of my school library’s collection of approx. 40 or so)
Hey you guys. I’m a new poster…I’ve wanted to register for awihle and I decided that I just had to when the subject came around to books. 
Anyway, I too really like Louise Fitzhugh’s books, particularly the Long Secret. And the Bunnicula books, I just remembered those. Also, someone here brought up Ruth Chew. I read a book by her called “No Such Thing as a Witch”. I really liked that book and recently I was thinking about it. It was simple, but really good. Anyone read that?
Im not sure if this is even considered a children’s book by most people, but I LOVE “Le Petit Prince”(the little prince) by Antoine de St.-Exupéry. It is such a beautiful, wonderful book, even now i read it every few months or so, and fall in love with it all over again. Its like reading a different book every time.
-S’il vous plait…déssine moi un mouton…
Oh yeah. I loved Roald Dahl when I was a kid. The Witches scared the hell out of me though. It felt so vivid. Now I still enjoy the books he’s written for older people. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory- another great one.
I never knew there were others. So You Want to be a Wizard was the only one my library had when I was a kid and I haven’t thought about that book in years. I’ll have to get my hands on them.
I never liked the Henry Huggins books. Henry reminded me of my older brother and, along with Beezus, seemed a stick-in-the-mud more than not. Ramona was around my age/slightly younger and got to do more fun stuff than me.
I remember reading a book called ‘Rebecca’s World’ at school when I was a kid. It was strange and surreal and utterly compelling. It was written by the same guy who invented the Daleks, Terry Nation, and the hardback edition had the most incredible illustrations. I looked it up on the internet, and apart from about 3,000 homepages belonging to people called Rebecca all I found was a picture of the front cover of the paperback edition, which appeared to have been illustrated by someone with a box of crayons and a spare five minutes. Really disappointing. I would love to see the hardback version of this book again.
I adored the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series.
“Bridge To Terabithia” was a keeper – it made me sad.
The “Encyclopedia Brown” series was terrific, even though I rarely managed to solve the mysteries without looking in the back of the book.
“Jacob Have I Loved” was the first time I had seen the word “breast” in print in a non-doctor-like context, so that was certainly a milestone. Whew!
A favorite of mine, which I read a lot at story time in the library, is “Where Do Butterflies Go When It Rains?”
It’s a picture book full of swarming colors, very visually exciting, and simple enough for a new reader, with help.
I went through “book phases” as a elementary kid. I would be addicted to certain series for months and then kick that habbit when another series came along. I loved:
The Babysitter’s Club
Sweet Valley High
Old & new Nancy Drew mystery series
The Little House series
I’m still in love with:
The Pyrdian Chronicles
Harry Potter
The Chronicles of Narnia
A Wrinkle in Time and all sequels except Rising Waters
Any Dr. Suess books
Matilda - she loved to read as much as me!
The Wizard of Oz
The Road to Oz
Alice in Wonderland
Alice Through the Looking Glass
My kiddy faves were:
Danny and the Dinosaur
Max’s Christmas (you know, the baby rabbit w/a sister named Ruby)
Happy Father’s Day! (I still read this w/my dad every Father’s Day)
The Oxcart Man
The Berenstein Bears series
Great book with lots of illustrations. I particularly like the one at the end that shows the head from Zeus’ statue lying on the grass, with the cosmos in the background, and text explaining how, like everything else, the greek gods reigns came to an end.
(not sure on the spelling of Daulares - there is definitely an apostrophe in there somewhere)
There are so many excellent kids books out there, that it makes it hard to pick some. But I’ll see what I can remember…
Young kids:
Drummer Hoff
Caps For Sale
Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm(absolutely hilarious)
The Serendipity books
Leo the Lop…and a bunch of others
The B Book(Think this is by Stan and Jan Berenstein)
Dr. Seuss-
And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street
The Lorax
Arrow to the Sun
Blueberries for Sal
Where is your mother?(I have never met anyone else who knows this one- about a little mouse looking for his family)
Slightly older kids/young adult type books
The Ordinary Princess, by M.M. Kaye
The Cherry Ames books, not sure who wrote them
Ender’s Game, though I never liked the others in the series as much
A series by Jean Karl, Strange Tomorrow, The Turning Place(Point?), and But We Are Not of Earth
The Alana books by Tamora Pierce
A series that included the book Winter of Magic’s Return and Tomorrow’s Magic, by Pamela F. Service
All the books by Ellen Emerson White: Friends For Life, Life Without Friends, White House Autumn, The President’s Daughter, and Long Live The Queen
A tale of time city by Dianna Wynne Jones
There are so many more… I wish I could think of all of them and not be completely redundant…but all of the ones listed by everyone are GREAT!
I’ve got a lot of fave books too-I don’t remember the ones I liked when I was really little…too long ago. But these are the ones I can remember, they’re mostly YA books:
The Bunnicula books
The Superfudge books
The Long Secret/Harriet the Spy
The Trial of Anna Cotman, The Haunting of Cassie Palmer (and other books by Vivian Alcock- has anyone read anything by her? her books are for kids but they are pretty dark)
Angela and Diabola
Where the Red Fern Grows
The Night Room
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm
That’s my Baby
Just as Long as we’re together/Here’s to you, Rachel Robinson
Books by Enid Blyton
Many Waters
In the Middle of the Night, We All Fall Down, Fade (and others by Robert Cormier)
Slave Day/Rats Saw God
Bad Girls
Secret Garden
Probably others that I can’t really remember right now. 
As has been mentioned many times above, “Charlotte’s Web” was a very influential book in my life. I truly love it. I must have read the book about 6 times over, back to back.
When I was a senior in high school I had a choice between portraying the lead in “Grease” (I was a theater dork) at school or a small part in “Charlotte’s Web” at a fairly prestigious community theater. I chose to be “John Abel” . . . "Fern"s dad. I do not regret it. My HS drama director never forgave me. Oh well.