Your Favorite Children's Books

[portia]

I like the "Wizard of Oz" idea, a lot. There are not illustrations that are so famous that they occupy everyone's imaginations, and the images are common enough to avoid copyright issues.(Witches, scarecrows, Lions, medium-sized girls, trees, a fanciful, green city.)

Hmmmmm.

[RoseMorninStar]

portia, the Wizard of Oz would be fun to do.. and you could use the wording 'There's no place like home'.. I don't think that is copyrighted.

[tony789]

I've never heard of that one.

[themili]

I can't resist bringing up one of my absolute Finnish writer of children's books, Timo Parvela, and his Ella series.

I quote here an extract pointing out the series. The text is from an article about Timo Parvela at www.finlit.fi:

Parvela (born 1964) has received a particularly enthusiastic response to his Ella series for primary school-aged readers. The series tells the adventures of second-grader Ella and companions, including Pate, the headteacher's son who's fond of disguises, Tuukka, the young genius, Samppa, the copious weeper, and the pugnacious Buster. The gang of kids means well, but somehow, through misunderstandings, things always end in chaos.

The most wonderful thing in the series is that many of the stories include themes of people and phenomenons of the contemporary world and especially things going on in Finland, all shown from the perspective of eight-year-olds. It's awesome, the author has caught it realistically but with loads of humor.

[Vanaladiel]

Portia that will be a cute piece of furniture when you are finished.

Now you do realize that you could even do the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe with Mr. Tumnus, Lucy and her siblings, a lamp post and a Lion as well as any number of things from the stories too.

I love the idea of decorating children's furniture with characters from great literature for children! Very cool idea!

Mt favorite children's books would have to be The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, Inkheart, The Dragon Rider and a few others.

I did not read a lot till I read The Hobbit then I took off reading. So I did skip a lot of reading up to that point. Fantasy grabbed me and never let go.

[Morwenna]

Is the question "then" or "now"?

When I was a child, I read acres of comic books. I also read many stories, most of which I've forgotten, but I did read and enjoy Bambi, The Wind in the Willows, Just So Stories (my fave!), Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, 101 Dalmatians, the Uncle Remus stories, and I can't remember what else till I got to junior high, when I read Pollyanna and Little Women. And I read a lot of forgettable popular stories too. Besides that, I was into Arthurian and Robin Hood tales, and I discovered Greek mythology at about age 11. I read A Christmas Carol when I was pretty young, besides seeing it on TV, and that started a lifelong love for Dickens. And I was reading poetry; when I was in college I'd raise the hair on some of my English-department classmates by saying that Tennyson was a piece of cake because I'd been reading him since I was ten, which was the truth.

Other so-called childhood books didn't come my way till adulthood! It all started with The Hobbit and went downhill from there...

[Gungnir]

When I was a child I loved the 'Uncle' books by J.P. Martin - imagine if 'Babar' had been written by Spike Milligan (or Monty Python) and illustrated by Quentin Blake.

For a taster go here - http://www.uncle-tv.com/Intro.html

They are brilliant , hilarious, subversive and surreal and written by an elderly Anglican priest in the 1960s. It's very hard to find the original books now as a mysterious collector in London buys up every copy he can find, luckily some have been reprinted. I can't recommend these highly enough.

[Gungnir]

Just found this brilliant attempt to animate the start of the first book...

http://www.uncle-tv.com/MovieB.html

[hamlet]

Gotta throw out George Martin's Ice Dragon here. Not great, but very good for adult kids.

[Lembas_Junkie]

1) The Dinotopia series by James Gurney
2) Winnie the Pooh
3) The Wind in the Willows

[LalaithUrwen]

1) Anne of Green Gables series
2) Little House on the Prairie series
3) A Wrinkle in Time

Those are definitely my top three. Others I loved included:

The Phantom Tollbooth
Wizard of Oz (but I liked some of the other books in the series better than the 1st)
The rest of the L'Engle series

There are so many more I'm having a hard time thinking of any!

[portia]

Thank you all again for the ideas. I am almost done with "The Wizard of Oz"

I went to a used furniture store and bought a small bookcase, painted a truly awful shade of dark pink, and then enough paint for two coats. I am now finished with the yellow brick road, the tin woodman, the melted witch,and partly done with Dorothy, the lion and the scarecrow. Iknow what I want to do for the Emerald City, but haven't started it.

I became ambitious and also started a small stool, for the "Half Magic" piece, which will carry the words "I wish I had a chair."

And a little box with Scotties on the ends, that I will need to look up a title for. (Greyfriars Bobby was a flop eared terrier and I can't use that).
Time is getting short and I may need to stay up all night to finish.

[RoseMorninStar]

portia... I hope you post photos when you're done! If I lived closer, I'd help you! It sounds fun!

[sfhdweb]

East of the Sun, West of the Moon is the one of the best book

[portia]

I finished, barely in time. I am not wild about how the Emerald City came out, so I hope I am just being too critical.

Downloading my pics is on my list, but I will have to review how I insert pictures in posts.

[RoseMorninStar]

portia, I usually have to upload photos to something like Photobucket and then place the link here.

[Morwenna]

Believe it or not, I never actually read The Wizard of Oz till adulthood. But I did know the story (as opposed to the movie) because I had a Classics Illustrated comic book of it, which was pretty true to the book, at least (as I remember) the actual number of witches, and the part about the glasses in the Emerald City.

Right now we have quite a few of the Oz books, but since the digout last year I'm not sure where they are. I haven't read most of them yet.

[Gollum Girl]

The very hungry Calipiter

My mother used to read that book to me all the time. However it's more of a baby book than a children's book. There's a difference.

[AlexSnitzel]

Anyone else read The Maze in the Heart of the Castle? I can't remember who wrote it. But the budding fantasy lover in me adored it. It was the first "real" book I read... ie longer than 50 pages.

[Cock-Robin]

Not in any particular order, I like:

The Phantom Tollbooth
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Wind in the Willows
Anything by E. Nesbit
Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass
The Velveteen Rabbit

I'll think of more later. I need to go.

[Frelga]

I can't believe I haven't posted here.

And seeing Sassy's name near the top gave me a pang.

As anyone who knows me for any length of time (4 minutes) knows I am a huge fan of Terry Pratchett's. His books for children and young adults are as fun and thoughtful as his adult stories, but I think written with better care.

The Bromeliad Trilogy (U.S. title) - Truckers, Diggers, Wings - is the story of four-inch-tall people trying first to find a place in the human world, and then to find a home of their own. 8 and up, I'd say.

Nation - for a thoughtful preteen and up, a story of a boy named Mau, the only survivor of a tidal wave that sweeps away his island Nation, joined by an English girl of a scientific mindset who survives a shipwreck. Does not go where you think it might, dark in places, but full of light and hope.

The Johnny Maxwell trilogy, about a boy who sees things others do not.
Only You Can Save Mankind - Johnny is shooting up the aliens in his computer game. Then the aliens surrender.
Johnny and The Dead - Johnny and friends try to save a cemetery from being turned into a shopping mall, while teaching the denizens to dance to The Thriller.
Johnny and the Bomb - the best time travel story ever, where Johnny and friends go back to the WWII and the day when their town was bombed.

Set in the Discworld:

The standalone, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is the story of the Pied Piper, where the rats are in on the sting.

The Tiffany Aching books, the story of a young witch and her friends, the pictsies (not pixies, very definitely not), tiny blue men of a vaguely Scottish persuasion.
Wee Free Men
A Hat Full of Sky
Wintersmith
I Shall Wear Midnight

[celebalqua]

Ok here is four for varying ages:

For the littlies ( and I love it so for grownups too)....
Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson illustrated by Axel Scheffler,

For the slightly bigger ( and definitely the grownups)
The magic pudding by Norman Lindsay

For the medium ages (and grownups like me)
Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer

For the slightly older ( and still me!)
Keys to the kingdom series by Garth Nix

[frodolives668]

When I was little, i had this Mercer Mayor book about a kid mailing a letter. The letter was intercepted by a, quote, "stamp collecting trollusk." Don't ask me what a trollusk is i just type here. The "trollusk" was collected by some kind of "trollusk collector" and letter stolen by several neumerous fictional beasts. In the end the letter was mailed, ironically, to the originally intended recipiant: the girl next door to the original sender.

I also had the classic "Goodnight moon" in which some kind of sheep speaks to neumerous inanimate objects. Why? I don't know. I think it came from children watching too much "Beauty and the Beast." What if your child grew up thinking anything can talk? when he needed help doing his homework he'd ask the lampshade. Or better yet, his taxes.

I dug "Goodnight Moon" out the other day. I'm using it for a spoof called Goodnight Ring. "three bears on chairs" becomes "Nasgul on stools" and so on and soforth.

I, of course was never a child. Merely a short adult.

[Melwa]

Ahh, what a lovely thread!

Scotties? Hmm, what about Wee Gillis?

Narnia and Anne of Green Gables are of course favorites. (I'll see if I can revive the thread before I start the really long list.)

[Rachel_musicfan]

my favorites are The Lion, the witch, and the wardrobe, The Wizard of Oz, and the Max and Rhuby series.

[Lithtaur16]

For the little ones:
The Mitten
Where the Wild Things Are
The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush
Can't You Sleep Little Bear?
Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham and just about anything else...

For approximately 5th grade and up:
Marguerite Henry
Sewell
Mark Twain
Author of Where the Red Fern Grows
Kipling
Scott O'dell
Jack London
Robert Frost and Mrs. Graham

Lorlene McDaniel
C. S. Lewis
Tolkien

[siddharth]

Okay, this is only what I can remember NOW. Sure o come back later.

Age group: 5-8

Animal Farm
Alice in Wonderland
Wizard of Oz
Brothers Grimm Fairy stories
The Hobbit
The Jungle Book
All of Mark Twain
Peter Pan
The Little Prince
Stories of Robin-Hood
Darwin's Origin of Species (Okay, just kidding here ... )


Age group: 8-12

King Solomon's Mines ( My first ever read of a serious adventure actually )
Around the world in 80 days
Harry Potter
Narnia books
Dickens' A Christmas Carol
Jack London
Robinson Crusoe
Where the Red fern Grows
The Jungle Book
Frankenstein (MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!)
The Time Machine!!

On second thought, I will end up giving off most of the classics so I'll just leave it here.

Age Group: 13+

Lord of the Rings
Silmarillion (okay let's say it's 17+)
Unfinished Tales and whatever follows.
The Alchemist - a truly spiritual as well as adventurous journey. I think it's a classic
Hunchback of Notredame (one of my faves)
Translations of ancient epics like Illiad, Odeyssey, Mahabharata
Count of Monte Cristo
Three Musketeers. This is another gem!!! My most favourite historical fiction.
Everything Dickens.
Poems of Lord Tennyson
Diary of Anne Frank.


That's all I remember now.

[MrsDundas87]

I have always loved reading and have probably read thousands of books. My favourites as a child would probably be

The Animals Of Farthing Wood
Anne if Green Gables
Heidi
The 'Redwall' series by Brian Jacques they were so well written and kept me captured from age 9 til I was about 16
Black Beauty
The Beach Dogs

Any Greek mythology from about age 8 til now. I still love reading about it and have started passing some of it onto my eldest son. Told him the story of he Trojan horse last week and he turned to me and said 'was that when you were a wee girl mum?'

[Eilowny]

My word...too many to remember.

Anne of Green Gables.
Anything Lloyd Alexander wrote.
Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom. (I went through a phase when I read anything of hers I could get my hands on, but these two are my favorites)
Every book of mythology/fairytales I could get my hands on. I read probably a half dozen versions of Robin Hood.
Redwall. I'm particularly fond of Marlfox, Mariel, Taggerung, and Triss.
A Little Princess, The Secret Garden, and The Lost Prince of Samavia.
The Lioness and Her Knight and The Savage Damsel and the Dwarf by Gerald Morris.
King of the Wind, Gaudenzia, and One Man's Horse by Maugerite Henry.
Percy Jackson books.
Narnia
Lord of the Rings, duh.
Isaac Asimov's robot stories


How's that to start a list? Too many thousands to think through!!!

[Morwenna]

Well, of course I like Narnia, I love Pratchett's books, I can't believe I didn't mention Dr. Seuss (I definitely discovered him in grade school), and I'm a big fan of Harry Potter. But most of that I found in adulthood.

I seem to have forgotten that I did read (or hear read) several of the Beatrix Potter stories. But I never owned any.

If I were to try to list my favorites among all that, whether I read them in childhood or adulthood, it'd take me all day to sort it out. And I certainly don't feel equipped to rate them by age.