What was your favorite childhood book?

What was your favorite book as a child? Perhaps it's the book you read, re-read, and then read again? Or the one you stayed up late reading by flashlight under the covers? Please share your favorite childhood books in this discussion (and whenever possible include the author's name as well as the title). Do you still have a copy of the book? Bet you do!

I received the complete set of C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia (in their own cardboard box set) for Christmas when I was eleven or twelve. We had very little money growing up, so the library was where I got most of my books, and I always had to give them back. It was a very special present, and I still have that set 30 years later.

I had already read the first five books, and never did like The Magician's Nephew or The Last Battle as much as the others - but Dawn Treader was always my favorite. I'm not even sure why, exactly. Maybe because Reepicheep is such a big part of it, and I always loved his pluck and chivalry. Or maybe because Lucy was starting to be treated like an adult instead of a child - and was respected by the entire crew of the ship. Or maybe it was because every new stop had new creatures, new adventures, and tons of humor.

I reread it again a few years ago - and I was surprised by how short it was. So much of Lewis's talent was in giving just enough detail to feed the imagination of the reader - I couldn't believe how sparse it was, yet the pictures in my head were so vivid. I can still see Lucy leaning over the ship and seeing the underwater girl looking up at her. I must have read Dawn Treader twice for every time I read any of the others.

I'm sure there are lots of other readers out there who will agree with me that "Harriet the Spy" by Louise Fitzhugh is an iconic childhood book. Harriet inspired me to keep a notebook of my own for several years. And more importantly Harriet was a role model for me in showing that kids could do "work" that was interesting and important.

Harriet the Spy!

I loved the Narnia series too, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was definitely a favorite but I still have a soft spot for The Silver Chair, because Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle is such a glorious character. I think of that book surprisingly often as something about the giant's house left its mark on me so that whenever I drive past one of the many "McMansions" that are springing up around us with their ridiculously huge front door I always get a flashback to Eustace, Jill and Puddleglum standing outside the house of the "gentle giants'" dwarfed by the huge doorway!

As a child I voraciously read the Nancy Drew series. As an adult I enjoy reading YA literature that I missed out on. (e.g. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine Engle.)

I loved the Little House On The Prarie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. My mom started reading them to me before I could read, but once I was able to read on my own, I read the series over and over again!

When I was in second grade, I was home in bed with the chicken pox. This was 60 years ago and kids were kept home longer than these days. The school nurse even visited me. My grandmother sent me a copy of Honey Bunch. I loved it and it helped the days pass much more quickly. I also read all the Nancy Drew books I could get my hands on. In the 9th grade, I read Girl of the Limberlost and just loved it. One day, riding the bus home from school, I was reading. All of a sudden I realized we had stopped. Gary, our bus driver, looked in his big mirror and said "Linda, are you going to get off the bus?" I was so engrossed in my book that I didn't realize I was home.

A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle! I tried to get my kids to read it when they were younger, and it broke my heart when neither of them were even remotely interested

My favorite was HEIDI by Johanna Spyri. I always loved the descriptions of the Alps since it was so different from the flat midwest area where I grew up. When I finally went to Switzerland and saw the Alps last year, it was a dream come true.

Oh, my. What a difficult question. Rather than a favorite book, as there are too many to even recall each one, let me digress a bit into a favorite genre which was/is poetry. As a quite young child I had a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses." While I no longer have a copy of that book, I often recall "by heart" many of the verses therein which I so loved. As I grew older I enjoyed a very old copy of the complete works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow which belonged to my mother and which I do have. While it is almost 100 years old and showing its age, I still enjoy refreshing my memory of some of my favorites within the volume. Because of those two books, I am still a poetry fan, have quite a collection of poetry books and enjoy my favorites over and over again.

My favorite childhood book is Jiji Lou: The Story of a Castoff Doll by Lurline Bowles Mayol and beautifully illustrated by Fern Bisel Peat. It was published in 1928 by The Saalfield Publishing Company. I still have my original hardback copy though it's in a very worn state. I read it over and over and over again, then read it to my children. The story is about a doll, cast out in a trash bin and the lovable Jinks the Junk Man who retrieves her to a new life with other cast-off dolls and toys. I remember staring at the illustrations and imagining what it would be like to be Jiji Lou.

The book is no longer being published but occasionally you can find an old copy on Amazon. Currently there is only 1 listed for $285! This definitely is a magical book that I will treasure a lifetime. If you happen to find a copy, sit down and read it for you, too, will be captivated.

Mine was The Giving Tree. Having a difficult childhood, I loved the idea of a person who loved you so much that they always had something to give no matter the cost to themself. I still tear up when I think about it

The story begins when Claudia Kincaid, an 11-year-old, decides to run away from home because she thinks her parents don't appreciate her. So she runs away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. She asks her younger brother Jamie who is 9 to accompany her.

Much of the early part of the novel details how Claudia and Jamie settle in at the museum: blending in with school groups on field trips during the day to learn more about the museum's exhibits, hiding in the bathroom at closing time to avoid the staff checking to make sure that all the patrons have left the museum, bathing in the fountain, picking up "wishing coins", and sleeping on antique beds. During their stay, they become fascinated with the newest exhibit: a beautiful statue of an angel, suspected to have been crafted by Michelangelo. They research the statue, and discover that it was sold to the museum by a Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, who lives in Farmington, Connecticut. They spend the last of their dwindling money to travel to Mrs. Frankweiler's house, where they discover the angel's secret, hidden in the erratically organized files in Mrs. Frankweiler's office.

I LOVED this book! I don't know if it appealed so much because I lived in CT at the time, and visited the MET once a year. But I always imagined hiding inside the museum and coming out at night to explore. What an adventure!

I read all the Sue Barton RN books. My mom always wanted to be a nurse and I think that influenced that particular choice of books for me. My local library was very small and had a bookmobile come each month.The local librarian was one of my favorite people because of many reasons, but one was letting me help her choose books. I have very fond memories of spending the summer reading and participating in reading contests. Do libraries do that these days?

Thanks for reminding me of those books. I too devoured them as a girl, but they didn't translate into a nursing career for me. I forgot the other day about another childhood favorite. The Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter. Also others that followed. In fact, when the books were out of print (back in now, thankfully) I found a used copy at an antique mall so now I can reread it whenever I like.

Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot to answer your question. Yes, libraries, at least the ones in Seattle and even the library at my church, still have summer reading contests for children.

I always enjoyed summer reading contests at the library when I was a child. When my son was young and we couldn't find a summer reading club, we set up one of our own with rewards given for a certain number of books read. It was a lot of fun and he did a lot of reading in the summer.

I loved the Boxcar Children books which were handed down to me by my sister and I devoured L. Frank Baum's Oz books.

LOTS of favorites, but the one that sticks in my memory is "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith. I first read it when I was about 11 but reread it all through my teenage years. I was taken with the story of the Irish American family living in the tenements in Brooklyn. It seemed far away from my little town in Louisiana, and the poverty, crowded conditions, the father's alcoholism, and the complex family dynamics fascinated me. The resilience of the children and the metaphor of a tree growing through the cracks in the concrete has stayed with me all these years. Although I didn't recognize it at the time, I believe it led me to a career as a social worker in the field of child welfare, where I worked for 30-plus years. Children's resilience in the face of the world's problems still fascinates me and I first experienced it first in this book!

I read non-stop as a kid, so there are many, many books I adored, many of which have been mentioned here (the Nancy Drew series, the Laura Ingalls Wilder series, and "A Wrinkle in Time" [which is still an absolute favorite of mine]). But a series you never even hear about anymore that I adored and even made one of my friends read was the Trixie Beldon series. I SO wanted to be her or even her best friend Honey. I still have all of them, and I don't plan on ever getting rid of them.

It was a tie between HEIDI & THE SECRET GARDEN.

As I got older I loved the NANCY DREW mysteries. I was so fascinated by the idea of her riding
around in her "roadster".

I did TINY TOTS STORYTIME and the SUMMER READING PROGRAM at our local library. It was a joy to
look into the faces of the young children sitting on the floor who were so wrapped up in the story. They were so bright and I was amazed at their senses of humor. They always knew the right place to laugh during the reading of a funny story. Ah....sweet memories.

Barbara

My favorite childhood book, which I read and reread many times over the years, was a Peanuts Treasury. I found the book online here (http://www.rubylane.com/item/440186-BK963/1968-Book-x96-Peanuts-Treasury) and I'm tempted to buy it, as my copy disappeared decades ago!

Even at the age of eight, I could empathize with Lucy's sarcasm, Linus's gentle wisdom, Snoopy's wild imaginings, Good Ol' Charlie Brown's various woes, and all of their frustrations with life and one another. It seemed Shultz's cast of characters were a microcosm of most of the people in my life. Lucy was my older sister, Linus my little brother, etc.

My favorite book was called "Hippity Hop Around the Block". My Mom tells me she must have read that book to me a thousand times!

Loved Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden, but my all time favorite was Little Woman. Remember my mom read it out loud to me one chapter at a time.

So many. Ones that particularly stand out are: the Nancy Drew series, anything written by Janet Lambert, The Secret Garden, The Little Princess, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. As I got into my teens, Marjorie Morningstar, can't remember the exact title of this one but the main character was Daisy Gordon and it was later made into a movie starring Natalie Wood and Robert Redford.

I agree that this is a hard question! As a child I LOVED the Little House series and Anne of Green Gables books.

When I was really little I loved "The Lonely Doll" (Edith) picture books by Dare Wright. When I was 11, "Anne Of Green Gables" was my very favorite. I was very shy as a child and I loved Anne's feistiness!!

The Boxcar Children... I wanted to be an orphan after I read that book! When I look back most of my favorites were orphan stories: Secret Garden and Jane Eyre were right up there.

This is an excellent question. Mine was The TV Kid by Betsy Byars. The obvious reason is that I watched a LOT of TV when I was a kid, so I could relate to Lennie. Not so much to his daydreaming of being on TV.

I loved it so much that a few years ago, I bought a copy of the 1st edition, with illustrations by Richard Cuffari. That's the way I always read it, and even though in my elementary school library we have both a copy of that 1st edition and of the 1998 reissue edition, I always put the original atop the stacks. However, it's never been checked out when I've done that, but I still put it up once in a while with that hope. Maybe toward the end of the school year, with more advanced reading skills, a student or two might.