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Gateways to Wonder: the books you loved in childhood

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Berhael
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Posted: Sun 15 May , 2005 10:14 am
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I was raised on Famous Five books. Love that ginger beer. :D
My other childhood reading was a bit more... eclectic. Pearl S. Buck, Arthur C. Clarke, basically anything my parents had lying around.

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Griffon64
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Posted: Sun 15 May , 2005 10:56 am
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Ah, this was fun reading :D

Of course, most of my childhood books were Afrikaans, but I, also, feel the same about Anne of Green Gables as the others here, have read the Hobbit and then LOTR, read Famous Five, and ... I forget what others :oops: :LMAO:

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enchantress
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Posted: Sun 15 May , 2005 10:38 pm
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I read Anne of Green Gables too :D Though a bit later than the others I mentioned. I read it originally in Polish, and then years later read some of the english versions... I must say I liked it better in Polish :P In english I found them more dull... strange I say :P

Nienor SharkAttack - was Nils Holgersson stuff the thing about the little boy that got transformed into a little person and had a lot of adventures flying with geese or swans or something? If so, I loved that stuff, though I knew it only from a cartoon I watched in those days. :)
I remember one called "The Incredible Journey"...

While on movie/tv things, "Neverending Story" was a big childhood thing for me... though I never read the book.

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TheEllipticalDisillusion
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Posted: Mon 16 May , 2005 6:39 am
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The Princess Bride was a favorite of mine, though I've never read the book, but I should. I loved that movie/story.

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Primula_Baggins
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Posted: Mon 16 May , 2005 7:14 am
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The book is a hoot, TED. Don't miss it. (I love the movie, too. They do each other justice.)

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Nienor SharkAttack
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Posted: Mon 16 May , 2005 4:19 pm
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enchantress wrote:
Nienor SharkAttack - was Nils Holgersson stuff the thing about the little boy that got transformed into a little person and had a lot of adventures flying with geese or swans or something? If so, I loved that stuff, though I knew it only from a cartoon I watched in those days. :)
I remember one called "The Incredible Journey"...
Yes - geese. :)

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samaranth
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Posted: Thu 26 May , 2005 1:31 pm
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My top childhood stories would include some other LM Mongtomery stories Pat of Silver Bush and Miss Pat. I delved into these at the same time I first read (and fell in love with) the Anne books. They all helped create a picture of a time and a place very far away from my own.

The first story I remember reading was Pip and Pippita, a tale of two mice who lived in a hollow tree. It is the sweetest little story, and I was very taken with the tiny house – chairs made out of cotton reels, big buttons for dinner plates and so on. It all looked so cosy.

Miss Happiness and Miss Flower by Rumer Godden. The little girl in this story was shy, quiet, and very carefully and determinedly created something of delicate beauty. She was the first child character I’d read about who sounded as shy as I was.

One Australia favourite is Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner, written about 100 years ago, about a family living by the Parramatta River in Sydney. Children who are not ‘paragons of virtue’, but who challenge what they were told and aren’t afraid of the world.

I also read as many of the Chalet School books as I found in the library and in book shops. I loved the books, even though the school was the polar opposite of the boarding school I went too! (No Alps, for starters…)

Speaking of school stories, I also waded through the St Clare and Malory Towers books of Enid Blyton. As with the Secret Seven and Famous Five, there was a lot of mention of ‘hard boiled eggs, potted ham and lashings of ginger beer’. Just super.

I can’t forget to mention Jennie and Thomasina by Paul Gallico. About cats. Of course. :)

I first read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe when I was seven, and sick with pneumonia. I was ill for weeks, and driving my mother crazy. She went to the library in town and borrowed LWW, and I was just enraptured. We kept renewing the loan so I could read it again and again. I copied the pictures – including the map – but in the end we just had to give the book back. Eventually I read the remaining books in the series. My favourite is probably Dawn Treader, but I think all of them are favourites in their own way.

I read The Hobbit when I first went away to boarding school. I was so thrilled by the fact that there was a relatively well-stocked library there, plus the book store for school books, that I read the set English texts (of which the Hobbit was one) for all the years, not just my own. I was in book lover’s heaven. LoTR followed shortly afterwards, thanks to my brother who recommended it to me.


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The Tennis Ball Kid
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Posted: Thu 26 May , 2005 3:32 pm
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L.M. Montgomery was one that I read too, both the Anne and Emily books.


Also the Little House, and Margeurite Henry, and Narnia, and a bunch of others already mentioned...I was quite a voracious reader at a young age thanks to my mother. :)


I remember finding "A Wrinkle In Time" lying about one Christmas morning, I just read straight through, completely oblivious to anything else.


And of course, I had read both The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit by the time I was seven. It took me a bit longer to get into the Sil though.... :D





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Frelga
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Posted: Thu 26 May , 2005 10:58 pm
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Samaranth, is Jennie the story of a boy who turns into a kitten, Jennie being the adult cat who shows him how to be a cat? I vaguely remember reading a fascinating story like that, many years ago.

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samaranth
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Posted: Thu 26 May , 2005 11:49 pm
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That's the one, Frelga. It's told very much from the cat's point of view. :)


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Teremia
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Posted: Fri 27 May , 2005 6:27 am
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I'm tempted to start my list by saying "all of the above"!

But I'll relish the repetitions instead and add some of my own:

-- the Oz books. Oh, my goodness, was I ever a fan! I wrote one myself one summer when studying Latin became dull. Heck, I'm still a fan.
-- the Narnia books
-- Lord of the Rings
-- The Secret Garden, Frances Burnett
-- Swallows and Amazons (and all the sequels)
-- Edward Eager (Half Magic, Knights Castle, etc.)
-- E. Nesbit, esp. The Amulet (from whence many a Narnian detail is lifted), and The Phoenix and the Carpet, and the Magic City, and....
-- the Moomintroll books by Tove Jansson
-- Tom's Midnight Garden, by Philippa Pearce (have I spelled that correctly?)
-- Little Women, Little Men, Jo's Boys, Eight Cousins, Jack and Jill (Louisa May Alcott)
-- Little House in the Big Woods and etc. by Laura Ingalls Wilder (esp. The Long Winter, for some reason!! When my mother was dying I read On the Banks of Plum Creek aloud to her, and it seemed perfect. She read the Little House books to us all through our childhoods in a neverending loop.)
-- The Princess and the Goblin
-- Charlotte's Web
-- James and the Giant Peach
-- A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door (L'Engle)
-- Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Black Hearts in Battersea, Nightbirds on Nantucket by Joan Aiken
-- The Diamond in the Window, Swing in the Summerhouse, The Astonishing Stereoscope by Jane Langton.

Help! Help! Can't stop!! But I really must go to sleep now or regret it greatly tomorrow...


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ToshoftheWuffingas
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Posted: Fri 27 May , 2005 9:59 am
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I remember being encouraged to join the town library in my infant school. It's a pity I can't remember how old I was but I guess about 7 or 8. I remember the first two books I took out; Myths and legends of the North and the Arabian Nights (an expurgated edition :( ) I still remember the awfulness of the Volsung saga, the Bifrost bridge, that really weird creation myth, Fenris wolf and lots more. It was years later that I read LOTR but you see that I was well prepared. One pleasure was to get 4 books from the library, get on to the top deck of the bus for the 20 minute trip home and start the first pages of each one. I remember being bought a children's encyclopedia by a rich uncle and then going up to the Junoesque librarian and solemnly saying I wouldn't take out any books for a while as I had an encyclopedia to read. Our family was poor but my dad bought a second hand 10 volume set of Arthur Mee's encyclopedias (1924 edition!) for me. In retrospect they were stuffy, pompous, well padded and not much good but at the time I devoured them. I learnt the words to the Marseillaise from them for instance.
I read Little Women and some of the sequels. Before I was 11 I had learnt of the Second World War and I asked the children's librarian if I could read Mein Kampf from the adults library. She gave me a look and then went off to get it. Yay for librarians!

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Leafy
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Posted: Mon 30 May , 2005 8:19 pm
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For me...

Roald Dahl - my Dad did the best voice of the BFG ever...ever.

Enid Blyton both the Famous Five, and her more magical stories - they ignited my interest in the Little People

Narnia though i haven't read them all in order till... last week lol

I also loved A Little Princess (can't remember the author) because it really taught me that beautiful things can happen to someone who has nothing :) such a hopeful story.

Must say i've never read Anne of Green Gables... :oops:

And even worse, when my dad read the Hobbit to us when i was 8/9... i thought it was boring. i read it again at 12, and enjoyed it then, so that was ok, but i didn't read LOTR till FOTR came out... a self confessed m00bie n00bie *sigh* i blame my parents for not making me read it sooner :D

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Lily Rose
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Posted: Mon 30 May , 2005 9:19 pm
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I am very surprised that no one has mentioned The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. That is probably my all time favorite Childrens book. Here are some other of my favorites that I read as a child. Some have been mentioned, some haven't

-The Little House Series
-The Hobbit
-Island of the Blue Dolphin
-The Narnian Chronicles
-The Prydain Chronicles, by Lloyd Alexander
-A Wrinkle in Time and other Madelaine L'engle books
-Agatha Christie mysteries
-The Walking Drum by Louis L'Amour, which is still one of my all time favorites
-The original Hardy Boy and Nancy Drew mysteries

And many more, but I am bit short on time.

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TheMary
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Posted: Fri 08 Jul , 2005 6:30 pm
I took the stars from my eyes, and then I made a map, And knew that somehow I could find my way back; Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too - So I stayed in the darkness with you
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I love the the Phantom Tollbooth! :D

Runaway Bunny: My mother read it to my brother's and I when we were little.

Anything by Roald Dahl, more specifically Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda.

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs

Are you my Mother, by Dr. Seuss

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jeanelf
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Posted: Fri 08 Jul , 2005 7:12 pm
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Tosh, I completely relate to your library story -- a girlfriend and I would walk there (1 1/2 miles) in 7th grade all summer long and carry home tons of books. I loved it.

My godfather signed me up for "Best of Children's Book Club" back in the 60s/70s. I'd get a nice hard cover book every month and it certainly made me fall in love with reading....some of my favorites as a child:

Rascal
Treasure Island
Charlotte's Web
Harriet the Spy
ANY Nancy Drew story
Island of the Blue Dolphins
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
The Blue Fairy Book
Eight Cousins
The Wind in the Willows


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cemthinae
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Posted: Fri 08 Jul , 2005 8:03 pm
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I too "lived" in our public library! :D Because I was homeschooled I could volunteer there during the day... so many wonderful memories & so many wonderful books!

I've not time to list them all, but TTBK's got quite a similar list!

My best friend is a teacher & she's been giving me all sorts of children's books to read! There are truly some amazing childrens authors out there! :)


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MariaHobbit
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Posted: Fri 08 Jul , 2005 9:35 pm
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Black Stallion books were my favorite, along with anything else I could find about horses, including the Chincoteague books of course... up until I discovered Tarzan books when I was in third grade (about 8). After I'd read all 24 of them, I moved on to sci fi. I didn't encounter LOTR until about 12 or 13, and was already reading all sorts of adult novels.

edit: I read all the Laura Ingalls Wilder stuff too, although that was AFTER we moved out to our own little house in the big woods when I was 12... so my interest was almost.... professional, shall we say? ;)

I have not even heard of Anne of Green Gables before.

I also read all the Hardy Boys Mysteries. The Nancy Drew stuff didn't appeal.


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quillon
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Posted: Sat 23 Jul , 2005 4:40 pm
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Most of what I read as a child has already been listed. I loved Alcott's Eight Cousins and Little Women. I read all of the Little House books. I loved Anne of Green Gables and most of the subsequent novels of that series. I was really into The Black Stallion series. I read a ton of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Mysteries. Read a lot of stuff by Judy Blume. I really liked The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks and The Undertaker's Gone Bananas by Paul Zindel. And when I was really little, I adored The Bears Who Went to the Seaside but I don't know who wrote or illustrated it. Multi-colored bears in Hawaiian-print shirts and sunglasses, driving a VW Thing to the beach. The back of the vehicle was loaded down with their dog and a bunch of surfboards--it was the most exotic thing I'd ever seen! :)

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cemthinae
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Posted: Sat 23 Jul , 2005 5:38 pm
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Quote:
Read a lot of stuff by Judy Blume. I really liked The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks
I have almost the entire collection of Blume's kids books! I still love reading them!

The Indian in the Cupboard series was great also. My 9 year old brother is making his way through them right now. I love how he talks about Omri as though he is a real person! :)

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