Monday
Sep272010
Time to play!
Monday, September 27, 2010 at 7:35AM For fun.
Because I'm silly and like games.
Because I often ask my husband ridiculous hypothetical questions that he hates to answer. (Would you rather live in a cave, never seeing the light of day until you were 150 years old, or would you rather live in a beautiful palace in the Alps and die when you're 75?)
Because it's Monday and we have one million skeins of yarn to ship today.
Because I'm still wearing my fuzzy pistachio green bathrobe and I have to be to work in 20 minutes.
For fun, OK? For fun.
What were your favorite children's books when you were growing up?
Maybe your faves will show up as a colorway name, you never know!
P.S. The answer to the poll in the post below this one is C.
See, you are smart.
I knew I liked you.
Reader Comments (85)
I can't wait to see what some of your favorites were....maybe some of my favorites! I loved The Pink Motel and The Bad Times of Irma Baumlein by Carol Ryrie Brink, Treasures in the Snow by Patricia St. John (although I didn't read that until I was an adult), the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books by Betty MacDonald, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, the really old Nancy Drew books where her car was called a roadster and her hair was titian, and Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. It will be fun to read everyone's answers....fun question, Sharon!
This is terrible! When I was growing up in Malaysia, I didn't read. Neither did my parents read to me. When I was a teenager (I supposed I was still growing up then), I read the Enid Blyton's mystery series (Secret 7, Famous 5). Enid Blyton was an English Children's author. Now, in my 40's I started collecting those books through eBay again. I doubt these will become a colorway, but thinking of my kids' children's books - I like the Dr. Suess' Green Eggs and Ham.
Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussycat. We had a beautifully illustrated edition, and it's such a good poem that my sisters and I still know it off by heart today. Zilpha Keatley Snyder's The Egypt Game is one of the first novels I remember reading and it is a wonderfully imaginative story. I loved mysteries, too, especially Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden.
When I was little, I loved The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and now I love reading it to my daughter. Raggedy Ann and Andy books were also frequently bedtime stories. As I grew, my favorites included Roald Dahl's Matilda (closely followed by the rest of his books), The Babysitters' Club series, A Wrinkle in Time, and The Outsiders by SE Hinton.
Charlotte's Web! And Nancy Drew mysteries. And Cinderella.
I think my favorite book while growing up was "A Wrinkle in Time." I also loved just about everything Beverly Cleary wrote.
The Book of Three series by Lloyd Alexander, the Chronicles of Narnia, ANYTHING dealing with horses, anything by Dr. Seuss, The Velveteen Rabbit. I also had a huge book of fairy tales that I read over and over.
I could blather on about favorite books for hours, but here are some highlights. Wrinkle in Time, The Westing Game, Babysitters Club, Nancy Drew AND Nancy Drew Files, and The Phantom Tollbooth. Oh, and the Rats of Nimh.
Benjamin and Tulip by Rosemary Wells---hands down my favorite, though I was a voracious reader and loved many, many books. This is the one I always come back to. Illustrated in darling muted pinks and greens, it tells the story of Benajmin, who is a sweetheart, and Tulip, who lives to terrorize him. Last time I checked it was out of print, sadly.
One of my favorite things about being a mom is getting to introduce my favorite books to my girls! I also loved Enid Blyton (given me by my English mum!), M. L'Engle, The Boxcar Children, Laura Ingalls Wilder (On the Banks of Plum Creek could inspire a colorway, don't you think?), A Secret Garden (oh, THAT could be a colorway!) and A Little Princess. Like Rhiannon I also loved Zilpha Keatley Snyder (esp. Black and Blue Magic) and Trixie Belden (mysteries and horses - heaven!). And "From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankwiler" - it made me want to go live in a museum too! And of course the Narnia books, my girls love them too.
I bet the L'Engle books would make great colorways - her titles are as imaginative as her stories; A Wrinkle in Time, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, A Wind in the Door, Many Waters, Moon by Night, A Ring of Endless Light, Dragons in the Waters, The Small Rain, A House Like a Lotus, The Arm of the Starfish (wait, you have something like that) - don't those titles just sound inspirational? <3
Ok, I'll stop now. Maybe I should've been a librarian! ;)
Oh my, what a question! I suppose my answer would be very different depending on my age. I loved Dr. Seuss and Beatrix Potter (The Pie and the Patty-Pan stands out for some reason) when I was very young. When I was six, my parents bought a set of World Book encyclopedia and the childcraft series and I read them constantly....I would pick up a volume and start at the beginning, reading whatever caught my fancy. The sections on art and painting were my favourites. When I was a bit older, I loved Nancy Drew and another mystery series that I have trouble remembering the name of. It was about a student (?) nurse named Cherry or something like that. I also loved the British books sent by my family in England.
I am lucky to have parents that value reading and who passed a love of books on to me and my sister. Now that I am an auntie, I happy to be rediscovering all the old picture books I loved as a kid.
My favorite (then, and today) is "Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Day" by Judith Viorst - when I was in grad school, my sister gave me a copy as a pick me up for those days when nothing went right in the lab (it really does work). I'm also a big fan of "Caps For Sale" by Esphyr Slobodkina (thank you Reading Rainbow) and "I Can't Said The Ant" by Polly Cameron (great rhymes - it's out of print, but I found one on ebay)
I adored Roald Dahl books. The BFG, The Witches, Matilda, Jams & the Giant Peach, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Danny, the Champion of the World were some of my favorites by Dahl (and most of these have been made into movies!). I also loved The Golden Compass an the rest of Philip Pullman's trilogy. The Chronicles of Narnia were great, too. The books that made the biggest impact on me were the more adult-ish books: I read To Kill a Mockingbird when I was 8, Watership Down when I was around 10. I started reading some of Steinbeck's shorter novels like Of Mice and Men and Travels with Charlie around this time.
Since I was a good bit older than my brothers, I used to read to them a lot. Stellaluna, Goodnight Moon, The Very Hungry Catepillar, and Verdi were some of our favorites. They make pretty good colorways ;) since they cute illustrations.
I love seeing others' answers to this question!
Five Children and It by E. Nesbit, The Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum, Grimms Fairy Tales, The Hobbit by Tolkien, The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis, The Wind in the Willows, The Borrowers, so many many books! I love books!
Piggy In A Puddle was by far my favorite kids book. I've been looking for it on and off for years now. I intend to read it to my kids too someday. Oofy Poofy Nope!
I love anything by Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time and A Ring of Endless Light are my favorites. I still remember lines from them that would make perfect colorway names - "deep but dazzling darkness" and "resilient pewter"!
Whew! Thank you for saying "books" because if you'd asked me to pick just one, I wouldn't have been able to answer. I loved--and still love--Louisa May Alcott's books. Everyone seems to know about Little Women, but I also loved Little Men and Jo's Boys, as well as An Old Fashioned Girl, Eight Cousins, and Rose in Bloom (which I just finished rereading 2 days ago!). I still have my Laura Ingalls Wilder books, which I can't wait to read with the kids. The Little Princess is still a favorite of mine as well. And I used to read Nancy Drew but she was too much of a goody-two-shoes for me; I much preferred Trixie Belden.
My Mum read all of the Little House books to me, as well as the Anne of Green Gables series (quickly followed by everything else written by L. M. Montgomery.) Through my childhood I continued to re-read these favourites,but my absolute favourite book was (and still is) The Blue Castle by LMM. I think I first read this book when I was 12 and it really resonated with me as an awkward, pre-pubescent girl when nothing seemed to go right. Valancy, at 29, could never make anyone happy and eventually stopped trying, finding herself liberated from the fetters of her family obligations. And of course it ended happyily, as all Maud books do, which doesn't hurt.
I had oodles of favourites. One of my all-time favourites is John Dough and the Cherub by L. Frank Baum. It features such nobles as Para Bruin the rubber bear, the Isle of Phreex and Ali Dubh as well as Monsieur and Madame LeGrand. I also loved the Nancy Drew books and Enid Blyton, especially the Malory Towers and St. Claires boarding school stories. I liked Grimm's Fairy Tales, especially the version of Cinderella where the stepsisters have their heels and toes cut off to make them fit into the slipper. I loved the Hobbit and many of the other L Frank Baum Wizard of Oz stories.
As a younger kid I also loved the Twins series. Not sure who wrote them, but there were the Dutch Twins and the Irish Twins etc. I had a bunch of those.
Now you're making me all nostalgic.
And I forgot all about Pittypat and the Mifkets in John Dough and the Cherub. Black Oooboo was the leader of the Mifkets.
We had a copy of the original 1906 publication, and it had all those great Art Deco sort of illustrations. You simply must read it. I think it is my all-time favourite book.