What were some of your favorite childhood books?

Definitely Robert Munsch books!

All of the Nancy Drew books. Also enjoyed westerns by Zane Grey. Guess Jane Eyre was my very favorite.

The "Little House" books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, "The Black Stallion" books by Walter Farley, and "Chronicles of Narnia" by C.S. Lewis were some of my favorites!

Oh, dear, where to start....

Walter R Brooks' "Freddie the Pig" books - recently read some of these and they are still just as great as I remembered them.
E Nesbit - the magical ones like "The Amulet" rather than the "Railway Children" type.
Edward Eager - modern (well, 50s and 60s) takes on Nesbit's themes, such as bad-tempered magical beasts and wishes that don't work out the way you planned.
Narnia, of course.
Rudyard Kipling - the "Jungle Books" and the "Puck of Pook's Hill" books. Never really liked "Just So Stories", though - I never was a fan of the "precious" school of children's book. Didn't like Winnie the Pooh or Peter Pan, either.
Geoffrey Trease - cannot recommend his books enough. I also read most of his pale imitators, such as Henry Treece and Rosemary Sutcliffe, but he was the best at historical stories, by far.
Zilpha Keatley Snyder - "The Egypt Game"
Nicholas Stuart Grey - "Down in the Cellar"
Felix Salten - "Bambi"
Clive King - "Stig of the Dump"
Mary Norton - "The Borrowers" and "Bedknobs and Broomsticks"

I could go on and on and on.... I read almost everything I could find, and liked most of it well enough. Every Friday, I had a standing doctor's appointment, for an injection. I'd go home from school, get last week's library books, walk to my appointment (read "Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine" in the waiting room there, from about the age of 8) and then on to the library. Change my books (I was allowed ten a week) and walk home. Reading as I walked - did anybody else do this?

I was, and remain, a great fan of Rumer Godden, who also wrote books for adults. Two Godden books I read many times were "Miss Happiness and Miss Flower" and its sequel, "Little Plum," old copies of which are now treasured possessions. I also loved Kay Thompson's "Eloise" books and Gertrude Chandler Warner's "Boxcar Children" series.

However, my all-time favorite children's book may well be E.L. Konigsburg's "From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler," which I highly recommend.

The Nancy Drew series
Cherry Ames series
Little House series

Agony and I must be twins under the skin. Like her, I read just about anything I could lay my hands on and liked most of it. I really looked forward to getting my book list at the beginning of the school year and I had usually read all my English books before school started.

From memory, some of my favourite childhood books included:

"Born Free" by Joy Adamson
Anything by L M Montgomery - the Anne of Green Gables series, the Emily series etc.
"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" (when I was a kid I didn't know it was a series or I would have read the rest of the Narnia books)
The Donna Parker series (someone bought me the entire set for my birthday one year)
The Trixie Belden series
Agatha Christie books
"Manx Mouse" by Paul Gallico
"Little Women" and "Eight Cousins" by L M Alcott
Anything by Robert Thiele, especially "The Sun on the Stubble"
"Hill's End" by Ivan Southall
"Snugglepot and Cuddlepie" by May Gibbs

The last three authors are Australian so you may not have heard of them.

I am sure there are many more books I could name but that's all I can think of for now (early Alzheimer's)!

Years ago, I did a bookbinding course. There were about six women in the class and every one of us was rebinding her copies of "Snugglepot and Cuddlepie" and/or "Anne of Green Gables"!

I loved Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, and The Banskia men, and all the others like that.

I also really loved Enid Blyton - in particular the Faraway Tree series, the flying chair thing, and The Naughtiest Girl in the School, oh, and the ones about the circus! - and used to love going to my grandparents' place because they have a whole shelf in their bookshelf devoted to her.

I also really liked The Secret Seven and Famous Five (duh...just occured the me that those are Enid Blyton as well)

Those were when I was about 6-8, when I was 9 or 10 I discovered Tamora Pierce, and still love her books. In my later childhood (maybe 10-11) I discovered John Marsden (yeah yeah...probably too young to read his books then, but meh).

After that nothing really stands out, as I moved onto adults books pretty quickly.

Ooh reading others' responses made me remember other books I loved!

Definitely Nancy Drew (the yellow-cover ones! and any other newer ones), the Laura Ingalls Wilder books... Babysitters Club too, I loved all the Kit Pearson books... that's all I can remember right now!


I was definitely a book worm too - I was allowed taking out 15 books at a time on my library card. Loved it

I loved Enid Blyton too and had a large collection of her books at one time.
The Magic Faraway Tree and The Wishing Chair series were wonderful and Brere Rabbit.
Roald Dahl was another of my favourite authors growing up. The BFG, Georges Marvellous Medicine, Fantastic Mister Fox.
And then I found myself strangly addicted to Francine Pascals Sweet Valley Twins books, Emily Roddhas Teen Power Inc Series and Nancy Drew.

I forgot to mention Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta.
I was given it as a gift and its one of my favourite books that I still find myself rereading. Needless to say I knew it quite well by the time I reached highschool where it became required reading.

Oh, I also liked the Goosebumps books, Colin Theile, and Epaminondas. I forget who that was by, but I loved it!

I was very much an early book reader - I was reading Colin Theile confidently and happily by year 3 or 4.

oh, and I liked the Deltora Quest series by Emily Rodda.

Some of my favorites when I was a kid in the 60's were the Big Little Books published by Whitman. I especially remember the Dick Tracy, Daktari, Lone Ranger and Bonanza stories. Big Little Books were popular in the 30's and 40's and they made a brief comeback in the 60's. I was also hooked on the Classics Illustrated comic book line.

Other than these, I loved William Pene DuBois' "The Twenty-One Balloons".

tjoeb};>

Oh, when I was really really little, I loved the different stories in the Golden Circle series.

Miffy at the Seaside (Nijntje aan zee) was the book that taught me how to read, sort of. It used to be read to me every night.

Crusade in Jeans (Kruistocht in Spijerbroek) by Thea Beckman (also a Dutch author) is one of the only "youth" books I remember. It was my favourite for a long time anyway.

I remember doing a book report in the final year of elementary school, it was a book about time travel by Tonke Dragt. In the end, there was the type of solution that what they did back in the past turned out to be what had happened the first time round. Not a very good choice for an oral book report lol, it was hard to explain and those kids just wouldn't understand..

Then when I was about twelve I started to read fantasy and Stephen King. If I wasn't so messed up by TV already then that would have done it

I didn't really get into SK until I was about 13 or 14. I really got into Matthew Reilly in primary school though.

Oh, childhood books. Man, I read anything I could get my hands on, too. Started early with my folks reading to me, kept going and going and going.

Madeleine L'Engle. I was 4 when mom read Wrinkle in Time to us the first time. By the time I'd hit 4th grade, I'd gone through the entire Time Quartet, plus Arm of the Starfish and Dragons in the Water, and all the Austins books. (My favorite L'Engle: The Moon by Night, an Austins book, and A Wind in the Door, 2nd book of the Time Quartet.) As I mentioned here a long, long time ago, L'Engle was one of the first authors I read to my daughter, aloud while she was nursing.

Marguerite Henry. Misty, Stormy, Sea Star and of course Brighty of the Grand Canyon. What little girl doesn't love horse stories?

Lloyd Alexander. My mom bought us the Prydain Chronicles for Christmas when I was 8 and I loved every minute of them.

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, of course. And Narnia. Both of them were read to me first by my parents, before I was old enough to read, and I think I'd read through all of them again at least twice before I even got to junior high.

I loved Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary. Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing, Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, Are you There God, It's Me, Margaret and Beverly Cleary's Ramona books.

Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series was beautiful and I loved it.

Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness series also really stuck with me.

E.B. White, of course. Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little are still favorites.

Roald Dahl. I love Roald Dahl. Vermicious Knids. Man.

I loved John Bellairs, most particularly The Curse of the Blue Figurine.

Richard Peck's Blossom Culp books.

The Serendipity picture books by Stephen Cosgrove, and illustrated by the brilliantly talented Robin James. Morgan Morning still makes me cry. The books are stunning, the stories are sweet.

I also loved Winnie the Pooh and Beatrix Potter, Shel Silverstein's poetry books, Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott... Really, I could go on. The above are the standouts, and I'm lucky that my favorites were mostly series, otherwise my list would be very long indeed.

And for the record: Most of these books aren't just childhood favorites with me. I've read almost every one of them again as an adult, and almost across the board, found them equally enchanting now as I did then. The reading level makes them quick reads, and I can see how someone reading many of them for the first time as an adult might consider them somewhat shallow, but read with the understanding that they are meant for relatively young children, most of them hold up well, in my opinion. I really dearly love childrens' literature.

Oh yeah, I like The Dark is Rising sequence as well, though when I read that I was too old for my age to consider myself a kid. (when I say kid I think I'm thinking up to about 11)

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings I didn't really get into until high school.

Like many of you I was a total bookworm as a child, and still have fond memories of the tons of books I devoured then. Many have been mentioned already but surprisingly a lot of the classics haven't made an appearance in this thread yet.

I personally loved all the classics - The Little Women series, the Katy Did series, Hans Brinker, the Heidi books, The Water Babies, Black Beauty, Treasure Island, The Secret Garden, The Swiss Family Robinson, Little Lord Fauntleroy, A Little Princess, Ballet Shoes, any horse or ballet-themed series, the Narnia set . . .

I think I read every Little House on the Prairie book I could find, and Mary Poppins (though I only saw film of that one when my two older kids were little nippers).

I read as many Enid Blyton books as I could get my hands on - The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, The Mallory Towers and St Clare's series, Mistletoe farm, The Wishing Chair, The Faraway Tree set, and collections and collections of her short stories. Notions of fairyland and magical wizards, sweets growing on trees and 'invisibility' potions filled my childhood dreams. A nostalgic part of me still holds out the hope that perhaps just some of the magic might really exist.

I had a very few treasured books of poetry, which I still delve into from time to time.

I loved any Irish legends and fairytales. I guess I still do.

One single shelf of my 'home library' contains any of my childhood books which I was able to hold on to, as well as a couple of ones I bought again as an adult so as to revisit that wonderful world of 'kid lit'. I enjoy them as much nowadays as I did all those years ago. The well-thumbed pages are like old friends to me now, and they regularly get an airing Am I just a child at heart? Or too immature to let go of the past? Perhaps, but I like it like that

Where do I start? Mum and Dad always said I could read before I could talk. I was rarely seen without a book in my hand!
So lets start from toddler
The Tiger who came to Tea - Judith Kerr (I got a brand new copy of this for the "new generation" a few months ago. Still as good! )
Rhyming books - by Ladybird. They have to be my all time favourites. They were perfect to lull someone to sleep - although Mum was great at reading them, Dad really had a way with reading them. The Runaway all about a naughty rabbit called Sandy, is my definate favourite. I got my nieces a set when they were little, and thankfully still got them for the next generation!
Read it Youself and Well Loved Tales all by Ladybird books. They were lovely books, and can still remember being scared to death by the front picture of The Wolf and the Seven little Kids. I purposely kept that book at the bottom of the pile so the wolf couldn't get me.
Mr Men Books and Topsy and Tim - they weren't my particular favourites but they were good when there was nothing else!
Growing up a little from about 7 to 12
Got to be the awesome Enid Blyton. I couldn't get enough of her books. OK, looking back, some (well most!) of her books were a little "outdated", but they were so great to read. I was a massive Famous Five, and the Five Findouters and dog fan - I never liked the Secret Seven as much. The school stories - Malory Towers and St Clares particularly - were great to read. I also loved the stand-alone books, especially "Those Dreadful Children", "Shadow the Sheepdog", "The Family at Red Roofs" and "Six Bad Boys". My biggest regret is giving a few hundred - no exageration - Blyton books away. I could have made a packet on Ebay
The Chalet School series by Elinor M Brent Dyer. There was about 70 plus of them and I collected them all. And then - yes, just like the Blytons, I gave them away
Babysitters Club by Ann M Martin. They were good when there was nothing else A little repetative sometimes. But they always had so much fun
Sweet Valley Twins, Sweet Valley High - Francine Pascal. Again, like the Babysitters club, a little repetative and I never got into it as much as others
Goodnight Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian (spelling?) This is a really excellent book - I'd recommend it to anyone

I don't think I have ever fully grown up. I have been known to go in the local library and read a Blyton or two even now. Not to mention Harry Potter ...

I think I better stop now

The first book I remember having was "Sara Squirrel's Ready Made House" by Cicely Engfield,Which I looked up and there are still some copies around. I was three.
Enid B (and comics) were banned in my house,but I managed to read a few by subterfuge. My mother thought her books didn't exactly require much brain, and I am inclined to agree. However, we all need to read trashy stuff, like adults read magazines occasionally, so I suppose children are the same. The trouble was that children who read only EB were/are not being challenged.She is really good for ESL teaching , I must say.'At least children are reading something'
My most favourite book , as I have said many times remains 'Wind in the Willows', I fall back on this at times of stress, it is like comfort food.
It is really dangerous, I think, to say to a child,
"Oh you MUST read this, I loved it when I was your age"
That is a huge turn off.My mum , wise old bird, used to say "I don't know if you are ready for that" when she saw me with a book chosen from her shelf. It got me reading every time.
I had a stepmother, lovely lady, but she sent me a new Swallows and Amazons every Christmas. I don't think I ever did read them.

I lovedddddd those little golden books growing up and then the R.L. Stine books!!!

Yes, let's not forget Little Golden Books - I don't know if you have them in the UK and Aus. Many classics for small children were released in this cheap and widely available format. Garth Williams published many of his books with them, as did Margaret Wise Brown, Eloise Wilkens... I have one from my own childhood, an Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas book, illustrated by a then little known Richard Scarry.

oh definitely!!! Awesome guys I used to read Little Clifford that red dog too!! and my little pony tale books lol

jodi picoult is a fabulous writer too even though she doesn't write children's book! she's my current obsession!