What are yours?


My list is about as long as my arm, we didn't have a lot of the well-known stuff, we had the Little Golden books with the Disney characters and stuff, and the fairy tale books and one flip-book with peter Pan on one side and Alice in Wonderland on the other, but that was about it.


Famous children's books I did NOT read as a kid:

Alice in Wonderland (we had an abridged version but I never read it until I was 16)
Through the Looking Glass
Mary Poppins
The Wizard of Oz
the Dr. Doolittle series
The Hardy Boys
Nancy Drew
Charlotte's Web
Stuart Little
Old Yeller
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
James and the Giant Peach
A Wrinkle in Time
Harriet the Spy
Maniac McGee
Goosebumps


basically you name it, I did NOT read it because we did not have it. How about everyone else?

This SO does not apply to me. I've read just about every popular children's book there was. I stayed in the library. I especially loved Shell Silverstein, Beverly Cleary and Judy Blumes' books.

Nystyle709 wrote:

This SO does not apply to me. I've read just about every popular children's book there was. I stayed in the library. I especially loved Shell Silverstein, Beverly Cleary and Judy Blumes' books.

This Shel Silverstein?

More like this Shel Silverstein:

I sold many copies of The Giving Tree, Where The Sidewalk Ends, The Missing Piece, etc. when I worked in a bookstore. I always got a chuckle from his picture on some of the dust jackets.



He looked more likely to cause nightmares than to be the author of beloved children's books.

I don't know if any of you remember the Johnny Cash hit, A Boy Named Sue but Shel wrote it (along with a later rebuttal from the father's side.)

I didn't read any of the top list until I had kids of my own, I also didn't read Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn until I was an adult. I was very very lucky, I was raised by my grandmother from the time I was 5 years old. I also learned to read then. She took me to the library and got me a card. In those days parents could determine what their child could read, by designating that the kid had to read to a certain age/grade level. Grandma (I miss her still) allowed me to read what ever I wanted as a result I was always reading above my grade level. By the end of 3rd grade I had polished off all the Nancy Drew books, by the 5th grade I was reading Pearl Buck , and my favorite book then and still a favorite was Ramona, by Helen Hunt Jackson. In the 6th grade I delved into history, etc. Reading was and still is one of my greatest joys. I mostly prefer non-fiction, simply because I find real people are more interesting than made up ones, at the same time I do read a bit of fiction. Having just last year discovered Janet Ivanovitch's many books. They are delightful and humorous. My all time favorite writer however was Taylor Caldwell.

I didn't read Tom Sawyer until I was I think, 13 or 14, and I only managed to get about halfway through Huckleberry Finn after that...I ought to try it again because I've got the other stories with them I plan to read soon.