query

[tigriswolf]

 So, what was your favorite childhood book?  Or your favorite kid book? 

(There is a purpose to this.  It involves helping children learn how to read.  So tell me!)

Comments

[thanatoseve.livejournal.com]

I had (still do) a battered copy of Fairytales that I have no idea where it came from.
The witches by Roald Dahl
Redwall by Brian Jacques
The Sword in the Stone by T H White

Probably more unfortunately brain malfunctioning.

[tigriswolf]

Thanks!

[ladyjanelly.livejournal.com]

A Wonder-Woman hard-bound book of comics from the early years.

I still blame some weird quirks of my sexuality to that.

I do recommend comics though to get kids started.

[tigriswolf]

Hmm...

[sgt-psycho.livejournal.com]

How young we talkin' here. Because I would say hands down "The Magic Tollbooth" for someone around ten-twelve.

[tigriswolf]

Grades 1-3.

[creeno.livejournal.com]

Green Eggs and Ham - Dr. Suess
Misty of Chincoteague - Marguerite Henry
King of the Wind - Marguerite Henry
BRG - Roald Dahl
Matilda - Roald Dahl

Those are just off the top of my head, what I read to up about 4th, 5th grade.

[creeno.livejournal.com]

D'oh. That should be BFG.

[tigriswolf]

I remember that book! *giggles*

[silverkit.livejournal.com]

Hmm, well anything by Roald Dahl (as others have pointed out), so "James and the Giant Peach" and also "The Mouse and the Motorcycle" by Beverly Cleary or any of Cleary's Ramona books.

Also, I'm not sure how well this would go over with some kids, but I think first-third grade is when the "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" books by Alvin Schwartz started to get passed around.

[tigriswolf]

Thanks!

[kimonkey7.livejournal.com]

I think my most favorite books are probably out of print, but they were 'The Big Tidy-Up' - about a girl who goes on strike from cleaning her room, 'The Best-Loved Doll' - which was a lesson about non-judgement and appreciating the things we love, even if others don't, and 'Harry by the Sea' - which i think was from a series featuring Harry the dog. All very engaging and great from younger kids.

[tigriswolf]

I haven't heard of any of those. I'll see if I can track 'em down!

[kimonkey7.livejournal.com]

Okay - so I got curious myself!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0805054677/ref=sib_fs_bod/103-1687373-9945408?ie=UTF8&p=S009&checkSum=Y1DaEXL1wIXekA0vFc%2F7wMVyRS8SJDKc6%2B4r1invBWA%3D#reader-link

http://www.thebestkidsbooksite.com/bookdetails.cfm?TopicID=831

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780375958212

[tigriswolf]

Oh, those just sound adorable. Thank you!

[henchgirl.livejournal.com]

god. so many.

but my favourite favourite was probably...the dark is rising sequence by susan cooper.

[tigriswolf]

Thanks!

[chrismouse.livejournal.com]

I'd like to both second that recommendation and ask how you liked the movie? Which I have not seen yet, but by the previews I think I am going to be disappointed.

[henchgirl.livejournal.com]

i haven't seen the movie either. i rather think it's too intricate to put into a movie. maybe a really extravagant tv series, but not a movie. not enough time to fit everything in.

Fantasy Novels

[fictionalfemme.livejournal.com]

Do you think Harry Potter is to old for the 1-3 grade set? Maybe one book a year so they can grow/mature as Harry does? My mom used to read my sister and I the Bobbsey Twin novels at a chapter a night...

I remember loving the Little Vampire series by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg, Amazon.com lists the Reading Level as 9-12 yrs, but I remember devouring them in 2nd grade. I also loved Choose Your Own Adventure books (especially this series of them, marketed to girls, called Heartquest). And I still go back to read Tamora Pierce's books. I also recommend 'So You Want to Be a Wizard' by Diane Duane or the classic Madeleine L'Engle's novels like 'A Wrinkle in Time'.

Re: Fantasy Novels

[tigriswolf]

I LOVE the Tortall series!

[caffienekitty]

I'll spare you the long list of remembered reading material from birth onward I just wrote.

General recommendations for ages 6-8... Depends on the person and family, really. I was reading at age three according to reports so my perspective of age-appropriate reading material is quite skewed. :-P

'Dark is Rising' is great, but for many readers that age it might be a bit frustrating. We didn't get 'Grey King' in school until grade 7, but I'd peg it around grade 5 average level. Roald Dahl, Gordan Korman's early stuff that he wrote when he was thirteen, a lot of stuff that's probably out of print like the "Great Brain" books, "Encyclopedia Brown" (though they'd be quite dated now, I think)... Really depends on the individual child and their family.

[tigriswolf]

Oh, c'mon! I'd find that list interesting.

Most of the kids'll be coming from harder homes, you know? Parents working too much, without a lot of time to spend with them.

[caffienekitty]

Well, okay, since you asked for it. I read absolutely everything and anything growing up. This is just stuff I remember off the top of my head.

Birth to age 4: A beat-up found copy of an issue of Hanna Barbera's Laff-a-Lympics, and a 'Spiderman vs Doctor Octopus' flip book. I learned to read from those, and read the Laff-a-lympics one to my cousin when I was three, according to observers. I was always horribly bored by 'Golden' books, or other 'learning to read' books.

4-6: Space Cat and the Kittens series, some series about a space monkey, the Madeline books, and a grade 5 reader from the early fifties left over from mom's school days.

6-8ish: A retrospective of Superman comics. The "Great Brain" books. Tintin and Asterix. The Secret World of Og. Harriet the Spy. Encyclopedia Brown books, and subsequently the first three and a half books of the 1972 Encyclopedia Brittanica. :-P

8-11: From about the age of 8 onward, I'd get about 20 books a week from the public library and read them all, find ones that I liked and hunt down the rest of the books by that author. "The Last Legionary" Series by Douglas Hill; I got in trouble for renewing "Galactic Warlord" over and over for an entire year from the public library. I also had a scary Scholastic Book Club order each time. Of the books bought through that, I remember "Best Friend Insurance" and another one by the same person about turning into a goose, "george" a book about a kid with a really odd invisible friend, something about kids with silver colored eyes doing evil things, an Australian version of Tron (sort of), "The Changeover" by Margaret Mahy....

11-13: Gordan Korman books, particularly "Our Man Weston". The Little House on the Prairie books. Chronicles of Narnia. The James Bond novels. Choose your own adventure books from age 8 through 13. Movie novelisations.

13-onward: "Dark is Rising" Sequence by Susan Cooper, "Stainless Steel Rat" series by Harry Harrison, Star Trek tie-in novels. Anything by Heinlein, Spider Robinson, Robert Asprin, Alan Dean Foster... Mostly sci-fi, got more into fantasy in my later teens/early twenties; Terry Pratchett and Robert Jordan. Didn't discover Lois McMaster Bujold until after college.

Lots of other stuff, but that's just the stuff that stands out from the 'growing up' years.


Now, recs for your bunch... "Secret World of Og", Harriet the Spy, and the "Great Brain" books would probably be good. Anything that involves a self-reliant acessible protagonist/s and an element of escapism.

[tigriswolf]

Wow. Nice memory!

[caffienekitty]

The scary thing is, I could probably take another hour and come up with 50 more. :-P

[dodger-winslow.livejournal.com]

Scrub: Dog of Alaska (Walt Morey) and Otherwhere, by I don't know who and I've never been able to find it again and that kills me because I sure wish I could. Probably 75% of the books I read as a kid were animal oriented in some way, most often also action and/or survival oriented. I consumed them by the library. (The Black Stallion Books, the Silver Chief books, anything Morey wrote, anything Montgomery or Kjelgard or Terhune wrote, etc). The other 25% were SF ... The Iron Cage (Andre Norton), The White Mountains trilogy (John Christopher) and the A Wrinkle in Time trilogy (Madeline L'Engle) were particular favorites, as well as anything by Alan Dean Foster (although that was more in the young adult category than "kid").

[tigriswolf]

Thank you!

[mercurydraconix.livejournal.com]

Hm.

Matilda, Roald Dahl.
The Boxcar Children. Gertrude Chandler Warner.
A Little Princess. Francis Hodgson Burnett.
Dealing With Dragons. Patricia C Wrede. (and the rest of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles)
Harriet the Spy. Louise Fitzhugh.
The Redwall books. Brian Jaques.

[mercurydraconix.livejournal.com]

i meant to say, gender will probably play a big difference, and yet at the same time, maybe not as much as you might think.

for example, my brother (who, admittedly, was pretty awesome for a boy, particularly in terms of reading material) was really enthusiastic about Matilda - when I gave my nephew The Witches (because he and his father are SUPER SENSITIVE about Girl Stuff) my brother was all "uh, Matilda was better..." He also really liked Dealing With Dragons, which has one not completely lame male character, and the Alanna books by Tamora Pierce.

On the other hand, my nephews are .. not so enlightened. If there aren't ninjas or explosions or ninjas who are also turtles or at least Male Main Characters, they're ... not interested. And I know I was all "oh no, I'm not reading Hardy Boys, I might like mysteries but there has to be girls. Nancy Drew for me!"

[tigriswolf]

My cousins are like that. It's annoying.

[tigriswolf]

Oh, The Enchanted Forest Chronicles! AWESOME series.

[jelloh0530.livejournal.com]

Ok, I was a serious booknerd as a child - but if I have to name a favorite, it'll be "The Velveteen Rabbit", every time.

I'd never "lived" in a book before. I'd never thought about death, or what happens to those who are left behind. It was one of those books that was read at the right time in my life, and it dramatically changed the way I viewed things. I was 7 or 8 at the time, and I sobbed reading it - I only saw the negative, I think, and I never read it again until last year when I found a very old copy of the book and bought it for my 5 year old son. I re-read it, aloud to him, and it STILL made tears well up in my eyes - and his.

It's just a beautiful little story with so much to teach children about life.

Wow, your flist has awesome powers of memory.

Or insane google-fu.

*eyes the books that they were reading at 6 years of age*

But yeah, by 8, girls usually have read their first (2nd or 3rd) books by Madeleine L'Engle and Beverly Cleary, some "Superfudge" and other Judy Blume books. My father was very strict on what I was allowed to read (total freaking loon), and I wasn't supposed to read anything that didn't look nice. Fairy books, horror stories, etc.etc., but R.L. Stine was a favorite of mine when I got a bit older, and I WOULD have liked it around 2nd or 3rd grade, lol. Same goes for the Narnia books and other series like that.

But... still.

At 7 or 8, my favorite book in the world was "The Velveteen Rabbit".

[tigriswolf]

That's on the list, for sure. I still have my Velveteen Bunny toy.

[trishabooms.livejournal.com]

I had quite a few.
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (I still read and love this one).
My absolute favourite however is Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. It has everything; action, adventure, romance, star-crossed lovers etc.. Wonderful book!!

[tigriswolf]

Thank you!

[grandiose666.livejournal.com]

in roughly oldest-youngest order

Ronia the Robber's Daughter, think by Astrid Lindgren. It was about grade 3 ish and up, my absolute fave, no one else has mentioned it.

Wrinnkle in time series
Scott O'dell Island of the blue dolpins, zia, My name is not Angelica, etc I was really into this genre at 9 to about 11 ish
RL stine's earlier works (pre-goosebumps, and only if the kid is into ghost stories)
Nancy drew
Roald Dahl-- Matilda, bfg, james and the giant peach, etc--but screen them all first for violence/nastiness!

I second the sword in the stone by th white, although I only got to that one in high school.

Also, short stories by Ray Bradbury. Loved these in a few collections.

[tigriswolf]

Thankees!