Spin-off: Which books did you love as a child

[Professor Walsh]

The thread about books ifluencing us made me think about books I loved as a child. Here's a question for all the book lovers: Can you mention one or a few books you really loved as a child? (12 years and under)

 

[Blaze]

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone is one of only book I actually remember reading. Not that I didn't read, I just don't remember any of the books.

The other I remember liking is Bridge to Terabethia. I recently bought a used copy of it so I will reread it soon.

 

[thetopher]

By Ronald Dahl : The Twits, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, the BFG. I just loved the dark humor in these books.

various boy's adventure books inherited from by Dad; ranging from Biggles to lurid pulp to sword and sorcery like Conan. I loved all the Conan books.

The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
Alice In Wonderland: A classical favorite of mine.

Charlotte's Web by E.B White

Knights In Anarchy: George Shipway. I read this when I was 11 because my Dad knew I was a bloodthirsty little urchin It's incredibly gritty take on medieval life/warfare and gave me a lifelong love of history, but also made me ill at some points.

 

[Priceless]

The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
Harriet The Spy - Louise Fitzhugh
Ballet Shoes - Noel Streatfield
A Summer To Die - Lois Lowry
Welcome Home Jellybean - Marlene Fanta Shyer

I think all I did as a child was read so this list could be endless. I mostly loved death, misery, dancing and horses 🙂

 

[Geobubbles]

Loved R.L Stine from Goosebumps to Fear Street. A book called Dogs Tales by Emily Rodda. A whole bunch of Aussie Bites and Nibbles books. I also remember reading The Da Vinci Code and A Child Called It because mum was reading them so I decided to, the latter being extremely messed up but has always stuck with me.

 

[GwenRaiden]

I was an obsessive Point Horror reader. I think me and my sister collected just about all of the books. I still read them sometimes. 😀

A Child Called It

I read that when I was young too. It was horrific; so sad. It stayed with me a long time too. Did you read any of his two follow-up books?

 

[Geobubbles]

I was an obsessive Point Horror reader. I think me and my sister collected just about all of the books. I still read them sometimes. 😀

I read that when I was young too. It was horrific; so sad. It stayed with me a long time too. Did you read any of his two follow-up books?

Yes I did, it was all in the one book but I remember only getting through half of A Man Named Dave I think it was.

 

[Athena]

From memory (and from looking at the bookshelves!)

• Chronicles of Narnia, especially The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.
• Charlotte's Web
• Peter Rabbit
• Anything by Roald Dahl, but I especially loved Matilda, The BFG, Danny, The Champion of the World & James and the Giant Peach.
• Great Expectations
• Five Children and It

I was an obsessive Point Horror reader. I think me and my sister collected just about all of the books. I still read them sometimes. 😀

Same, but I class those as post-12 because I don't think I touched Point Horror til I was older than 12. I'm actually re-reading one of my favourite PH books right now 😉

 

[sk]

Lots of Astrid Lindgrens books. I was big fan.
Especially Mio min Mio (Mio my son in English?) comes to mind.

Also pretty sure I was 12 or younger when I read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings the first time. Absolutely loved them.
Remember that my older brother had to explain a lot of things for me when I read them the first time though. I might have been a bit too young for them.

/SK

 

[brinkster130]

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler By: E.L Konigsburg. I use to dream of getting sneaking into a museum and getting to spend the night.

 

[Blaze]

Completely forgot, I adored the hobbit as a kid.

Wish I could say the same for Lord of the Rings, but those books bore me to death. Then again I was only 10 when I read them.

 

[thrasherpix]

I was an avid reader of both fiction and nonfiction. And I'm another one for the books of Astrid Lindgren (not just the Pippi Longstocking ones).

I also reread the Dorrie the Little Witch series over and over (and also The Witch Next Door was a favorite), and have been since I was 6 (maybe earlier). I think Dorrie and Pippi (both very independent girls who were on their own, or practically so) had an affect on how I grew up, and prepped me for liking The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane that I mentioned in the other thread (not that such was the sole reason, just a contributing factor). I've always wanted a black cat to name Gink like from the Dorrie series.

This would shunt me to fantasy and scifi as I got older. My elementary school had The Cat Who Wished to be a Man which I checked out again and again for years (I think starting at the age of 9) and may have imprinted on me somewhat in how I view ideal romantic relationships (and come to think of it, the romantic affair between Lionel & Gillian in the book would be somewhat similar in dynamic to that between Rynn & Mario in The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, something that just now occurred to me). But I was unable to enjoy anything else by the same author (not even Time Cat).

I was a fan of the My Teacher is an Alien series, and was 10-11 when I read My teacher Flunked the Planet which was intense for me, and though I read it fewer times than the other books in the series, I also remember the events in it the most.

I believe I was 10 when I read the Alice books by Lewis Carroll.

By the age of 12 I was reading whatever "game books" (where you choose for the character in the book and go to the appropriate page) which I thought were brilliant at the time, and had to read every single one I came across.

When I was 12, I read Z for Zachariah (the movie that came out sounds very different) which was nightmarish for me (a girl is, as far as she knows, the lone survivor from a nuclear war, living on her own as I'd have loved to have done, when a scientist arrives and becomes increasingly sadistic and controlling of her until she's forced to leave), certainly not the feel good book of the year.

I know I read the Goosebumps book, but I'm not sure of when I started. I think I was 12, and read other horror for children before that (though Goosebumps was often comedy as it was horror), including Poems to Trouble Your Sleep in which I stared at the drawings while reading the rhymes over and over (I was even able to recite a lot of it as an adult before getting my own copy). Doing a quick search I found you can find the entire book (including illustrations) on pdf here

Though I came close to not reading one book The Monster at the End of this Book because the main character Grover was begging the reader not to turn the pages so that they wouldn't find the monster at the end. It wasn't that I was scared, but I felt bad for Grover, especially when the illustration was of him bricking up the next page so I couldn't turn it, and when I did he was covered in bricks and even more scared of the monster at the end of the book. Even so, I just HAD to see (sorry, Grover, but it turned out okay). I was 5 years old (and very new to reading), and the conflict between not wanting to hurt Grover but having to see how it ends was an intense internal struggle for me at the time. 😀

 

[Slayerofslayers]

I really enjoyed reading R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series as a child. Some of them actually had some creepy/disturbing images for a children's book series. I also became a big fan of the Animorphs book series by K.A. Applegate and still am. It's a great sci-fi/war story that brings up a lot of thought-provoking themes such as the horrors of war and its effects on people, ethical and moral debates, what it means to be human etc. I'm surprised that it was marketed as a kids series because of how deep and dark the series could be and how it seems not a lot of people have read it because it's really great.

 

[thrasherpix]

Animorphs book series by K.A. Applegate and still am. It's a great sci-fi/war story that brings up a lot of thought-provoking themes such as the horrors of war and its effects on people, ethical and moral debates, what it means to be human etc. I'm surprised that it was marketed as a kids series because of how deep and dark the series could be and how it seems not a lot of people have read it because it's really great.

KA Applegate also came out with the Everworld series. I was 17 (while I was a library volunteer) when I read it (or started to) and was certain that no one read the books before placing them in the children's section. It went into surprising detail about issues regarding mental health, the vilest racism, the horrors of war, killings, the descriptions of hearts being ripped out, and I recall a few scenes even making me shudder. Oh, yes, and a boy has to deal with issues of having been sexually molested by a camp counselor when he was younger, and there are vivid threats of castration and rape (of both genders) in it.

Still, the kids seemed to love it, especially the worst (and thus best) ones. I think I would've as a child, too (but I also think they should've been placed in the Young Adult/Teen section). It's too bad that Ms. Applegate had to pepper all the books with so many pop cultural references that dated the series fast and thus made it harder for kids in later years to follow (though any pop cultural references would've been lost on me when I was in elementary school anyway).

 

[white avenger]

I loved books about horses

"Black Beauty"
Walter Farley's "Black Stallion" series
"My Friend Flicka" and its sequels
"The Silver Brumby"

and fantasy/adventure

The "Conan" books
Just about anything about science fiction, myths, mythology, chivalry, and fantastic worlds

My favorite authors were

Edgar Rice Burroughs
Robert Heinlein
Andre Norton
L Sprague DeCamp
Edison Marshall

 

[Mylie]

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

I was completely obsessed!

 

[VisionBoy]

I'm another for the Goosebumps book club. I also had a lot of the Sabrina the Teenage Witch books.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and quite a few of Roald Dahl's books.

Oh and The Worst Witch series was my Harry Potter.

 

[Slayerofslayers]

KA Applegate also came out with the Everworld series. I was 17 (while I was a library volunteer) when I read it (or started to) and was certain that no one read the books before placing them in the children's section. It went into surprising detail about issues regarding mental health, the vilest racism, the horrors of war, killings, the descriptions of hearts being ripped out, and I recall a few scenes even making me shudder. Oh, yes, and a boy has to deal with issues of having been sexually molested by a camp counselor when he was younger, and there are vivid threats of castration and rape (of both genders) in it.

Still, the kids seemed to love it, especially the worst (and thus best) ones. I think I would've as a child, too (but I also think they should've been placed in the Young Adult/Teen section). It's too bad that Ms. Applegate had to pepper all the books with so many pop cultural references that dated the series fast and thus made it harder for kids in later years to follow (though any pop cultural references would've been lost on me when I was in elementary school anyway).

Yeah I heard about the Everworld series but never read it. That series and Animorphs should have definitely been placed in a different section like Young Adult. Though Animorphs doesn't have anything as dark as the last thing you mentioned, it definitely does have violent scenes of battles and heavy themes and plot lines that you wouldn't expect for a book series in a kids section. It might be because the main characters are around 12 or 13 when the series begins and around 16 when it ends so the publishers thought it should be marketed more as a kids series than a young adult series.

 

[Fuffy Baith]

I never really read much as a kid. I think I might have tried reading a couple of the Goosebumps books. I remember reading Dr. Suess books and Where The Wild Things Are. Oh, I liked Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.

Wish I could say the same for Lord of the Rings, but those books bore me to death. Then again I was only 10 when I read them.

damn! That's some advanced reading for a 10 year old! I think my niece read the Divergent books when she was 11. I've just always been far behind on reading I guess.

I also became a big fan of the Animorphs

I do remember reading (or just owning) one of the books, then watched the show. Lol

 

[Slayerofslayers]

I never really read much as a kid. I think I might have tried reading a couple of the Goosebumps books. I remember reading Dr. Suess books and Where The Wild Things Are. Oh, I liked Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.

damn! That's some advanced reading for a 10 year old! I think my niece read the Divergent books when she was 11. I've just always been far behind on reading I guess.

I do remember reading (or just owning) one of the books, then watched the show. Lol

What did you think of the one you read? The books are way better than the show they got a lot of things wrong and changed a lot of plot points lol but I'm curious to what you thought of the show since you didn't read the books.