I collect children’s books and am always looking for gems (new and old) I need to meet. My tastes run turn of the century to mid-century. Favorite authors are EB White, William Stieg, Kenneth Graham, Tove Jansson, Maurice Sendak’s less popular (and even stranger) works, Herge, Esther Averill, Ezra Jack Keats.
Recommendations warmly received. Thanks!
In childhood I loved all the books by E. Nesbit, in particular 5 Children and It, Phoenix and the Carpet, and Story of the Amulte. Nesbit was part of an extraordinarily rich period in English children’s literature.
Robert McCloskey. Charlotte Zolotow.
Love McCloskey especially ‘Time of Wonder’ which i put in the same spiritual category as the simpler book, ‘Dawn’ by Uri Shulevitz and the more complex ‘Paddle to the Sea’ by Holling C. Hollilng.
ONe of my favorite books of all time is “Up a Road Slowly”
Half Magic by Edward Eager.
Taash and the Jesters by Ellen Kindt McKenzie (1968) and the subsequent prequel Kashka. I read Taash in 3rd grade and have loved it ever since.
Okay, I LOVE “Paddle to the Sea”. My kids, unfortunately, never liked it as well as I did… How about Burt Dow?
This is one of the quirkier books I have.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_and_Moritz
The wild baby, by Barbro Lindgren is one of my favorites, as is a local author, Betty McDonald and her Mrs. Piggle Wiggle series.
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/the-magical-morality-of-mrs-piggle-wiggle/?_r=0
she also wrote The Egg & I, which was made into a movie with Fred Mcmurray and Claudette Colbert.
Besides "Sylvester & the Magic Pebble "and “Dr. De Soto”, I love William Stieg’s “CDB!”
My favorite line from “CDB!”:
U R N M N L :o3
I M N U M B N 
Our D LOVED Paddle to the Sea!
I am a Charlotte Zolotow fan as well
^You are only the second person I’ve ever known who read that!
Books I was particularly fond of:
Fantasy
E. Nesbit (especially House of Arden/Harding’s Luck - a pair of time travel books about the same events told from two points of view.)
Alan Garner - though his books get really, really weird (and barely for children after a while)
Peter Dickinsen - all sorts of interesting and different fantasies
Robin McKinley - The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown - non-Tolkienesque fantasy
Ursula K. LeGuin - The Wizard of Earthsea
Science Fiction
Sylvia Louise Engdahl - Enchantress from the Stars and The Far Side of Evil
John Christoper - The Tripod trilogy
Madeline L’Engle - A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels and the overlapping Austin books and the same characters showing up in her adult novels - so cool!
Diana Wynne Jones - she did wizards at boarding school long before J K Rowling
historical fiction
Harold Keith - Rifles for Watie
Rosemary Sutcliffe - Eagle of the Ninth and many others
Karen Cushman - Catherine, Called Birdy
Contemporary
K.M. Peyton - Fly-by-Night about a horse mad girl - the sequels and related books are more YA than children, but I love her character Pennington who is a gifted pianist trying not to be a juvenile deliquent.
Noel Streatfeild - love her books - they were given stupid shoe titles in the US
@NJtheaterMOM Ordered! That look up my alley!
@intparent How do I not have Burd Dow? Thank you!
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble! I hadn’t thought of that lovely book in 20 years…
@emeraldkity4 Oh wow my 6yo is going to go bonkers for Max and Moritz. Great rec!
@mathmom You rock. My kids (6 and 5, two boys) loved a graphic novel version of ‘A Wrinkle In Time.’ Such an awesome weird book. The rest are new to me apart from Nesbit which @katliamom also recommended. Great stuff. Books are my parenting substrate of choice.
The children’s classic I’d like to see burned is “The Rainbow Fish”, otherwise known as the “The Socialist Fish”