What about Pippi Longstocking and The All-of-a-Kind Family??
Any picture books by Patricia Polacco. Some of our family favorites in addition to the already mentioned Sylvester and the Magic Pebble and Dr De Soto are Ms Rumphius, Lyle, Lyle Crocodile and the House on 88th Street, Mouse Paint, the Tomie De Paola Strega Nona books especially.
My all-time favorite growing up were Babar and Madeleine, Make Way for Ducklings, a little bit later on was Nancy Drew. I did also like reading Cherry Ames. My favorite Seuss book is And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.
My Aunt gave me her entire collection of Little Colonel books because I used to read them when I visited, but none of her kids were interested in them. They are a little like some of the Louisa May Alcott’s but set in the South.
I love seeing all of the suggestions here as they bring back great memories. I would love to visit the Hampshire College Museum so will add it to my bucket list. If any of you are ever in the area of the UCSD (San Diego) campus, the widow of Dr. Suess (Theodor Geisel) donated his private collection to their library. It is a wonderful collection of his early sketches, mock-ups, cover designs with his notes, etc.
I loved Danny Dunn as a kid. I have to say that I have acquired copies of some of my childhood favorites that are out of print (thank you, Internet!) that my kids weren’t very interested in. But I am holding onto them in hopes of a grandchild that I can draw into their web someday…
“For more recent contemporary books I love Cynthia Voigt’s books about the Tillerman family - just love Dicey and her prickly Grandmother.”
Huge fan over here. But it’s disturbing to think how contemporary they aren’t – Dicey was 13 over 30 years ago.
Katherine Paterson’s sad, honest YA novels, especially the early ones that are less well known, like Jacob Have I Loved, and the Japanese/Chinese historical novels about young people (such as The Master Puppeteer). These are a great way to spark or feed an interest in different historical periods.
Agreed, but not as bad as The Great Gilly Hopkins. That’s more or less Greek tragedy for pre-teens. If you describe the plot to someone, it sure doesn’t sound like a children’s book. But it’s so real!
We have all the Moomintroll books! One of my kids went to Finnish camp for many years (no, we are not of Finnish descent!), spent a summer there in high school on a summer program, and studied in Helsinki for a semester in college. We have a collection of Moomintroll mugs that are everyone’s favorite, too.
I assume you mean Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. I liked these too, but it has occurred to me that she solved kids’ problems by giving them unregulated psychoactive drugs.
We had a very strange book about koalas where a baby koala eats oak leaves (instead of the eucalyptus leaves she is told to eat) and goes on what is clearly a psychedelic drug trip. It is called “The Smallest Koala”. As one Amazon review says, “only libraries desperate for stories about koalas should consider this one”. But we found it kind of creepily fascinating…,
These are bringing back such happy memories – and ideas for reading ones I haven’t encountered. It isn’t always easy to see what stands the test of time – my MIL gave D a copy of “Hitty - Her First Hundred Years,” to D, and neither of us ever got past about the fourth chapter, though it had been MIL’s favorite book. Or, possibly it is just a taste issue.
But Hitty brings up another point: I’m fairly irked that publishers print new versions of an existing book, materially changing the story and the writing. They did this with Hitty, and I really noticed it when D was given some Nancy Drew books. Not even close to the original. I can see – possibly – replacing outdated terms like “roadster,” but these were wholesale rewrites.
