<p>I just pulled out one of my favorite books from childhood to reread for the umpteenth time, but I’ve always remembered that first sentence. I’m sure lots of CCers know which book this is!</p>
<p>I’m also planning to reread The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder (have read that many times, too, last time when the boys were in elementary school), and Tree Grows in Brooklyn (ditto about reading a billion times “Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York”). Partly because winter is coming but largely because of the economic crisis. Isn’t it funny that these books are about people who struggled (of course, the girls from my quote were relatively well off, as they discovered)?</p>
<p>Any other good books–children’s lit or otherwise–for these days?</p>
<p>I just watched the hallmark movie Saturday – An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving. Apparently, it’s based on one of Lousia May Alcott’s short stories. I had never read that one. Anyway, I, too, went looking for my Little Women. <g></g></p>
<p>I can’t think of what Little House book it’s from but it’s earlier than The Long Winter…Mr. Edwards fords the stream, bearing the gifts “Santa gave him” for the girls…sweet potatoes to go with their rabbit stew, a candy stick for each girl “and one whole penny.” They all said “it was just too much.” Always makes me tear up.</p>
<p>missypie, I think that’s from the second book, Little House on the Prairie. I loved that, too! How wonderful to be so thrilled to get a new tin cup and a whole penny! (although we can all remember some Christmas when our kids fell in love with one inexpensive, little thing instead of the expensive toy–or with the box it came in!</p>
<p>I can’t think of a more successful combination of text and illustration than the Little House books and Garth Williams. (And one of the reasons I absolutely despised the television series.) Unless it’s Garth Williams and Charlotte’s Web! Hmm, and Roald Dahl–Quentin Blake.</p>
<p>Yes, it is from *Little House on the Prairie<a href=“I%20looked%20it%20up”>/I</a>. I read the entire series to my first two…I guess the youngest missed out. I have such fondness for those books. My 16 year old read her first words from the books…she was in preschool and looked at the title of a chapter and read, “Pa’s Bet.” We cried together when Mary went blind. We cried when the good old bulldog Jack died.</p>
<p>A few years ago, we drove the “long way” from St. Louis to Texas to visit Laura’s adult house in Mansfield, Missouri. Pa’s fiddle is in the museum there!!!</p>
<p>Mrs. Mike by Benedict and Nancy Freedman. The opening sentences: “The worst winter in fifty years, the old Scotsman had told me. I’d only been around for sixteen, but it was the worst I’d seen, and I was willing to take his word for the other thirty-four.”</p>
<p>Wrap yourself up in a blanket and have a BIG box of tissues handy.</p>
<p>I always LOVED the Little House on the Prairie series…I usually took them out from the library but I still have the only one I owned, By the Shores of Silver Lake. I felt so sorry for the family moving around so much and having to build a new house each time. Remember the sod one?</p>
<p>None of my own kids ever liked the books I cherished. Readers all, they have different tastes.</p>
<p>An Easter favorite is The Country Bunny and The Golden Shoes, by DuBose Hayward. I have my childhood copy and one I bought for my children but again, not favored.</p>
<p>I also loved The Little House about a country house that became dilapidated as the city grew around it. It was eventually moved back to an idyllic rural setting.</p>
<p>^^Neumes, when you read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn please note the reference to Ragamuffin Day. It is a particularly local custom, found in a small part of Brooklyn and Queens and in Jersey City, NJ. We dressed as beggars on Thanksgiving morning and went from house to house asking for pennies. There was no such thing as trick or treating in our neighborhood. If you weren’t from those parts you never heard of it.</p>
<p>We also will be cutting back this year, which is fine since we were never super-big spenders at Christmas anyhow. </p>
<p>These came out a bit late for college-age CC kids, but younger D loved Tomie DePaola’s short chapter autobiographies about growing up in New England during the 30’s. She gets to open one gift early, on Christmas eve, and it’s always a book. </p>
<p>They all loved the Beverly Cleary stories - Otis Spofford Henry Huggins, Ribsy, Ramona, Klickitat Street… I read each of them aloud at least four times each, and never really tired of them.</p>
<p>silvervestermom: wow, I didn’t know that tradition was still around–is it still, I wonder?</p>
<p>lspf72, I loved Beverly Cleary, too. It’s funny how simple daily life can make such good books. It’s a nice balance to fairy tales (which I also loved) and fantasy (HP).</p>
<p>My favorite: All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot, and all the books that he wrote. I still want to visit the area he worked in someday.</p>
<p>my oldest read all the little house books in 1st grade and went on to read the books written by her daughter. She absolutely loved them.
As her elementary school class made journals and followed wagons from the midwest to the northwest as part of history- she was in heaven.
Her class also took an overnight field trip to Pioneer farms- a replica working farm - her dad accompanied the class & while I carefully packed extra changes of clothes- she came home with her bag untouched ( full of straw- because they slept in the barn- but otherwise untouched), because the pioneers would have worn their clothes every day.
One of another of the chapter books she read, was one of my favorite books- Island of the Blue dolphins.
I was also happy to see that while Wrinkle in Time had been one of my favorite books- L’Engle had gone on to write * many* more, and D#1 read all those too.</p>
<p>Anne of Green Gables is a wonderful story…similiar in vein to what you have read… I got an audio version earlier this year for my iPod and I find it very enjoyable to listen to. Anne’s enthusiasm for the beauty around her, because her young life was so stark and sparse, is very powerful for me…helps me recharge my batteries just to listen to parts of it. I went and got many other books from Lucy Montgomery, and enjoyed them all. </p>
<p>Rosamund Pilcher is an author whose book The Shell Seekers evokes similiar feelings for me, but from the perspective of an adult. A kinder, gentler world…is how I think of her books. September is another one of her books, a sequel to Shell Seekers.</p>
<p>Vderon, I LOVE the Herriot books! Our sons’ choir got to spend a week at York Minster one summer and we were lucky enough to be chaperones (so got our way paid, but not our sons!). One chaperone set up a trip for the boys to Brimham Rocks in Yorkshire, which has an awesome view of farmlands (but I was sure one of the boys was going to fall off the rocks and break a leg–but only after I got a photo of him jumping from rock to rock, please). Brimham is south of Herriot-land but still in Yorkshire and I could envision Herriot driving around the narrow, winding roads tending to farm animals (in fact, I took one of his books to read on the trip, but was so exhausted I didn’t have time to read it. We could hardly understand our bus driver, who had a thick Yorkshire accent. It is gorgeous there–the greenest green and a beautiful light to the sky. The dollar’s better against the pound these days, but of course, years of college tuition will be keeping us at home for a long time!</p>
<p>Many fond memories of the books discussed here.</p>
<p>Someone above mentioned “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.” It is a favorite, and one book whose movie version is, I believe, as good as the original.
The book’s author, Barbara Robinson, lives in my area and has been very generous to local libraries. I heard her at one last month. She is now 80 years old but still vigorous, attractive and a delightful speaker.</p>
<p>Does anyone know “Five Little Peppers and How they Grew?” It is the story of the homey Pepper family, who share happy, challenging, poignant and joyful times.
From [Five</a> Little Peppers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Little_Peppers]Five”>Five Little Peppers - Wikipedia)
*“The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew” tells the story of how the Peppers live, learn, and play in their little brown house. They are poor, and Mamsie must work constantly to keep the wolf from the door, but they do it with gaiety and spirit that would not be expected.</p>
<p>The Peppers make do with whatever they have and the elder children try to make things special for the younger. Though tragedies often befall them, they bear it as best they are able and make the most of the good.*</p>