Thanks to everyone for their own unique take on Pottermania. I agree with Heather’s comment — it’s amazing to see how many different opinions there are on one book and one writer. If you need any reminder regarding the subjectivity of the reading experience, just take a gander at the wide variety of opinions on a book that just sold, according to my exclusive and completely verifiable accounting, 78 bazillion copies in the last 72 hours.
Now lots of kids (of all ages) have officially grown up on Harry Potter, and as we all know, the books you read as a kid can have a profound effect on young and impressionable minds (children’s book writers everywhere just uttered a collective “Bwa ha ha!!”). Books open up new worlds to children and make some of them want to go on to become writers.
Little Nathan Bransford’s favorite books tended to involve a child living on their own or at war. I don’t know what that says about Little Nathan Bransford (or his grown up version). So my favorites included ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS by Scott O’Dell, RIFLES FOR WATIE by Harold Keith and especially MY SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN by Jean Craighead George (who is a longtime Curtis Brown client, and who I actually had the honor and pleasure of working with when I was an assistant in New York. There’s nothing quite like talking with someone you idolized as a child!)
So you tell me — what was your favorite book as a child?
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Kaytie M. Lee says
I read all of the Nancy Drew series my library had. I also loved LITTLE WOMEN, although my relationship with that book has become very complicated. I remember enjoying Judy Blume books. The first books I started buying on my own were Piers Anthony’s Xanth series.
I remember reading Island of the Blue Dolphins for school, as well as Bridge to Terabithia! And checking out The Silver Chalice from the school’s library…
Once I had my own library card I intentionally sought out the children’s novels that were obviously very old. Unfortunately I don’t remember titles as well as I’d hope. One in particular–a sci-fi book in which alien overlords put a silver controlling device on everyone’s head once they reach a certain birthday, and the hero had to rescue humanity from these aliens…I really wish I could remember the title of that one.
takoda says
“The Wind in the Willows”
Loved Mr. Toad and his car antics!
Liz says
Favorite children’s book had to be The Secret Garden…I loved that book.
I also loved to read Louisa M. Alcott, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lloyd Alexander and CS Lewis.
I enjoyed The Borrowers too:)
joycemocha says
Kaytie–sounds like the John Christopher series about the Tripods. Can’t remember the titles now, but your description sounds pretty accurate.
For me–the Black Stallion series was a favorite, as were the Little House books. I read pretty widely, though, with a focus on horse books, then science fiction and spy thrillers. For a little bit I was heavily into Arthurian stories.
Brian says
THE WESTING GAME.
I still revisit it once a year.
THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS. (Didn’t quite stand up to the test of time but freaked me out as a child.)
The Alvin Fernald series by Clifford Hicks.
Jim says
Since you named three I think I’ll go ahead and name three of my own favorites.
Where the Red Fern Grows, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Pigman.
I would have added My Side of the Mountain if you hadn’t already.
Lauren says
Mine was HARRIET THE SPY.
As a very shy, scared-of-everything child, I loved books about introverted, introspective characters who took control of their world and did something brave. Harriet was the ultimate. Of course, I kept my own spy notebook after reading that book. It inspired my first novel, too.
Second place goes to Judy Blume’s OTHERWISE KNOWN AS SHEILA THE GREAT. Once again, strong girl character, and also, freaking hilarious.
Merry Jelinek says
I still love The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – it has so many layers you don’t understand until you’re older…
The Outsiders, or any Hinton, was a favorite in middle grade.
I also loved Johnny Tremaine and A Light in the Forest.
Eric says
Joyce, you’re right re: Kaytie. Kaytie: the books are the Tripod Trilogy (though composed of four books) all by John Christopher: The White Mountains (1967), The City of Gold and Lead (1967), The Pool of Fire (1968), and When the Tripods Came (1989). Read them myself as a kid. I remembered them involuntarily when I read your post, since when you said “silver controlling device” I immediately thought “cap” (which is what they’re called in the books).
That said, I read a ton of golden age science fiction, as well as the greatest children’s author of all time, Dr. Seuss.
Eric says
Also, I just realized John Christopher is a pen name. The author’s real name is Samuel Youd.
Jillian says
I absolutely devoured the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. Over and over again.
Then, in seventh grade, I discovered the fantasy novels of Katherine Kurtz. (Not exactly appropriate material for a seventh grader, but what can I say? I was a bit precocious. Sadly, that wore off years ago.)
My love affair with the Deryni books catapulted me into the world of fantasy, which, aside from Jane Austen and comparable British Lit, is my favorite genre.
And so I write it. For children.
Oh. I also adored the poetry of Shel Silverstein and still do. His poems are wonderfully warped. Methinks I must love warped things.
I’ve come a long way since Little House On the Prairie.
paulv says
I feel I have to speak up for my all-time favorite, The World of Pooh by A. A. Milne. It can still bring tears to my eyes.
My other favorite, in a creepier vein, and which I also received as present on my 6th birthday, was Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales. Magic and gruesome death–just the thing for a young lad.
Scott says
ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHIN is an excellent choice. I loved that one as a kid. So is MY SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN, although it was too late for to read as a kid. I read it a couple years ago after meeting its author.
I read so much as a kid, that I can’t single out one book. But some of the books I loved in elementary school were THE CAY, THE ENORMOUS EGG, HARRIET THE SPY, the Hardy Boys, a book about a football QB called THE ROOKIE, TOM SAWYER. I discovered THE HOBBIT in Jr High and followed with the LORD OF THE RINGS.
I didn’t read as much in Jr High. Instead, I wrote my own stories. My reading picked up again in high school, mostly fantasy, mythology, and classics.
Mig says
I read all (and still have and value) THE THREE INVESTIGATORS mystery series. They were like the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew but way cooler.
A Paperback Writer says
Besides Little Women and A Little Princess, I loved mystery and supernatural-type books. The Three Investigators series was one of my favorites, with The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot being top of the list. (I recently found a copy of this among Amazon resellers, though I wish they’d republish the series.) And I LOVED Zilpha Keatley Snyder books. Some of hers are still in print and some aren’t. My most favorite of all of hers was The Velvet Room, followed by Black and Blue Magic (about a fatherless boy named Harry, who at age 11, discovers he has magical powers!), and The Headless Cupid. I also liked Snyeder’s The Egypt Game and The Truth About Stone Hollow.
When I got into my early teens, I fell in love with the Tripod trilogy (thanks, Eric, for telling me John Christopher’s real name!), then Mary Stewart’s King Arthur stories, and — of course — Tolkien!
jessie says
I adored The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In fact, I read and re-read the whole Chronicles of Narnia (this was before it was cool to be a geek) starting at about age 7 until I was probably 13 or 14. I also loved Alice in Wonderland and The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg. Oh, and The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. I still try to read that one once a year.
alternatefish says
I’m really liking this question because it is reminding me of all the great books I read that I’ve totally forgotten about. Like THE CAY and MY SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN.
That said, top prize goes to THE PRYDAIN CHRONICLES by my man Lloyd Alexander, as well as JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH and THE WITCHES and pretty much anything else Roald Dahl wrote. I am also still in possession of coverless copies of Patricia C. Wrede’s ENCHANTED FOREST CHRONICLES.
I guess I liked fantastical escapism.
DMH says
OMG! Someone else loved The Three Investigators! I absolutely loved that series.
I remember reading The Secret of Terror Castle (book #1), and my dad snuck into the room and shrieked. I screamed so loud! Then we started laughing. I, of course, began plotting my revenge.
Many of the books I loved had the MC getting lost in a fog or through a mirror, fighting for survival, and making their way back, a better and wiser kid.
BTW, Nathan, did you recently celebrate a birthday?
don killuminati says
Maus by art spiegelman
Bone by jeff smith
EVERY Redwall book
Calvin and Hobbes by watterson
The Never Ending Story by michael Ende
Moomin books by tove Jansson
Watership Down by richard adams
Animal Farm
Nathan Bransford says
DMH-
Yes, earlier in the month. I am now squarely in my late 20s.
DMH says
Well, Happy Birthday! Hope you got some good stuff!
Dave says
Wow, when I think back on what I read.
In grade school my parents were poor. They bought my brother and I a set of Grolier’s Encyclopedia and then nothing else up till I was 13. I just opened each letter of the encyclopedia and read what was in it. . . If it was printed, I read it.
I was taking piano and organ lessons, though. I wasn’t deprived, so to speak.
So when I hit 7th and we moved closer to relatives, I started reading all sorts of stuff. Tom Swift, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, AC Clark, Edgar Rice Burroughs. Sci Fi stuff. I remember memorizing lots of poetry out of the reference books, too. Vachal Lindsay, Longfellow, Wordsworth, Frost and others.
I only read “good literature” when I hit college. We studied several Shakespearean plays in high school but they were so pulled apart and distorted, I never appreciated them as literature.
I never read “kids” stories. I never read “age-appropriate” stuff. I just read and if I didn’t know a word, I had a dictionary. I remember asking the 10th grade teacher (A Nun) if I could do the report on “Stranger in a Strange Land.” she had never read it. Needless to say, she was shocked by its premise.
Those years, they had an experimental catechism with lots of philosophers in it. I read Camus, Joseph Fletcher, Simone de Bouviour, Nietsche, Tielhard de Chardin, DeCartes, and more.
When I think about this all now, I wonder why I even like to read or write.
Dave says
I forgot to say, my favorite books back then were by Albert Camus and Fyodor Dostoyevski.
Colorado Writer says
My all-time favorites are the Little House books. I still have all of them from my childhood.
Michele Lee says
Black Beauty, the Black Stallion books, anything by Roald Dahl, all books that I read over and over. I liked a lot of the Christopher Pike books too. I till think some of them are better than some of the adult horror I’ve read.
Writing Angel says
WINNIE THE POOH. Enough said. 🙂
KingM says
I liked My Side of the Mountain as well, but my favorites were probably the Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander, and the Narnia books.
bran fan says
Another Harriet the Spy fan, here. I read that one over and over.
Also, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. It is the funniest book I’ve ever read. I re-read it as an adult and it still cracks me up!
pws says
My Side of the Mountain – I think I nearly had that book memorized.
Brains Benton mysteries – There were only six, but I loved them.
Three Investigators – classic.
Tom Sawyer – suprised this hasn’t been mentioned yet. I must have read it twenty times growing up.
Enid Blyton – anything I could find by her I gobbled up, growing from the Secret 7 to the Fabulous Five (or whatever they were called).
Kaytie M. Lee says
Joycemocha and Eric are my new favorite heroes. Thanks, guys!
Robert Henshaw says
Can’t remember how old I was, but “April Morning” really stuck with me. The horror of being a child and actually being called to defend your country (against the invading British) was a lot scarier than anything I’d ever read by Stephen King and others.
A Paperback Writer says
Isn’t it amusing how you can often tell the ages of the contributors? For example, those of us who listed 3 Investigators obviously grew up in the 70s. Those of you who listed Maus are much younger.
Some books, like the Little House series (which I should’ve mentioned earlier that I loved), are timeless. But some of the books give away the age of those of us who loved them.
DeadlyAccurate says
My all-time favorite book was Willo Davis Roberts’ The Girl With The Silver Eyes. I still have it, even though I don’t have children.
Melissa says
Oh gosh…
Three Investigators
Trixie Beldon
Black Stallion
Chronicles of Narnia
A Wrinkle in Time
Where the Red Fern Grows
Bridge to Teribithia
Secret Garden
101 Dalmatians — the novel, not the Disney book
Bambi — also the novel, not the Disney book
Tall and Proud
Tom Burchfield says
Winnie the Pooh here, too. . . .
Kate says
One fuzzy yellow head stands out above all the rest–Winnie the Pooh. I also loved Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, The 5 Children & It, Little Women, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm–and to this day I still cry every time I read The LIttle House.
2readornot says
LINNETS AND VALERIANS was my number one favorite. I also loved Madeliene L’Engle from the first time I read any of her books.
Anonymous says
The 13 Clocks
Laura E. Goodin says
I just gave my 11-year-old kid _The Thirteen Clocks_ to read. Largely because I have forbidden her to reread the Harry Potter books (except for VII) until she’s branched out a bit. She is hotly resentful, but grudgingly admitted that it was a good book.
Marva says
Strangely, the earliest thing I remember reading is The Decameron by Boccacio. My parents had no idea what was in their bookcase.
It was an eye-opener for a 10-year old. Really, I read it when I was ten. I was pretty much ruined for all that other kid stuff after that.
Janet says
The Chronicles of Narnia, hands down. I was lending them out as my favourite books by the time I was seven. But Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, and Black Beauty also rated highly.
Angelle says
Margot Benary-Isbert (from memory) had a wonderful book about a German girl and her family trying to keep body and soul together after World War II. There’s a wonderful railroad car they convert into an apartment, lots of farm life, an outcast old lady in the woods, and I’ve had a soft spot for mastiffs ever since.
I really think seeing that war from another, ordinary side as a child deepened my empathy.
sex scenes at starbucks says
The Black Stallion
Crystal Jordan says
I have two favorites: WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE by Maurice Sendak and the ANNE OF GREEN GABLES series by L.M. Montgomery.
Crystal Jordan says
Oh, and happy belated birthday, Nathan from someone who’s only about 6 months behind you.
Sara says
THE SECRET GARDEN, THE LITTLE PRINCESS, TOM SAWYER and HUCK FINN. Oh, and ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
Heidi the Hick says
cI pretty much read ONLY horse stories until about age 12 or 13.
The Pony Problem by Barbara Holland
King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
…a whole shelf more although the best one was a little book with gorgeous pictures and an almost realistic plot: A HORSE CALLED DOODLEBUG by Irene Brady.
Still love it, still tear up when I read it!!
Being a farm kid with not much money and two ponies, I found a lot of horse books to be just plain stupid. I damn well knew you can’t love a horse into doing anything for you and it kind of irritated me that these fantastical kids had lovely horse lives…while I was riding bareback because I had no saddle! Worst of all? The Black Freakin Stallion. Even as a kid it bugged me. I was kind of jealous that this kid had nothing to do but tame a horse but mostly it just bugged me. Even at 10 I was skeptical.
Yeah I know I’m killing the dream. Sorry. Not really sorry. I’m still trying to conceive of the ultimate middle grade horse book that won’t warp a kid’s brain but will have some magic.
Then I discovered Brave New World and Atlas Shrugged and Canticle for Liebowitz and The HObbit and the Fionavar Tapestry and now I’m just thoroughly confused!!!!!
joycemocha says
Heidi the Hick–
Did you ever read any of Vian Smith’s young adult horse books? *Very* realistic portrayal of horse racing–especially steeplechase racing–in the UK.
Dorothy Lyons, while a bit fantastic, was also a bit more realistic about horses than others. Her “Blue Smoke” , while having a happy ending, also has a lot of angst and drama to it.
Then there’s Dorothy Potter Benedict’s Montana horse series–“Pagan the Black,” “Fabulous,” and “Bandoleer.” I only knew about the first two as a kid–and found “Bandoleer” as an adult. In the first two books, the protagonists are a boy and his adopted sister–in the last book, he’s dealing with wanting to go into the military (Vietnam era) and being jealous of her boyfriend.
Then the two of them admit their love for each other, and go off in the sunset to get married–after his dream horse gets killed while attempting to rescue the boyfriend.
Hmm. Guess there was a reason that one was never in a school library, huh?
But if you think kid horse books are horribly unrealistic, you’ve not read horses in fantasy and science fiction. Most are horrible, with horses as All-Knowing, All-Wise, All-Empowering to the little hick farmgirls who use them to escape a dreary lifestyle.
C.J. Cherryh does the best job in turning the stereotype, in my opinion, with carnivorous telepathic horses who will do *anything* for fresh-cooked bacon. (Riders at the Gate, Cloud’s Rider–but they’re SF, not F). I *recognize* her horses.
I *do* have a fantasy project centered around horses that I’m poking with–but the horses are most decidedly NOT wise Lipizzans. If anything, they’re Quarter Horse/Appaloosa types with Thoroughbred and Arabs snorting around. And they are telepathic, but they don’t communicate in words–just images, and not all of them can do that.
cate says
I can’t believe it.
Doesn’t anyone remember Ramona? As in Quimby. As in, one of the most memorable (IMHO) misfits in children’s literature. Can’t pick a favorite, but I still remember those Beverly Cleary books like I had read them yesterday.
The Anti-Wife says
Anything Nancy Drew or Trixie Belden. Loved the mysteries then and still do.