BellaOnline Forums Education Reading What was your favorite childhood book?

Lots of great books here. I enjoyed the Beverly Cleary books and Encyclopedia Brown. The Mixed Up Files was also a favorite. Probably my favorite book from my youth was A Wrinkle in Time. However, there's one kiddie book that still gets to me and at more than half a century, I still get misty when I read it; Love You Forever.

I loved the Red Fairy Tale book when I was young. As I grew, I loved A Wrinkle in Time and any book by Robert Heinlein.

Great picks! I also loved A Wrinkle in Time and Ramona the Pest. Agree that Love You Forever by Robert Munsch is wonderful. Adults seem to love it even more than children.

I also loved the Ballet Slippers type books and Betty Cavanna books. In a time when young girls were supposed to stand by and watch boys, Cavanna and Heinlein had heroines who were bold and active.

Not Ballet Slippers--Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild. I loved the Shoe Books.

Hello all,

Ah so many including Nancy Drew, Famous Five, Hardy Boys, Secret Seven, Aesops Fairy tales, classic renditions for kids - loved Dickens and Shakespeare as done by Puffin Publishers and they also did Roman and Greek Myths for kids. Scrooge, Great Expectations, Ullyses, Zeus and Athena and the Gods of Olympus. I don't remember who the publishers were but they did famous historical figures like the Venerable Bede, and Joan of Arc and Boadacia... loved them all and more, they were all so brave and courageous. Too many to think of but loved Noddy and Big Ears and other Enid Blyton stories too. Oh and what about all those bible stories? Loved them especially Cain and Abel, and Joseph's coat and Samson OMG so much more.

Am sorry that I missed so much like a lot of what I read above by authors I do not know about etc. The Narnia books must have been such a joy for the kids who read and read them today, I didn't and maybe should catch up now? Roal Dahl - nope not read hmmm how old am I tut tut!

Still, Treasure Island and Kim, and Jock of the Bushveldt and Gulliver's Travels were lots of fodder for little brains! I remember being so pleased when I could finally say BROBDIGNAG

What a joy a book is! What luck to be able to read!

As to having a favourite? Not possible for me to choose - but if I had to, it would be a close contest between Gulliver's Travels and Alice in Wonderland. Such imagination stretchers.


Thank you v v much for such a nice topic.
Cheers now

So many but these are at the top:

James and the Giant Peach
The Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Chronicles of Narnia (still my favorite)
Frog and Toad
Nancy Drew
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

Yes, I too loved James and the Giant Peach. Roald Dahl was a favorite author. Fantastic characters and crazy adventures! So many hideous adults. I read James and the Giant Peach and the BFG aloud every year when I was an elementary school teacher.

I just started reading Riding Freedom, by Pam Munoz Ryan, with my children. (1998) My girls (4th graders) LOVE it. The book is based on the true life adventures of a woman in the mid-1800's who disguised herself as a boy (and later as a man) so she could leave her orphanage and work with horses. She later became wealthy, moved to California, and bought land. She returned to being a woman, and was the first woman to vote in the state of California.