(Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme brought to you by The Broke and the Bookish. Want to make your own list? Clicking the image will take you to this week’s post. Happy listing!)
Every bookish person has a book (or two, or 50) that they read over and over as a kid. Here’s ten of mine.
1. Little House on the Prairie (Laura Ingalls Wilder) – I read all of the books in Wilder’s series—and later the books about Rose, Laura’s daughter—but Little House on the Prairie was the first one I read. I read my copy until the cover fell off (for real; it’s taped on now), and I still have it.
2. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (E.L. Konigsburg) – I thought that Claudia and Jamie’s adventure sounded so fun and dangerous, and I hung on every word. This is another book I read until the binding came apart.
3. Dancing Shoes (Noel Streatfeild) – This was my favorite installment of Streatfeild’s Shoes books, and follows three orphaned girls and their adventures in a rambling boarding house. The girls are talented dancers and actresses, and the book is a nice balance between the harsh realities of poverty and the beauty of following your dreams.
4. Stellaluna (Janell Canon) – A book about a little bat who gets separated from her mother and is raised by a family of birds. Even though Stellaluna eventually finds her mother, she and her “siblings” Pip, Flitter, and Flap know that they’ll always love each other.
5. The Secret Garden [abridged] (Francis Hodgson Burnett) – I read several illustrated and abridged adaptations of this book as a kid, but didn’t read the unabridged version until recently (I loved it). My favorite was always Dicken.
6. All Creatures Great and Small (James Herriot) – The second in a series written by the English veterinarian James Alfred Wight. The descriptions of the English countryside, the animals, and the funny characters had be obsessed. I still love these books.
7. Love You Forever (Robert Munsch, illus. Sheila McGraw) – Read it about a million times. I can’t read it anymore, though, because it makes me cry.
8. Live Among the Savages and Raising Demons (Shirley Jackson) – While Jackson is best known for her horror writings, she wrote several autobiographical books about her family (husband, four kids, and assorted wild animals). Fabulously funny.
9. The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush (Tomie dePaola) – A beautiful illustrated legend. Didn’t you ever wonder why those wild flowers you see everywhere are called “Indian Paintbrushes”?
10. Erma Bombeck, Teresa Bloomingdale, and Prudence Mackintosh – The triumvirate of ridiculous and hilarious family escapades. Most of these books are from the 1950s – 1980s, but they were always laying around at my grandmother’s house, and I loved them. Still do, actually.
What are some of your childhood favorites? What memories do they bring back?
