What was your favourite book or series as a kid?

I liked the Disney princess stories as a kid and Thomas the tank engine too.

The Animorphs series by K. A. Applegate. I started reading them when I was 10 and read them all through middle school. Still have them all.

When I was really little, it was The Chronicles of Narnia all the way. I used to read them over and over and over and over and over and over and over, ad nauseum.

When I got a bit older, (ie, seven or so), it was Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series. I loved those books so much that I persuaded my parents to take me to De Smet for summer vacation.

And when I was ten, I discovered The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. They were my favourites for a long, long time. Taran Wanderer still ranks as one of my Top 5 Favourite Books.

Easy --Nancy Drew! I had the entire hardcover collection and my mother THREW THEM OUT when I left for college.

I also have to second Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series and IMHO the Harry Potter of the 70's series The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. Come to think of it, I need to re-read them to actually see how they compare to HP.

I completely forgot about Nancy Drew! I used to borrow them from the school library. I'd get one in the morning, read it that night, and exchange it for a new one the next day.

I personally loved the Goosebumps series by R.L Stine ... I read every book I could get my hands on. I didn't really know about many other series/books out there, as my parents were completely uninterested in the topic as a whole ... so I had to fend for myself ... but it all worked out in the end. ;)

The Rick Brant Science Adventure series by John Blaine. I see there are now a couple of ones I never read. Hmm.

I remember the Tom Swift Jr series in the mid-1950's, when I first started going to public libraries. Also, the Arabian Nights, the Odyssey of Homer in a children's version, besides the Little House on the Prairie.

How young (what age group) are we talking about here..? (I'm still a 'kid' at heart :P)

World of Pooh by A. A. Milne is one of my all-time favourites. Others include the tales by Beatrix Potter.

I liked The boxcar kids series of mysteries, Sweet Valley High series, and Judy Blume the most!

At age 6, it was The Lone Ranger novels. From there I moved on to dogs Albert Payson Terhune and horses Walter Farley, and to Nancy Drew and Beverly Gray.

No Brainer ..

Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. Its sequel The Long Secret was great. I recently discovered a third "Harriet" book: Sport - it was awful. Apparently, from what I gather, the publishers had rejected that manuscript during Fitzhugh's lifetime, but agreed to a posthumous run based upon Harriet's (continuing) popularity. It seems Fitzhugh was working on a fourth book (Harriet-centered) at the time of death.

The recent attempt by a new author to write such a book was ... almost bizzare, as some of its facts/events directly contradicted those in Sport.

I had a few favourites...

The babysitters club, Nancy Drew. Little House on the Prairie series, Anne of Green Gables series, Alex series, Judy Bloom books, the Alanna series by Tamora Pierce, Paula Danziger like Remember me to Harold Square and when I was a little bit older Tomorrow when the war began series and Belgariad & Mallorean series by David Eddings.

Nancy Drew for sure. The Little House series, too. and of course The Black Stallion series which I read to shreds. Throw in some Beverly Cleary and some Judy Bloom and it's pretty much complete.

the only 2 series I can remember reading as a young kid are Encyclopedia Brown mystery books and the Sugar Creek Gang I thought both were great.

Very interesting topic. I enjoy seeing everyone's answers. So many of you wrote series that weren't even out yet when I was a child. I guess I'm getting old. Snow Treasure by Marie McSwigan was a family favorite when I was a child. My mother read it as a child, my sisters and I did, and now my nieces and nephews have loved it. As to a series, I remember reading three of the Wizard of Oz books in one day, and having such a headache afterward.

Enid Blyton's The Famous Five and The Secret Seven. And those school stories where girls solved crimes, played lacrosse and had midnight feasts with lashings of tomatoes.

Enid Blyton, arabian nights, superman, pop ups and all of disney works were my favourites as a child

I would have read Winnie the Pooh at the same age as Tom Swift Jr. I also read the Wind in the Willows at this age. I didn't discover The lion, the witch and the wardrobe and the others, until I was an adult, so it doesn't count for me, nor do the Arthurian Susan Cooper novels.

One series that I LOVED as a child that hasn't yet been mentioned was the Ramona Quimby books by Beverly Cleary. Also loved the Little House on the Prairie books, the Babysitters' Club by Ann M. Martin, Sweet Valley Twins/Sweet Valley high (so trashy when I think about it), and Nancy Drew.

I forgot a series that I loved that probably introduced me to mysteries. Yes, I later read Nancy Drew, but I started with The Happy Hollisters mysteries by Jerry West. My sister and I both loved that entire series.

I loved the Ballet Shoes and White Boots books. When much younger I adored Winnie the Pooh as well. I was also a fan of the Point Horror series.

I agree with a lot of folks here... Ramona books by Beverly Cleary, Little House on the Prairie, Dark is rising, Encyclopedia Brown, Lloyd Alexander... I also remember being addicted to the Choose Your Own Adventure books. I did read Nancy Drew, but enjoyed the Hardy Boys more.

As for non-series books, two of my favorites were Peppermints in the Parlor and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. I also loved The Witch of Blackbird pond.

At a younger age, the Dorrie books by Patricia Coombs were favorites. I also loved the Maggie B, and my hands down all time favorite picture book was When the Sky Is Like Lace.

>24 jagmuse:, Oh wow - Choose Your Own Adventure! I had forgotten about those, but they were so fun. In like 5th or 6th grade, I actually wrote my own Choose Your Own Adventure book for a school project - it was very 1950s nostalgia-centric. One option led to the reader going to an Elvis concert but several were very dark - you could end up dead through so many of the options!

>25 fannyprice: I know, I had forgotten too, but thinking about this reminded me. I hadn't thought of them in YEARS! I always obsessed over them, making sure that I got to every ending eventually!

I completely loved the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome. I can remember hanging around the library waiting for one to be returned . . and when I received one of the books for Christmas I was over the moon!

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham. I had such crushes on half the girls in that book.

#21 - I mentioned her. : ) check out #14.

Oh and I loved the Encyclopedia Brown books. To this day if I come across a mention of General "Stonewall" Jackson, I think of on of his cases. : )

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott was my favourite. Does anyone remember The Five Little Peppers and how they grew? That was my second choice of favourite books

>29 Bookmarque:, so you did! My bad. I was looking for "Ramona" when I started reading these posts - I confess I couldn't remember the author's name until I looked "Ramona Quimby" up on Wikipedia. :)

>30 torontoc:, How did I forget to mention Little Women? Such a great book.

Every night of my childhood and on through that of a large group of younger siblings, one or the other of my parents read to us.

We loved the Thornton W. Burgess books about animals and the woods, especially Grandfather Frog, and named parts of our woods after places in his stories.

The Little House books, the Five Little Peppers and the Bobbessy Twins were also favorites. Most anticipated of all were the serial stories from our magazines (as we emerged from babyhood, each of us acquired our own magazine subscription). The Jack and Jill magazine had great serials, and I still remember one called Wild Geese Flying.

Now that I am older, I can appreciate how sleepy my parents must have been after doing the evening milking, settling down among children ravenous for stories, and rationing out the chapters even-handedly.

Strange that Marchpane mentions the Thornton W. Burgess books among favorite childhood books. I too, loved to hear those wonderful nature stories as my fourth grade teacher read so many of them over the school year. That was in the 1940's.

Marchpane thanks. I've been struggling to remember those books with the anthropomorphized animals. Even though I couldn't remember the author, I remember the books vividly and how grown up they made me feel. They had chapters and more words than pictures and I finally got to use the bookmarks supplied by the library - what a step up from the picture books I graduated from. : )

The Thornton W. Burgess books seem to have disappeared en masse after the early 1960s... maybe the original printings just gave out after 40 or 50 years. They were mostly written from 1900 to the early 20s, as far as I can tell, and perhaps not reprinted very often.

Ours must have belonged to my mother as a child, and after decades of use are extremely structurally challenged even after several applications of library tape. I've been looking for copies of my own with no success, and have thought of re-issuing Grandfather Frog by myself if he is now in the public domain.

As a grade school kid back in the 70s, paperback book clubs were popular (paperbacks were about 75 cents...ah, the good ol' days) and my very generous parents allowed me to buy as many books as I wanted. The books that stuck with me were S. E. Hinton's books, The Outsiders, That was then, this is now, Rumble Fish and Tex.

Possibly Marchpane, but I remember them as having coated press-board covers of beige with a scene from the book in color. This was in the 1970s and the books at the library didn't seem so old and beat up to me...will scour google.

Something like this only lighter beige.



they might have had special library binding, come to think of it.

Oh, yes, Torontoc. Little Women was a favorite of mine, too. My father gave it to me in first grade, when I was a little young to read it. I also loved The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew as well as Alcott's Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom. You're right. Those were some of my favorites, too.

It seems that I missed out on an awful lot in my original post! I also got a big kick out of the Boxcar Children, The Babysitters' Club, Goosebumps, all Beverly Cleary's stuff, Encyclopedia Brown, and the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books. When I was ten or eleven, I read a whole bunch of Christopher Pike and Fear Street, too, riding the teen horror wave.

re: #37 and #38. Bookmarque, I missed those editions completely! Thanks for posting the Dover cover.

re: #33. Gordon529-- The Burgess books have always seemed best read aloud.

I was inspired to visit gutenberg.org after posting that I couldn't find the books, and have just had a mini-Thornton Burgess festival.

They have free downloadable text-only ebooks of public domain works, which you are probably already familiar with-- and also html versions including the original cover and illustrations.

Gutenberg's public domain texts include a lot of Victorian and Edwardian childrens books. Definitely a treasure trove for those whose childhood memories include 19th century hand-me-downs.

Someone finally mentioned the S.E. Hinton. I loved her books as a kid and I got to teach The Outsiders a few years ago. I was very happy to find that kids still really like the story. Several students went on to read the others also.

I also loved Ramona the Pest and read everything Beverly Cleary wrote that I could get my hands on. Judy Blume was another author I read every book I could find. Another I really liked was the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series. I haven't seen that one since having my own kids, though. My absolute favorite was Pippi Longstocking. She was my hero - her own money, her own house, her own monkey... and nothing like the girl in those annoying movies.

The first series I can remember really getting into when I was younger were Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar books and the Doc Savage stories by Kenneth Robeson.

I loved to read The Chronicles of Narnia , Judy Blume books, and my favorite was The Boxcar Children series by Gertrude Chandler Warner!! I would pretend to be one of the kids..trying to solve the mystery!! I think I read some Beverly Cleary books too!

This post brings back memories. My all time favorite was Nancy Drew, The Babysitters Club, The Hardy Boys, The Boxcar Children, Little House on the Prairie series and of course Judy Blume.

Memories! My absolute favourites were always the Swallows and Amazons, which someone else already talked about above. No-one seems to have mentioned Richmal Crompton's Just William series yet - definitely a favourite, although I don't think they've aged as well as the Arthur Ransomes. I read the C. S. Lewis books a few times, but wasn't a big fan.
Less creditably, I used to have a huge collection of Biggles books (something I really don't want to revisit!).

Growing up in England, our local children's library had a lot of mass-produced American children's books (Hardy boys, Nancy Drew, etc.), but I never really got into those. There were just too many inexplicable foreign words ("jalopy", "drugstore", etc.). Somehow, it was easier to relate to British books from the thirties, even though they were all about middle-class children whose parents kept servants. The only American writer I really remember reading as a child was Jack London.

Oh, I also loved this series of books about three girls named Betsy, Tacy, and Tib by Maud Hart Lovelace. The fact that they were set my home state of Minnesota just made it even better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betsy-Tacy

Two more books that I just remembered from childhood by Rudyard Kipling:
The jungle Book and
Just so Stories

I was a strange kid. I liked books of my parents' era (very early 20th century) better than I liked books written in the 1930s and 40s when I grew up. My favorites (and still in my library) are Frank the Young Naturalist and others in that series by Harry Castlemon. One in this series Frank Among the Rancheros even went back to my grandfather's childhood! These books are sexist, racist, and environmentally irresponsible by today's standards so I "edited" them when reading them to my son. He liked them though not as much as I did. I still love them and won't part with them. I also loved all of Beatix Potter's books -- must have read each of them 100 times.

The Robotech series was my favorite growing up. I also enjoyed any DragonLance books that I could get my hands on.

Wow. This got me thinking..ditto to the Beverley Cleary books, and Black Stallion series. And Marguerite Henry's horse books, esp, Misty of Chincoteague. Also loved a dog series - Irish Red, Big Red, etc.

I love so many of the series everyone has mentioned, so I thought I'd toss in an obscure series I loved, the first book was called The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks. I'm not sure if that was the series name, or if the series even had a name... but they were great books!

the Neverending Story by far. I read it when I was eight, nine or 10 and it was mindblowing and lovely.

otherwise it is pippi longstocking ( well, I thought I was her for like 4 years) , ronia the robber´s daughter (made me feel so safe, strong, adventurous and I loved her relationship with her dad the robber chief :), I had a warm relationship with my dad too and it´s like the only book in history where the father is showing his feelings and is loving. ronia is the best self-evolving book) , the brothers lionheart, the neverending story!!!, diverse swedish fairytale books, the booklets of the swedish proggressive rock /theatre/ childrens theatre group "Nationalteatern" http://www.nationalteatern.nu/bilder_ovrigt.htm like Kaldolmar & Kalsipper http://www.nationalteatern.nu/Skivor-kalsipper1.htm , Anne on the Green Hill, Linklater "The Wind On the Moon", Maria Gripe " The Beetles fly At Dusk", a 50s fantasy/photorealistic tale about two little tomteprinces that saves a fairy and a troll princess, because they were little dolls photographed in the nature in a very realistic way and I sort of thougth that they were real, another quite weird 50s book about 2 childs that are taken up to the moon by a bumblebee where there are lots of freakish beings, it´s still a very pretty, special book especially for being from the 50s, it´s dreamy, and I´m sort of looking for it, anyway, i loved fairytale books if they were somewhat complex and variated. I had like 9 examples of " the worlds fairytale" that came in orange, green, lilac colours. but okay, maybe this is about the books we read as even younger. the BEAUTIFUL " Dragon with Red Eyes" by Astrid Lindgren. it´s about a dragon that is totally misplaced in the swedish farmland and sad about everything. Maurice Sendak " Where the wild things are". Mio, my son ( Mio min Mio), Astrid Lindgren. Sigh, this is all such poetic dreamy books, didn´t I like any fun books? I´m sure I did, and that I´ve missed an awful lot. Anyways, I will post this for now. This is kind of fun. :)

I never liked the Narnia books more than to some excerpts, I liked Aslan and some fantasy parts. I never liked the Narnia Children and I disliked most of the characters, they were quite annoying. and there was so much hierarchy and abuse of power in those books. I was fed up with that. and the girls were SUCH whimps and the boys were just plain annoying, stupid. the fantasy parts were alright and I could tolerate Lucy even if I thought she was a bit whimpy.

oh, I´ve missed so many though, I will post them later. A lot of fairytales though. And Pippi.

http://bp1.blogger.com/_oKjVa_wWx-I/Rn1egNjCkcI/AAAAAAAAAR4/BvifU4gQ2ak/s1600-h/...

the spike jonze-movie looks just like maurice sendak´s own illustrations. :)

well, I know this is a book site, and that is all good, I just thought it would be nice to know for all Sendak-fans.

oh yeah! one of my best books was an extremely anarchistic one, the far out, swedish 70s leftist-communist, enpoweringchildren-novel that I think was named " The Children takes it back" and is all about how the children at a daycare-centre makes complete rebellion aganist the teachers/carers and makes them eat peas. it´s hilarious and a little scary. :)
it´s written very funny, almost crazily, by a swedish doctor, it´s totally cult but sortof unknown.

the thing with the book really was to psychologically and pedagogically empower children.

and it´s like 150 pages long. it´s sincere and the kids actually run away and stuff. I thought it was kind of scary actually, I was like " but why do they run away from their parents doésn´t that make them sad?" but actually I think I was too young for that type of rebellion.

omg, of course, roald dahl! matilda, BG, witches, etc.

I thought of a couple more: The Saddle Club and Thoroughbred, two horse-related series. I gobbled those up.

At the age of 8 or 9 I loved the Sweet Valley series by Francine Pascal and then at 10 I was addicted to R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series. At around 11 or 12 I got into Harry Potter, and I'm still hooked!
I also read a few of those classics that they adapt for children, like What Katy Did and Rebbeca of Sunnybrook Farm. I didn't really like them, though.

There were the Chip Hilton books by Clair Bee, and John R. Tunis's various baseball books, too.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Kenneth Grahame and The Wind in the Willows, but maybe that was better suited for teenagers than for younger kids. Did you know they closed "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" at Disneyland forever recently?

I did mention Wind in the Willows at # 20, and I read it before I was a teenage. But I had forgotten the author's name when I typed in the title. I thought I read it when I was 9 years old.

I think most of these have been mentioned already, but here's a list of my favorite series:

The Baby-Sitter's Club
The Boxcar Children
Nancy Drew
All the American Girl books
Everything by Beverly Cleary, especially the Ramona books
All of Marguerite Henry's horse stories
All the Black Stallion books by Walter Farley

In between when the latest book of each series came out, I pretty much read everything I could get my hands on. I also read The Wind in the Willows when I was young--I think I was 8; it was a reading assignment in second grade. However, I somehow managed to miss the Narnia series until the movie came out, so I just read those last summer.

I loved the "Anne" books (Anne of Green Gables, etc.). I also loved Little Women, Little Men and Jo's Boys.

For mysteries, I really enjoyed the Trixie Belden series and the Nancy Drew series.

Some older series I enjoyed include The Merriweather Girls (a British series set at a private school for girls), Robin Kane mysteries, Bobbsey Twins, Cherry Ames, Donna Parker, and Elsie Dinsmore.

bkwerm, I had forgotten about Cherry Ames. I enjoyed these books also. I'm sure I have one of them hidden away on one of my shelves.

Anything by Judy Blume. Hers were the first books I read that weren't patronizing.

Of course I loved all the Sweet Valley High books to. They were marketed to teens, but I remember it being so totally uncool to read them past sixth grade.

I realized I forgot about a couple from when I was really little: Beatrix Potter's animal stories and Stephen Cosgrove's Serendipity books.

I made the mistake of falling in love with books by Howard Pease in the early sixties when he was already long out of print.

I loved all the Roald Dahl books and The Chronicles of Narnia. I also remember really liking The Last of the Really Great Wangdoodles and The Five Children and It. And I was constantly reading the peoms of A. A. Milne.

Can't believe I forgot Roald Dahl when I posted mine....!!!!! I used to regard him as some sort of honorary grandad, and remember sitting on my dad'slap crying when it was on the news that he'd died.... :-(

In no particular order... The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett was one of my favorites, and The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Andrews. I had tons of Beverly Cleary's books too--I especially liked the Ralph S. Mouse ones. And The White Mountain and its sequels, which are in a box somewhere at either my or my parents' house, and which I have not catalogued because I can't find them. And Shel Silverstein, especially A Light In the Attic. And ooh, the Black Stallion books... I'd forgotten about those. And the Choose Your Own Adventure books... yeah, I still can't pick favorites...

Edited because I had an author's name wrong...

The best things in my elementary school library were the Dorrie books by Patricia Coombs... I wish I could afford to pick them all up on eBay so my girls could have the little witch whose socks never matched on their shelves.

Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume were other favorites, and I can't possibly explain the joy of sinking into Madeline L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time series. Anne of Green Gables, Encyclopedia Brown, Shel Silverstein... For some reason, I remember loving Trixie Belden and never liking Nancy Drew -- who knows why?

And my all-time favorite, with lasting memories of my mother yawning through it who knows how many dozens of times, was a funny little book called Socks for Supper.

Anything and everything by Enid Blyton (Touchstone not loading).

Ditto on the Enid Blyton; the adventure series, the 5 friends series, etc. But also Michael Ende's Jim Knopf books (aka Jim Button and Lukas).

Between the ages of 7 and 10 I would say the Serendipity books then the Ramona the Pest and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing books. After that I started reading almost all fantasy like C.S. Lewis' Narnia books, The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper and The Wrinkle in Time books.

Peculiar Miss Picket and Miss Picket's Secret by Nancy R. Julian, and The Circus of Dr. Lao by Charles G. Finney...I have read each of these a dozen times.
-touchstones are not loading

Enid Blyton's adventure series: The Island Of Adventure, for example, are still lovingly stored away in the recesses of my memory, along with Anne Of Green Gables, Nancy Drew's and Trixie Belden's adventures, and of course The Hardy Boys. My home town in Ontario Canada is famous for Leslie McFarlane having lived there as a youth and having written 21 of the Hardy Boys books under the pseudonym of Franklin W. Dixon. His biography is entitled A Kid In Haileybury.

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, Miss Pickerell, the Little House books, Cherry Ames, Sue Barton. Like xicanti, I spent one summer reading a Nancy Drew a day. Of course, Five Little Peppers and every horse book I could find, especially Marguerite Henry. I LOVED Chip Hilton in the Claire Bee stories.

What a joy to think back through these old names!!

>73 DerBuecherwurm:: Yeah! How could I forget the Jim Knopf books?! I read them countless times and I still have them somewhere. Maybe it's time for a reread.

When I was seven or eight, I lived in Billings, Montana. The public library there had lots of Snip, Snap, Snurr and Flicka, Dicka, Ricka stories that I loved. I don't know if our Scandanavian friends know how popular these books used to be in the US>

Marchpane, the Thornton Burgess Society in Sandwich, MA, where he was born and grew up, could be a source of information for you about his books. Our local newspaper, the Sandwich Enterprise, runs his stories every week. Needless to say, he is very popular around here.

When I was in early elementary, my favorite book was The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White. I remember my 3rd grade teacher borrowing my copy so she could read it aloud to the class! I loved the Nancy Drew books, and after I got through all of those I started on Trixie Belden. I also loved the Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon books by L.M. Montgomery, and in later elementary I read everything by Cynthia Voigt.

Hi, everyone. I've just read all these posts and am remembering all those books you've mentioned. I loved them, too, but does anyone remember the Little Colonal series? I believe Shirley Temple played the little girl character Lloyd in a few movies. I loved those books, too, and wish I could find them today. It's amazing how some really good books can disappear, isn't it?

the American Girl books
Dick King-Smith
The Redwall Books
Edgar Eager
Tamora Pierce
Noel Streatfeild's shoes series
Susan Cooper
the Books by Jean Estoril
Harry Potter
Diana Wynne Jones

And I Know that there's More I just can't think of them right now.

Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. I must have read that book a hundred times.

Blubber
Superfudge
Otherwise Known As Sheila The Great

See a pattern here? ;)

And when I was really little, I remember loving There's a Monster at the End of This Book. It was a Sesame Street book with Grover in it.

I'd really love to find that again for my baby coming in the spring!

I loved Goosebumps by R.L Stine, and the Sweet Valley by Francine Pascal.

Swallows and Amazons by Ransome;
Island of Adventure, Mountain of Adventure, etc., by Enid Blyton;
Little House on the Prairies series by Wilder;
Nancy Drew by Keene;
The Hardy Boys *high fives, Tropics*
Anne of Green Gables by Montgomery;
Narnia Chronicles;
Nigel Tranter books about Scotland and Scottish heroes;
Tom Swift series by Appleton;
The Secret Garden
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stephenson
Wind in the Willows

I think I'd better stop, this could get long.

#80 vivienbrenda-- Thanks for the info! Someone who had read this thread (#32- #38, #41) commented about the Burgess museum. I visited the website and was amazed by the historical and environmental projects undertaken by the Burgess society.

As a child, I thought Burgess and the illustrator (Cady) were probably some folks from *around here* somewhere, as obsessed with the woods, farms and swamps and their inhabitants as we were.

We don't get out to New England very often, but this makes me want to visit again soon.

I loved the Trixie Belden and Bobbsey Twins series.

One of my favorite books as a kid was about a dog that was trained to be a seeing eye dog. I thought it was called Lad: A dog, but after reading the review, that's not it. I remember taking it out of the school library in 3rd or 4th grade, so around 1974.

I also really enjoyed Heidi, Little Women, Little Men, Jo's Boys and the occasional Nancy Drew.

All of these I read over and over and over. It's a wonder I don't have them all memorized.

Charlotte's Web
A Little Princess
anything by Judy Blume, esp. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and Blubber
Nothing's Fair in Fifth Grade
Harriet the Spy
Hanging out with Cici (this was before Francine Pascal lent out her name to Sweet Valley High)
Diary of Anne Frank
Island of the Blue Dolphins
Little House on the Prairie et seq.
Trixie Belden series
Little Women
The Outsiders
Stranger with my Face - Lois Duncan
Queenie Peavey
The Pistachio Prescription - Paula Danziger

After progessing from the Ladybird "Read It Yourself" books :) I think you could say that the Chronicles of Narnia where my top series - with Voyage of the Dawntreader in the #1 slot...

Then, when I got to about 10, I read The Lord of the Rings for the first time - and that became my top book for a while.

I started reading Terry Pratchett's Discworld series when I was 13... I guess you could say he is still my favourite now at 28

Trixie Belden
Nancy Drew

I loved all the Ramona books, Harriet the Spy, was addicted to the Babysitter's Club, cried and cried over Anne Frank, a book called You give me a Pain Eliane but my big shout out goes to Judy Blume. Thanks to this woman, many questions/topics that I felt I couldn't ask/talk to my mom about were answered.

I also enjoyed all of my mom's old Nancy Drews, Bobbsey Twins and Five Little Peppers books. I read every single one of the Baby-Sitter's Club books, in order, from my local library, which was fortunately only a block from my house.

But no one's mentioned my absolute favorite series, Bunnicula, featuring the book with the title that I thought was the height of cleverness at the time, The Celery Stalks at Midnight.

Some of mine have already been mentioned. Others include:

Beautiful Joe by M. Saunders, Farmer Boy, fairy tales and legends, The Amazing Land of Wew, and a series of Weekly Reader books that came in the mail (not often enough but very welcome)

Edited because the Beautiful Joe touchstone came up the The golden apples of the sun book, so I added the author!

>83 LettaAvanell: LettaAvanell

Me too! I was a Brian Jacques nut when I was a young teen, up until I realized that the Redwall books are pretty much all the same.
My favorite was Castaways of the Flying Dutchman.

I loved Castaways of the Flying Dutchman and the sequel The Angel's Command. I stopped reading Brian Jacques when I ran out of books when I was about 12. That's when my sister introduced me to Diana Wynne Jones's books.

#84 -- The Monster at the end of this book was my sister's FAVORITE book as a child, and is available now as a board book. It's one of my 2 1/2 year old's favorites! :)

24: jagmuse - Wolves of Willoughby Chase is definitely one of a series - there are maybe 10 books. Wolves and Black Hearts in Battersea are about those two girls (I think), then Dido (who I think shows up first in Hearts) becomes the heroine and has 5-6 books, then her cousin Is has several books...all the same universe, and similar (well, at least equally wild) adventures.

46: thorold - awww, you don't like Biggles anymore? I love the earliest books - the WWI ones. After that, when he stops aging and becomes a generic hero, it gets less interesting, but they're still fun. And they're _hard_ to find in the US! I buy them on eBay every once in a while, and usually pay lots more in shipping than the cost of the book (shipping from the UK or Australia or NZ). Sigh.

67: nemoman - Ditto on Howard Pease! I do find them every once in a while, in yard sales or book sales, or on eBay for cheap. My mom and I share them, we're both addicted.

Earliest series - Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys - then abandoned them all for Tom Swift Jr and Rick Brant. Also horse books, Marguerite Henry and Black Stallion, and dog books, Albert Payson Terhune, Jim Kjelgaard (Irish Red etc) and others. And Pippi Longstocking, though I only knew about the first book then. And anything by Enid Blyton. Later went on to Swallows and Amazons, Narnia, anything by Kipling. Oh, and somewhere in there I read (many many times) the three Heidi books and the two (or three, I don't remember) Bambi books. I guess only two - Bambi and Bambi's Children.

I still have a lot of those, and still read some of them. Unfortunately I've found that the Tom Swift Jr. and Rick Brants don't hold up - those kids are _annoying_! And the Lone Ranger books aren't much better, and I _loved_ him. And The Phantom - haven't tried to reread those. Well, I should try rereading a Lone Ranger that isn't the first book - I always thought that one was dumb.

>83 LettaAvanell: LettaAvanell

I remember reading Castaways in one day, I think in one sitting too. It was THAT good!

Walter Farley-I read every book in the Black Stallion Series
Margurite Henry-Album of Horses, King of the Wind, Misty of Chincoteague.
Paul Brown-Pipers Pony, Patchwork, a pony.
C.W. Anderson-Blaze and the forest fire, Blaze finds the trail.

Does anyone detect a pattern here?
I wanted a horse from 7 yrs. old on. I was 15 when my wish finally came true.

I also read: Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Secret Garden, Black Beauty(of course), etc.

I was 60 years old & the LOTR movies were in production when I read my first fantasy (Tolkien of course!) I'm still reading fantasy; right now I'm in the middle of HP5.

Inbetween my childhood & old age I read mostly non-fiction as I spent a good deal of my time in school in an attempt at being a 'professional student'.

Vanye:
Have you kept your books from your "professional student" days?

Things not mentioned (and I'm shocked!)
The Phantom Tollbooth
Edward Eager magic books

I also loved Harriet the Spy and Roald Dahl.

I wish I had read more as a kid, but in addition to the classics and the Boxcar Children series, I always had fun reading Sideways Stories from Wayside School and the other Wayside School books by Louis Sachar. Each chapter was about a different student or teacher in the school, and they were all quirky and funny (at least to an 8-year-old).

I also loved historical fiction books by Ann Rinaldi, because most of her books had girl protagonists, and whether or not it was true, I remember thinking that most historical fiction books were about boys.

A couple other favorites were My Teacher is an Alien by Bruce Coville and Time Windows by Kathryn Reiss.

#102
I'm sure I said Edward Eager!! I loved those books, and still do.

I loved the Cam Jansen series, and Bruce Colville's My teacher is an alien Series. (there are 4 books) My next favorite I loved so much that I tracked it down as an adult so I could read it again. The Girl Who Owned a City by O T Nelson.

If you haven't read it, give it a try.

I reread the Maud Hart Lovelace Betsy-Tacy-Tib books so much that I had them memorized. I also loved all of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House books. I bought complete sets as an adult and read them all again.

i always liked The Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket

I loved the Chronicals of Narnia, my 6th grade teacher read aloud the entire series to us. It got me hooked on books!! Now that is a great teacher.

#88 - it's been so long you may have already discovered this (or you may have forgotten the post!) but I think the book you remember is called Follow My Leader. I really loved that book as a child too.

Dulcibelle! I think that's it!!!

I loved reading Beverly Cleary and Judy Bloom books : ) My nieces the next generation also have read the same series.

My favorite series as a child was the Tarzan books by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

The Hobbit; The Lioness series/The Circle of Magic series by Tamora Pierce; Spooksville series by Christopher Pike; Redwall, et al by Brian Jacques; Amphigorey by Edward Gorey; The Wizard Comes to Town by Mercer Mayer; anything by Roald Dahl; the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett; A Wrinkle in Time, etc. by Madeliene L'Engle; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis; Valdemar books by Mercedes Lackey; Wayside School books by Louis Sachar; From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth by E.L. Konigsburg; Goblins In the Castle by Bruce Coville

If I recall correctly, all of these books were read between the ages of 6 and 13, with the Hobbit for sure at age 8, The Lion etc. at age 9 and A Wrinkle in Time at 10.

Choose Your Own Adventure and all the similar series, anything by Roald Dahl. I won a bookmark making contest one year and asked for a copy of Charlie and The Great Glass Elevator. They couldn't find a copy and I received Danny, The Champion of the World. I think that book opened my eyes a lot to what a story could be. Previously I suppose I imagined books as a kind of second rate movie.

I absolutely loved the Happy Hollister series. My mother recently sent me the one remaining from my old collection. "The Happy Hollisters and the Cuckoo Clock Mystery", 1963.

I am gettin old. 115 posts and not one mention of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Tarzan, Barsoom, Pelucidar, Venus, the Moon Men, should I go on?

When I was a kid, it was all about The Hardy Boys, Choose Your Own Adventure, and the Lone Wolf series.

Oz books--can there be any question? My grandmother had first editions.

I loved..Peter Pan, Little Women, Little Lord Fauntleroy, A Little Princess, and the Chronicles of Narnia..
I remember reading those over and over again...(I stlll love them, actually..)

Saddle Club

116: TLCrawford;

Thanks for bringing that up. Now I don't feel so out of step.
I'll add Armageddon 2419 A.D. by Philip Francis Nowlan. The oringinal Buck Roger Book.

The Secret Garden and Little Women. Also the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. The Phantom Toll Booth and all of Roald Dahl's books were also faves. A few of the books series were Sweet Valley books by Francine Pascal and The Babysitters Club.

White Fang, A Dog Named Wolf, Shane, Star Wars, and the Tom Swift series.

When I was 9-10, I adored George Orwell and Daphne du Maurier.
Prior to that: the Chronicles of Narnia and Disney, of course :D

I guess when I was 8 or 9, it was The World We Live In. I still have a keen interest in nature.

For me it was the Black Stallion series by Walter Farley had to read every one of them. Also read all of the books written by Margurite Henry & illustrated by Wesley Dennis including King of the Wind which won the Newberry Medal in 1949. They were not, technically, a series of course. They also did Justin Morgan had a Horse, Misty of Chincoteague @ one of my favorites Album of Horses & many others. You may have detected a theme here; namely they all about HORSES! I was horse crazy & i first asked my folks to get me a horse when i was 7 yrars old but i was 15 when my wish was finally granted. 8^)

Little House on the Praire series by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene

Both instrumental in forging a life-long love affair with books

One of my first books that I can still remember was one of those little board books titled Pat the Bunny. I liked pretty much anything to do with animals. I remember liking Socks by Beverly Cleary a lot (to the degree that my Mom would yell at me for checking the same book out of the library over and over again).

At some point I discovered fantasy (and to a lesser degree science fiction) and never looked back. The ones that stand out in my memory are:
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
A Wrinkle in Time Quintet by Madeleine L'Engle
The Young Wizards Series by Diane Duane
The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper
Anything by Andrea Norton or Robert Silverberg

Jim Knoop en Lucas de machinist is without doubt the most influential

My earliest favorite book was "The Majesty of Grace". The setting was America's depression era in the 1930's. A little girl formed the notion that she was really born to England's royal family and had somehow become adopted by an American family. Her father was an out of work geologist. He sold his rock collection because the family needed the money so badly but allowed each of his children to pick their favorite rock before he sold them all. I read it over & over.

Without a doubt...the original Nancy Drew series. I thought they were so grown up. I remember for my birthday one year, I received 3 of them as my birthday gift and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I really thought I was the luckiest kid in the world. Times sure have changed, haven't they? I'm not one to hang onto things but I will never get rid of those books.

Freddy the detective hasn't been mentioned yet, I can remember the shelf they were on in the Scarborough Public Library.
{Rosemary Sutcliff} started with eagle of the ninth and wrote a loose series up to the Napoleonic wars. {Ronald Welch} started with a book about the Crusades, drat I can see the cover in my mind's eye but not read the title. Knight Crusaderthat was it

Starman's Son and all the other Norton's

I don't now think they were very good but there was a series cave twins that I think I read all of.