June 2025 List of the Month: Books We Loved As Children

Nothing sticks with us like the books we loved as children. Stories that you wanted to read again and again, characters that stuck with you. This month's List of the Month is devoted to the Books We Loved As Children.

For the purposes of this list, "children" is defined as 12 and under. Each member may add ten titles. Given the subjective nature of the topic, downvoting is not allowed.

For a complete list of topics covered so far in our project, please see the new section for Lists of the Month on the Zeitgeist page

We would welcome suggestions for future lists. Please add them here, and we will keep them in mind, going forward.

So hard to pare it done to 10. Even 15 or 20 might be hard! So many favorites!

Half Magic, Edward Eager.
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, Betty McDonald.
The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis.
My Side of the Mountain, Jean Craighead George.
Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery.
Lad, A Dog, Albert Payton Terhune.
Rascal, Sterling North.
A Candle in Her Room, Ruth M. Arthur.
Katia, E.M. Almedingen.

What a nice trip down Memory Lane!

It's amazing how many favourite books of mine were not published until after I was well past 12.

>4 tardis: You are THAT old, hey? Well, me too. This is a good list for discovering new favorites.

>5 2wonderY: LOL! It's great for nostalgia, too.

Taking a look at the list, except for a few, The ones I did read were when I was in High School or later.

>7 rastaphrog: That's often true for me, too. E.g. I didn't read Watership Down until I was late teens, and I don't think I read the Earthsea Trilogy until I was thirteen or so.

Also, a lot of the things, such as Dr. Seuss books, are things I know I encountered, but I don't remember books that I read/had read to me at that age. I barely remember what books I was reading at ten or eleven!

Hm. Another thought. As I write this, the list is up to about 180 books, and it looks like I may be the only person to have included any non-fiction (unless you could Laura Ingalls Wilder, but her works are so fictionalized that they're basically historical fiction, not autobiography).

I know fiction is more popular than non-fiction, especially at that age, but wasn't anyone else reading books that started them on a life-long vocation? This isn't criticism; I'm just deeply surprised.

I love this list, but why are we limited to 10 works for our own lists? I just want to add a couple more. :-)

>9 waltzmn: If it makes you feel less lonely, Mr. Charon07 tells me he read mostly nonfiction as a kid (and still does as an adult)—mostly gadgety, technological stuff about rockets and radios and such. He did go on to become a computer programmer (that’s what we called them back in the day).

I liked 10 books before I knew it...I didn't get to add Harold and the Purple Crayon or the early Pern books. I loved seeing some of Heinlein's juvenile fiction as I cut my teeth on them. Podkayne of Mars is a favorite though I cried every time I read it (still do). Robin Hood is one my grandfather gave me in 5th grade that I loved then and now.

>9 waltzmn: I read some non-fiction but absolutely nothing that made an impact even starting to resemble that of fiction.

I've only added the childrens books I still own copies of and still read 60 years on. Like others, most of the books I read when I was older - probably in my early twenties. The other issue is that many children's books I read were in fact my younger sister's books which I read when I was in my teens. Much of what was available when I was a child ran heavily to Enid Blyton and various boarding school stories, most of which haven't stood the test of time, and to be honest I preferred boy's fiction (Pocomoto and Biggles) to girl's fiction.

>13 anglemark: I read some non-fiction but absolutely nothing that made an impact even starting to resemble that of fiction.

Oh, the fiction I read has stayed with me much more. Some of it, anyway -- The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Prydain, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I can't even remember the names of most of the non-fiction I read. (Or the fiction, for that matter.) The books on science are all utterly out-of-date now! But the non-fiction I read very much influenced my later life, even if the books sort of blur together.... Of the seven books I've come up with so far, five are in some way or another indicative of the thing I studied as an adult. I repeat, I'm not criticizing; I'm just surprised not to see others who were like that. Maybe it's an autism thing.

>15 waltzmn: Like other have said, there are so many children's/YA classics I read in my teens or early twenties, sometimes because they were published after I turned thirteen, sometimes because they were translated after I turned thirteen (A Wizard of Earthsea in 1977, The Book of Three in 1981) and in many cases simply because they were either not translated at all or not as well known in Sweden.

>16 anglemark:

I want to emphasize that I am not criticizing anyone. In fact, it appears that @anglemark and I like the same sort of fiction. My situation is much the same: Of my current fifteen or so favorite books, I had only read three by the time I was twelve: The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Prydain, and the Alice books (in the form of The Annotated Alice). Watership Down was published the year I turned eleven, but I hadn't seen it yet; the Earthsea books were available, but I don't remember reading them until I was thirteen. Ditto The Mote in God's Eye (which I might not have appreciated yet anyway). I probably wouldn't have appreciated Lord of Light yet, either. The Dragon and the George and Vinge's The Snow Queen hadn't been written when I turned twelve.

But then, my current favorite science books hadn't been written when I was twelve, either: The Ancestor's Tale, John Emsley's Nature's Building Blocks. Ditto for history: Battle Cry of Freedom wasn't out. Francis James Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads was out of print (and it's another one I wouldn't have been ready for, I think). I couldn't read the Middle English of The Canterbury Tales or Sir Orfeo.

So the list of books that I liked at twelve does not correspond to the list of books I like today, but the genres broadly correspond: even then, I was interested in science, and in folklore, as well as science fiction and fantasy. And it influenced my nominations.

This seems typical of the scientists I have known: Most of us knew it early. But, as I say, that may be an autistic thing. Or maybe it's just another sign that I'm strange.

>17 waltzmn: Three non-fiction in my list, including two set of encyclopedias, which I consulted constantly in my pre-Internet childhood. Plus a book of recreational mathematics preceding a career in IT.
Suspected autism here too.

>18 kleh: Oh, well, if we are going to talk about encyclopedias!

They sold them door to door in the 60s, and my dad invited the salesman to sit down with the entire family (11 of us kids, though not sure of the number at that point) and he had us ask questions.
We did acquire The American Educator Encyclopedia set, along with a handsome and well loved set of Book Trails.

Any time we had factual questions, the parental response was “Look it up.” And we did, poring through all of the “See also”s at the end of the entry.

Our Easter morning basket hunt began with an index card clue that led us on a trail of discovery. Often, we were directed to find Mozart or some such in the encyclopedia for the next clue.

I feel fortunate that I got final custody of the set, and I still prize them.

We updated to a set sold at Krogers, a volume a week, when my kids were growing up. Youngest and I would play who could find the weekly bonus answers in freshman history class. She on our first computer, me still using the texts.

Then around that time (the 90s) some educational publisher brought college aged kids from Eastern Europe to small towns in the US to sell door to door again.
They would come in to the library to use the computers to email home.
I would let them practice their spiels on me. And feed them.

Good memories!

Suddenly I remember Lilla Focus!

>18 kleh:

Yes, I noticed your encyclopedias and the Gardner book later. I think you posted at least one of them after I started writing.

We had two sets of encyclopedias when I was young -- Collier's for adults and World Book for children -- but I never did all that much with them. Funny, because I like specialized encyclopedias now (Encyclopedia of the Wars of the Roses, Ships of the World, Nature's Building Blocks). I guess it was the style. :-)

It would be fascinating to do a study asking each person whether their favorites then are still favorites now. It's a mixed bag for me -- some are, some aren't.

On a side note, I suspect LibraryThing has a higher proportion of autistics than the general population. It's a site about books, after all :-). But, also, despite Talk, it's not a site that requires interaction -- and where people do interact, the topics are generally well-defined.

>21 waltzmn: "It would be fascinating to do a study asking each person whether their favorites then are still favorites now. It's a mixed bag for me -- some are, some aren't."

It's a pretty even split for me - 4 which I continue to love without qualification; 3 which I can appreciate but don't speak to me the way they once did, and 3 which go in the "I put away childish things" pile.

I do find it fascinating that of the 10 books I voted for, only The Chronicles of Prydain is in my collection. (Technically I have it cataloged as component volumes, not a set, but the others aren't there at all.)

>9 waltzmn: I included Cathedral by David Macaulay. I guess it is sort of fiction as I think it is a fictional cathedral, but all the information is about how cathedrals were constructed in medieval times. I thought about including A Scientist at the Seashore, but probably read it after age 12? And I ran out space.

>22 hipdeep: I do find it fascinating that of the 10 books I voted for, only The Chronicles of Prydain is in my collection.

Concerning which, I noticed your comment: (Even if I was well past 12 when I realized how good Taran Wanderer really is.)

And how it significantly alters the meaning of the series, I would say. Did you know that the Chronicles were originally set up to be a quartet, but after The Castle of Llyr was done and The High King fully plotted (and, I think, started), Alexander and his editor realized that (in effect) they needed Taran to grow up a bit, and so Alexander wrote Taran Wanderer? Although it's the fourth book in the series, it was the last one to be created.

I think it's one of the reasons why the Chronicles still stand up for me, personally. There are lots of bildungsroman fantasies, but most lack that introspective element. Including Harry Potter -- did anybody in those books ever consider a career as, say, a farmer? Or an electrician? Nah.

>23 al.vick:
I ran out of slots before I could list Macaulay's Motel of the Mysteries, and I might have been 13 already when I read it.

>23 al.vick: Ahhh! That brings back memories! I used Cathedral as a model in the fourth grade, when making a cathedral out of sugar cubes, for King Arthur Day! Fun times...

In terms of the larger discussion of non-fiction, the first adult book I can recall reading was my mother's copy of Cornelia Otis Skinner's Madame Sarah, a biography of Sarah Bernhardt. I read it at eight, and thought it was incredibly scandalous (in a good way), rereading it many times.

As it happens, most of my non-fiction reading as a child, if it was done for leisure (as opposed to school assignments) was in the area of biography. I have particularly fond memories of reading and rereading the children's biography of Abigail Adams, given to me by my grandparents when I was seven. I was my parents' bicentennial baby, and they named me after Abigail Adams, thus the gift. The biography was Abigail Adams: Women's Rights Advocate. Alas, my copy with my grandmother's inscription was lost in a flood.

I also went through a period of intense interest in the Holocaust after reading Sara Zyskind's Stolen Years when I was eleven. I read over 30 memoirs and other works of non-fiction over the course of the next year, many of them adult books (my public library didn't have any prohibition on children using the adult section). Those books had a profound impact on me, but I wouldn't say they were favorites, as I rarely felt inclined to read them a second time.

>24 waltzmn: I did not know that! Thanks! Come to think of it, might be time for a re-read.

(You've hit on one of my problems with that other series - it's not clear to me that Hogwarts does anything except teach child soldiers how to be adult soldiers. Is there any fiction at all, or music, or drama? Hell, even the Klingons had opera. Or a business writing course? Civics class?)

>27 hipdeep: (You've hit on one of my problems with that other series - it's not clear to me that Hogwarts does anything except teach child soldiers how to be adult soldiers. Is there any fiction at all, or music, or drama? Hell, even the Klingons had opera. Or a business writing course? Civics class?)

Or science classes, so that they could actually figure out how to create reliable new spells. For that matter, given the inheritance rules of magical ability, that ability almost has to be due to either a hot spot genetic dominant single nucleotide polymorphism or the result of an epigenetic change. So the magical world could open their gifts to the rest of the world -- if they'd do a little research.

As you say, there are lots of other things they patently lack to produce a reasonable education.

Further, the wizarding world cannot possibly have a working economy. It can be shown that there are only a few thousand active magic users in Britain. There aren't enough people to support a publishing industry for all those books, to visit all those joke shops, etc. (And, yes, I'm the sort of nut who would calculate the economic output of a children's fantasy series. :-)

I remember devouring all the children's biographies in my elementary school library, especially scientists and American history figures, but nothing specific. I don't read much biography at all now.

>29 SF_fan_mae: Me too!!

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Too many beloved books to list here. It does not appear that anyone added Trixie Belden which was a girl detective series that I thought was better than the Nancy Drew series.

A few of the books on my list are quite old as I inherited many books from my mother's generation before I started to get scholastic books at school.

>3 KaterinaBead: I had forgotten the Albert Payson Terhune books until you mentioned him! I loved those dog stories.

>10 krazy4katz: >2 al.vick: I agree! Should be able to list more than 10!

>34 vwinsloe: No reason we can’t do that in this thread.😎

Well, I don't see Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates on the list either, but there is no easy way to search the list once you've reached 10 on your own list.

>36 vwinsloe: Well, I don't see Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates on the list either

It's there, on page 4.

It's not that hard to search. You have to search each page, but go to the page and use your browser's find command.

I wish we had a way to combine books that are actually the same book -- e.g. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are present both individually and as a package; The Fellowship of the Ring really should have been part of The Lord of the Rings, and The Black Cauldron is the second of the Chronicles of Prydain. It distorts the popularity ratings a bit.

>37 waltzmn: Thanks.

How, exactly, do we add our personal list of ten? Or are we only able to click on the books already listed?

>39 NurseBob: The blue "Add Work To List" button at top right.

>40 Aquila: I saw that but wasn't sure. Thanks! Now to make a list.... :)

I'll begin with a bit of autobiographical information. And yes - this is about my favorite books as a child...

At 85, I am somewhat of a polymath. Studied physics, PhD in Evolutionary Biology from Harvard, taught many different subjects (especially anatomy, marine biology, vertebrate and invertebrate biology, genetics, biogeography, etc); worked in a hospital neurophysiology lab, radiation ecology, and for 2 years as a Univesity of Melbourne Research Fellow in Genetics before I became a casualty of Affirmative Action and declining university enrollments as the last of the baby boomers were graduating with newly minted PhD's that exactly matched advertised positions. computer industry as a documentation specialist (small business and clinical applications, commercial banking, computer literacy consultant.

For the last 17 years of my professional career, I worked as an engineering documentation and knowledge management systems analyst and designer for Australia's largest defence contractor, which was designing and building a class of 10 frigates for Australia and New Zealand. Because I understood and dissected major organizations as living organisms, I solved problems no one else even recognized. My solutions allowed the ~ $7 BN (yr 2000 $A) project to be finished on time, on budget against a fixed price contract signed in October 1989--with happy customers and a reasonable profit for the company when the project was finished in 2007. Today, as the first (heavily used) ships are reaching the ends of their programmed lifespans, there have been no problems in operations or refits. It should be noted that this is one of the few large defense projects in world history that has not faced major cost and schedule blow-outs costing billions of dollars. This has probably saved the respective governments ~3 BN dollars on contract overruns that never happened, and at least this much more on through-life maintenance and support. From ~ 2003 through ~ 2012 I was an honorary research fellow in engineering in various departments in the Faculty of Engineering.

While I was still working in the defense industry, I started work on a major book project to trace the coevolutionary history of humans and our (mainly cognitive) tools. This work continued off and on through 2015, by which time I was forced to the conclusion that no one would read it because our species was well on the way to being overwhelmed by anthropogenic global warming and/or by AIs. Not mentioned above is an Earth Sciences thread tracing back to my father's BS degree in petroleum geology from his university days before I was born. Seeing no future in humanity's current actions, I have devoted my full time to trying to promote action on the climate emergency. Towards this, I am currently Editor of VoteClimateOne's Climate Sentinel News (this is currently offline due to a technological glitch not yet resolved.

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Childrens books: I owe this entire life history to W. Maxwell Reed's three science books written for curious boys in the 1930s: The Earth (1930) ..., The Stars (1931)..., and The Sea For Sam (1935). I grew up on a boat, so I never owned these books, but I did find them in the library. I'm congenitally dyslexic and didn't learn to read for myself until the 3rd grade when I was put in a remedial class and taught to speedread. My family lived on a 43 ft motor yacht, with only a single shelf for books. My parents were encouraged to read to me, and we occasionally visited the city library to find things I was interested in. Also, my father had retained a couple of his university texts on geology. I was fascinated by the pictures in his books, so I was already interested in geology, and even before I could read for myself, I had picked up Earth for Sam. In my remedial class, I picked up Reed's books (900+ pages of a comprehensive exploration of the sciences from microbiology through biology (marine and terrestrial), geology, physics, astronomy, to cosmology (even to the extent of a few pages on special relativity). Although I have never owned these books physically, I actually used them as my primary school readers. Vastly more interesting than California's mandated Fun With Dick and Jane (https://archive.org/details/basicreaderscurrgray_1/page/n3/mode/2up) running up the hill with their dog Spot.

I have recently found the 1930s editions of Earth and Stars on the Web Archive:

● The Earth for Sam (https://archive.org/details/earthforsam0000wmax/page/n6/mode/1up
● The Stars for Sam (https://archive.org/details/starsforsam0000wmax_h7n3/page/n8/mode/2up)

Web Archive only has the 1960 Revised Edition of the Sea for Sam, but the version here follows the 1930's style:

● The Sea for Sam (https://archive.org/details/seaforsam00reed/page/n7/mode/2up).

House at Pooh Corner

Dr Doolittle series, Half Magic series, Betsy-Tacy series, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Mrs Piggle Wiggle, Harriet the Spy and The Long Secret, all horse books, Caddie Woodlawn, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Season of the Ponies, Maryann Dreams, Twinspell, Misunderstood Betsy, Laura’s Luck, all the books by Elizabeth Enright, the Secret Language, Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield, and The Little White Horse.