What books did you love as a child that really DON'T stand up to re-visiting?

It's funny, because I vividly remember LOVING it... I can still see the images I'd imagined from reading it aged 10 or whatever

But 8yo DD didn't really get into it (though we did finish it, hurrah) and I found it a bit of an endurance test this time round

I also bought Heidi for her at the same time, but she has yet to start it...

She's too stuck on JW

I love Ballet Shoes too.

'And, if not too wet, expected to 'save the penny and walk'.'

Oh dear, I re-read Ballet Shoes at least once a year .

"The Fossil sisters lived in the Cromwell Road. At that end of it which is farthest away from the Brompton Road, and yet sufficiently near it so one could be taken to look at the dolls? houses in the Victoria and Albert every wet day."

I had completely forgotten The Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse!

I loved Enid Blyton. read one of my favourites, The Secret Island, to DD recently. I had to either miss out the sexist bits or explain ' things were different back then'. it was also very classest (if that's a word) the children were so rude to servants, PC Plod etc

oh and what about the Phoenix and then Carpet where the girls have to do the darning?!

Someone on a previous MN thread said she had a row with her mother after her father died, if I remember rightly. But yes, I expect you're right she was romanticizing a bit. I didn't even think about that when I was little reading them (you don't, do you?).

I really loved Ballet Shoes as a kid

Got it for dd1, we read it together as it's so bloody wordy (forgot that!) and I confess we both struggled...

I loved the Little House series, still do. But recently read a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and her books were fairly different from real life. And after she moved away (see Last Four Years) she pretty much never visited her family again. So maybe it wasn't quite as rosy as she described.

I'm with you on Children of the Oregon Trail. I bought it a while back as I remembered it being good, and didn't get on with it. Too sentimental. I found Emily dull to read as an adult, as well - I'd remembered her teacher being really encouraging about her poems in a nice way and now I just think he's a wanker with a really shite grasp of literature.

What Katy Did was another one - reading it now I'm just thinking 'what the fuck?! Your daughter has just recovered from a nasty illness, your sister has died after spending her life looking after your household, and you're happily getting your daughter to take on the role too. Employ a bloody housekeeper, man!'

I found The First Four Years really awkwardly written when I re-read it, too. I know she didn't really finish the draft of it, but it's just so stilted and fairly peculiar, too. There's the bit when she goes to the Boasts' house and Mr Boast asks her to give them her baby to adopt because they can't have children, and she gets Almanzo to drive away fast. I mean, I get that it's quite an appalling thing for someone to ask you but I found it really hard to reconcile how she obviously felt about those people, and how she writes about them so lovingly in the other books.

I didn't like Mr Men even as a child (apart from Mr Messy for some reason - it tickled me how he went all smooth when he had been cleaned).

We went on Guide camp and our Patrol Leader was supposed to read us improving literature every day - she chose to read us a Mr Man story every morning. It was incredibly tedious.

PS agree re Mr Men. It must have been the pictures that attracted me as a child because the stories are very ponderous.

I love Winnie the Pooh - when I read it to DCs I realised how funny it is, really well written.
Also still love Moomins - quite subtle in a way (eg the book where they move onto a small island to live and the family starts to become a bit dysfunctional).
So sad to hear about Children on the Oregon Trail - loved that as a child and have been really looking forward to reading it to the children. We'll see how it goes.
I find DC1 really enjoys having old fashioned books read to her, but reads the modern fantasy stuff herself.

Arcticwaffle, I loved Little Black Sambo and 40 years ago the issues with it went right over my head. I was reluctant to reread it with DCs for obvious reasons. Thankfully it's been renamed and reillustrated as "The Story of Little Babaji" - exactly the same story which I loved with the same weird story about turning tigers into butter and the same cool little boy who escapes the tigers and eats all the pancakes - but he's just not called Sambo this time.

www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Little-Babaji-Helen-Bannerman/dp/1857141385

I still love it and so do DCs.

The Secret Seven books, and the Five Find Outers. Horribly sexist to the point of tedium. Though most of the rest of Blyton stood up fairly well to rereading.

Adventure in Forgotten Valley was my favourite book as a child - kids get trapped in a valley and meet dinosaurs and cavemen. On reading recently the dialogue was terrible and the two girl characters were solely to make up numbers to the extent that one had one line and the other screamed once in the whole book.

Winnie the Pooh is even more tedious than I remembered, though it's readable if you miss out the asides and humming.

The Phantom Tollbooth was still fantastic, though.

I'll have a look through then and find some of the earlier ones (and the worrals) we have hundreds (as dh whinged each time we move house)

The Nancy Drew books. Admittedly I was (and still am) a total bookworm and would read any old shite, but those were particularly awful. Especially the series aimed at the tweenager market.

I liked Little Black Sambo as a child but (unsurprisingly) it's not widely available these days so I can't check how good or bad the story is.

Have just read Milly Molly Mandy to my six-year-old, she loved it! Our favourite story is the one where Father has a bonfire and Milly Molly Mandy, Little Friend Susan and Billy Blunt cook their lunch on it...

I have been rereading Little House on the Prairie series lately, and have had the good fortune to find copies of two books I was missing second hand at school fairs, in the right editions with the right illustrations - yay! I still love those books and will be reading them to the DC very soon.

Also just read The Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse - that had stood up well too, although the poor horse's adventures were more traumatic than I remembered. I need to raid my parents' bookshelves again soon.

I love B. Potter! Samuel Whiskers was my very first horror story. I found it really scary, especially when read by my mother who was rather phobic of rats owing to one having run out of a rain barrel right up her arm.

I loved the fact that it was possible to get lost an a house's secret structure (in the chimneys, behind the walls etc), so that you were right next to the adults who could help you but still trapped beyond their reach. That really is the stuff of horror films.

I adored reading it to my children.

The first few Biggles books, the ones set in WW1, stand up to re-reading much more than the later ones, they were written before the series got toned down for children. Lots of hard drinking, swearing, death and depression in them - which is probably quite realistic.

I quite like the Milly Molly Mandy stories - haven't had to explain too many old words or phrases from those, and the stories are just the right length.

The Beatrix Potter stories. DD is 5 and insists I read them, but I don't enjoy them and I know the story is going over her head. I think she just likes looking at the pictures.