What really stands out when you think of your childhood books?

Also a book no one ever remembers - was also a TV series. Seven Little Australians - a kind of Aussie Little Women and a complete sob-fest. Wlt know if anyone else read it.

Oh, and I didn't know A Wrinkle in Time was part of a series. What are the others? [Goes off to google the Austin family...]

Ah, this thread brings back memories.

I'm also a lover (still!) of Traveller in Time - anyone remember the drama series? Also serialised at about the same time was Midnight is a Place. I read both of them after seeing the TV series.

Early childhood favourites were My Naughty Little Sister, Teddy Robinson and Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse. Forward to:

Wheel on the School
Lottie and Lisa
Charlotte Sometimes
The Silver Sword
A Little Princess
A Wrinkle in Time
Time to go Back
Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry
Masha
One More River
Summer of my German Soldier.

We read The Owl Service at school and it stands out, but not in a good way - I was seriously freaked out by it.

I re-read endlessly two volumes of short stories. One was a kind of 'stories for girls' volume which included a creepy story (reminiscent of Jinty comics) where a spoilt 20th-century girl who expects her mother to wait on her hand and foot happens upon a ruined old house and goes back in time, getting trapped as the servant of a querulous old woman. The other, which I think was a collection of one particular author, had a girl who goes back in time for short hops within her lifetime and re-lives (among other things) being a baby and realising there are secrets in her family. Yep, I liked time travel!

Joan Lingard, Natasha's Will, about a girl born into the Russian aristocracy who flees to France with her family. Loved that book. Was about 12 when I first got it in a charity shop.

What modernuriaheep listed
also
Little Grey Rabbit

RL Stephenson: Robinson Crusoe
Swiss family Robinson
the Warden's Niece
Treasure Island
Grimms fairy tales
Lots of Dickens
Lots of poetry
the Three Musketeers
the Black Tulip
the Children of the New Forest
Narnia, Tolkein, Chalet School, Secret seven, Famous five, Nancy Crew, Swallows and Amazons, Little Women, Emil and the Detectives, the Subtle Knife, Noel Streatfield, the Secret Garden, Anne Franks Diary, Evelyn Waugh, Somerset Maugham, EM forester.. after about 11 anything on the parental book shelf

Spot the dog
Horrid Henry
the Mousehole Cat
Ant and Bee

The late Madeleine L'Engle wrote a number of books in that series, of which A Wrinkle in Time was only one. My favourite work by her was the Austin family series, beginning with the first book 'Meet the Austins'. It is very sensitively written and is remarkable for L'Engle's ability to create a family that have an almost palpable love for each other, without being corny or preachy. We all hope we can love and be friends with our siblings and our children, not to mention having a close and loving respect for our parents, but L'Engle seems to have quite specific ideas for how this can and does sometimes happen.

I loved A Wrinkle in Time too! There were a few others in the series which I tracked down, but I didn't enjoy them quite so much.

I read a Traveller in Time to my DDs, they both loved it too!

One I used to get out of the library over and over again: A Wrinkle in Time. The idea really fascinated me.

He faraway tree
The wishing chair
The famous five
The island of... Series - all Enid Blyton

Frances hodges on Burnett - the little princess's
The secret garden
Little lord Fauntleroy

Kizzy

Sweet valley high books about twins

The chalet school series

Malory towers
St Claire's

The hose books by the pullein-Thompson sisters and Judy Blume books...

If it is the one I'm thinking of, there's a very controversial rape scene.

CuffsAndCollar was Easy Connections the story about a girl who meets a pop star who becomes obsessed with her, and there's a bit where another character says that him, her and A N Other are members of the Tuatha de Danann reincarnated? I read that a couple of times from the library many years ago and bits of it really stuck, but I could never remember what it was called. That rings a huge bell though.

Yay - someone else finally mentioned The Tripods (though it's John Christopher rather than Wyndham)

I lived Blyton back in the 70's - but my kids just aren't keen at all. Saying that, many are very very repetitive and a bit dull now.

Enid Blyton, JK Rowling, Philip Pullman.

The chronicles of Narnia.

Most of my favourites have already been mentioned many times:

The Chalet School
Anything by Noel Streatfeild but particularly Ballet Shoes
Malory Towers
The Sadlers Wells books by Lorna Hill
The Jill Books by Ruby Ferguson
The William Books
Charlotte Sometimes

I still read all of the above and get as much pleasure from them now as I did back then.

All of these.. Also remember the grain of rid one, what was it called?!

Also:

Fly by Night
New Patches for Old
Easy Connections

The chalet school
Drina Ballerina
Trebizon
Malory Towers
St Clare's

MimiLaBonq - thank you, I have just googled Carbonel and that definitely is the cauldron story I remembered. I'm really grateful as it was years ago I read it and never thought I would track it down. Off to order it on Amazon!

uriahheep no I don't know that one by Kate Seredy at all, have only ever read The Good Master (which tbh I wasn't mad about). I will look for it. Always good to get a recommendation!

When i was at Junior school, a friend of mine had a copy of The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar by Roald Dahl. I remember finding the story Lucky Break about his school days and his description of getting the cane as an 8 year old quite sad and shocking. I remember the words "If only your mother were here, you told yourself, she would not let this happen. She wasn't here. You were alone."

A definite yes to Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban. It's wonderful. So is A Birthday for Frances. And his book for older children The Mouse and his Child is brilliant. Books I still love are the Borrowers series, Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh by Robert O'Brien and his other children's novel Z for Zachariah, I am David by Ann Holm and everything Enid Blyton wrote except the Noddy books.

I've remembered more!

• "Back Home" by Michelle Magorian - less mawkish than "Goodnight Mister Tom".
• The "Flossie Teacake" books. Very funny.
• Books about teenage life in slightly earlier eras, e.g. "Fifteen".
• Other books I read as a child that were not children's books as such: Isaac Asimov (the mystery ones as well as the robot ones); lots of George Orwell; lots of Agatha Christie.
• John Wyndham: "Chocky", "The Midwich Cuckoos", "The Tripods".
• "The Lotus Caves" by John Christopher, about teenagers living in the first lunar colony and how claustrophobic that is.
• Gerald Durrell's books. I preferred the bits about his family and their friends to the bits about animals and scenery.
• All of E. Nesbit, especially the Bastable books ("The Story of the Treasure Seekers", etc.) - Victorian and Edwardian feminism!
• Nancy Drew, the Bobbsey Twins, and the Lone Pine books.

Loads of the ones mentioned - cressetmama I remember a Traveller in Time (I thought she was a bit young to be swooning over the plotting nobleman )

Also lots by Leon Garfield and Rosemary Sutcliffe

Mominatrix I read a few post apocalypse dystopian books eg Brother in the Land (Robert Swindells) and the Tripod series (can't remember the author). No vampire books, but I did read Point Horror...

For pony book lovers www.amazon.co.uk/Heroines-Horseback-Pony-Childrens-Fiction/dp/1847451543

For me

-Carbonel

• The Demon headmaster (plus cbbc or maybe itv adaptation)

• Milly molly Mandy
• All of Enid Blyton. Except the biblically inspired ones.
• Pony books. Thoroughly recommend a book called heroines on horseback by Jane Badger for anyone nostalgic about pony fiction
• teddy Robinson was one of my early childhood favourites. I remember the 3 books, the green one was my favourite.
• Mrs pepperpot was also a favourite at a young age I remember my mum reading them to me.