Reading Children's Books as an Adult

I still have Gone Away Lake in my bookcase (aged 58.5). I think i last reread it during the pandemic.

And Cynthia Voigt for brilliant American writing - the Dicey series is wonderful.

Oh, the Silver Brumby books were amazing. I'd never read anything like those before, they really fired my imagination as a kid.

@Matildatoldsuchdreadfullies yes to Cue for Treason. It has influenced my life in several ways.

And Elyne Mitchell's Silver Brumby books were some of my favourite- Australian.

There have always been lots of English language writers, so we haven't had as many translate authors as other countries. I don't think I've seen Karl Mey in English (haven't looked, to be fair,) which many German children would have been brought up with.

Elisabeth Enright books are American, too - the Melendy series and Gone-Away Lake.

LM Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables, Emlyn of New Moon, Jane of Lantern Hill) was Canadian.

Curiously, the best classics seem to be British - except for Little Women, which you might want to try. (I prefer Little Princess over Secret Garden.)

On the ReadingtheWorld blog once she asked folk about the best children's books in different languages. I was surprised that the majority of suggestions were fairytales rather than chapter books. I think in the UK the suggestions would be things like Tom's Midnight Garden, Narnia, Alice in Wonderland etc so books aimed at what we now call tweens.

I think the US has more than Little Women. There are the Little House books, Charlotte's Web, The Oz books, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (are these still read by children?), Pollyanna, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Rats of NIMH. I read and loved a lot of US children's novels as a child in the 70s and 80s.

I didn't read Wind in the Willows and Peter Pan until I was in college. And I'm glad I did, finally.

Curiously, the best classics seem to be British - except for Little Women, which you might want to try. (I prefer Little Princess over Secret Garden.)

Yes, these are wonderful.
I too have read and re-read the Anne of Green Gables books as an adult, and the Laura Ingals Wilder books.

@Dappy777 I have heard a story that once when Tolkien was holding forth to a group of students on his latest chapter of LOTR that one was overheard saying “Not another fucking Elf…”

Ah, yes.😀

Totally agree.

The Eagle and Child, nicknamed the Bird and Baby. Would love to have eavesdropped.

Apparently, C. S. Lewis (who could read Ancient Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Old English and Old Norse) re-read Beatrix Potter's Squirrel Nutkin every September to get him in the mood for Autumn. He also adored Wind in the Willows and Tolkien's The Hobbit. This was a man who read War and Peace three times and could practically recite the whole of Milton's Paradise Lost from memory.

I love the fact that tolkien and Lewis, who were Oxford professors, and who used to read Dante to one another in Italian, both retained a love for children's books and for simple adventure stories. I just love the image of them in that pub in Oxford (can't think of its name), on a winter evening, pipes in their mouths, swigging beer and reading their stories about Narnia and Middle Earth out loud.

All the Noel Steatfeild books plus all the Michelle Magorian books.

I love Starlight Barking. Read it as a tween and it stayed with me so I had to go and seek out a copy as an adult. I just loved the idea of dogs being alone in the world (the plot is that all the humans fall asleep and the dogs have to save the day) - I think I prefer it to 101Ds!

Just read A Wrinkle in Time, post stranger things! I enjoyed it, although probably not as much as if it had a nostalgia element.

My first intro to it was The Babysitter's club 🤣

Try Cue for Treason, A Wrinkle in Time, I am David. And the Laura Ingalls Wilder series is wonderful.

There are a couple of sequels, taking her up to adulthood.

As CS Lewis once said - "Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again”.

I recently re-read the Anne of green Gables series and loved it which actually led to me discovering the Emily Starr trilogy which I had been completely unaware of as a child and absolutely loved it! But for nostalgia reasons, re-reading the Mallory Towers and St Clare’s books as an adult gives me such joy. I remember the feeling of being cosied up in my room as a child and reading them for the first time.

Somewhere I read or heard that 'there are no such things as childrens' books', meaning that all are for adults, too.
I've never read 'Charlotte's Web' and I mean to ask for it in the library.
Edited to put a word in.

I knew a lady who was 'in service' with relations of Noel Streatfield - not the immediate family, but not far removed. Sorry, no anecdotes.

Black Beauty was not written for children, btw, it was to draw attention to the poor treatment of many horses.

The secret garden. I loved the BBC serial version, but was disappointed in the most recent film remake. It was overdone and had lost the magic.

Weird? Why would it be weird? I enjoyed the Arthur Ransome's S&W books far more as an adult than as a child.

Same here, want to get back to all the classics. I wish I’d kept all my books (my mum hadn’t decluttered them
out of my life!!)