to ask what your favourite children's/adults books of all time are?

[SundayBea]

I am wanting some inspiration for myself and for the DC. Children's and adults books of any age and genre, fiction and non fiction. Basically what I am asking is if there are books that are great enough to be hands down your childhood favourites / your DC favourites / your own favourites then please pass on your recommendations. Thank you

As a child I loved anything by Joan Aiken (I read Wolves of Willoughby chase first, and then the following adventures with Dido and Is. She's written alot of books! Including adults. I'd recommend any book by her tbh)
Lorna Doone was also a favourite.
As a teen, I second the Laurie Lee books (Cider with Rosie etc)
As an adult it has to Wuthering Heights and Jamaica Inn. Jane Eyre and Rebecca are also very good.

Toad of Toad Hall
Fantastic Mr Fox
Black Beauty
The Railway Children
Matilda
The Twits
The Chronicles of Narnia
Anything by Julia Donaldson
The Hairy Maclary series
The Diary of Anne Frank

Flowers in the Attic
Harry Potter
The Ice Cream Girls

My favourite children's book was "The Power of Three" by Diana Wynne Jones. It's also my DD's favourite book.

Can I just say how much this post has given me a blast from the past 😊 The ahlbergs especially. GO MN! Great post OP.

For me:
I used to love famous 5 - might be a bit out dated now
Red roofs
Faraway tree
Any roald dhal- anyone else read 'BOY' as an adult? The witches and so many others for kids, pure magic
Judy Blume
Lewis Carroll

I used to also love audio books in car journeys.

Wish I could remeber more, this has cheered me up beyond measure bringing up all the old stories!

And YY ton'wolves of whiloby chase!' I remeber watching the film at Xmas and I'm sure a boy went through a mangle? Did I make this up?

Child:
A little princess
The dark is rising books
Narnia
I am David
The giver
The dark portal
Doctor dolittle
The treasure seekers and the wouldbegoods
Anything by noel streatfield

Adult:
Gone with the wind
Most things by Margaret Atwood
All the Mrs gaskell books
My family and other animals
Dracula
Les miserable
All the tracey chevalier books
Witch child
Gone girl was BRILLIANT
Hunger games trilogy
The jeeves and wooster stories by PG wodehouse

This thread has got my brain going!

The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler
Neville Schute - any
Helen Forrester
Elizabeth Howard
Armistead Maupin

Noughts and Crosses
Charlie Higson's Young Bond
Alex Rider

Cant believe no one has mentionned 'I want a blue banana' by Joyce and James Dunbar. Bloody love that book

Ah god as a grown up, I better answer properly. The Spider Shepherd series by Stephen Leather are brilliant

A book I go back to is 'Charlotte Sometimes' - school story, time travel and social history all in one story.

My favourite children's books are Anne of Green Gables and Good Night Mister Tom - I've read them again as an adult and still love them

A few of my favourite adults books are:
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
A thousand splendid suns
A prayer for Owen meany
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
Remains of the day
Notes on a scandal

Stalky and Co by Rudyard Kipling.
A town like Alice by Neville Shute.
The vicarage children by Noel streatfield
The Zom-B series by Darren Shan

Anything by E Nesbit. You can download her complete works for free on Amazon Kindle. These include The Railway Children, Five Children and It, Phoenix and the Carpet, The Treasure Seekers, The Wouldbegoods, and loads loads more.

as a child: The Family From One End Street - about a working class urban family - so different to my rural upbringing & I loved it, The Viking sagas by Henry Treece, the Laura Ingots Wilder series

as a teen - To Kill A Mockingbird - set book for O-level but didn't put me off, The Thornbirds, most of the John Wyndham stuff, Lord of The Rings & a dreadful bodice ripper called Forever Amber

as an adult - Rebecca, Jamaica Inn & The House On The Strand - Daphne Du Maurier, the original Dracula story, Harry Potter series, still like LOTR

*Ingolls - bloody autocorrect

A question - do you buy your kids books or do you down load them on to a kindle and at what age do kids start preferring an ereader?

When DD was little she just loved looking at the pictures and turning the pages. Now we're on chapter books and I wonder if she would prefer to read on the kindle.

Personally I love books, especially children's books. I love the smell of a new book and the touch, I think they are so tactile. I don't mind reading adult novels on the kindle but there are certain books that I think deserve to be printed and read on paper. Maybe it's an age thing.

I would also add to the kids books Which Witch and Lemony Snickets.

and Z for Zachariah

I would also say the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, I reread them recently and they are still utterly wonderful books.

An obscure one I'll throw out there is 'the raging quiet' by Sherryl Jordan. I picked it up from a charity shop near a beach one day (beaches bore me but kids wanted to go) and I read the lot in the one afternoon. Brilliant book set in medieval times, I'd say aimed at young adults.

Has anyone said The Chalet School books yet?

Grumpy I bought my bookworm DD a kindle for her (I think) 12th birthday but she didn't "take" to it. She prefers books, and saves her pocket money for hardbacks of favourites. I however have been using the kindle since the New Year and love it. I was one of those people previously who would have said I preferred physical books and disliked the idea of e-readers, but the ease of downloading and having a new book instantly has converted me. Plus DH works shifts so I can read without the lamp on. I still think that physical books are best though, especially for young DC. There's something about a collection of physical books as possessions which I love.

The hungry caterpillar!

Postit yes someone does get caught in a mangle!

My favourite for young children: Each Peach Pear Plum - Janet and Allan Ahlberg.
DS (4yo): Oi Frog - Kes Gray.
My favourite children's books: Anything by Roald Dahl.
DD (8yo): Anything by David Walliams.
My favourite for older children: Diary of Anne Frank.
My favourite adult novel: Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernières. The book ending is very different to the Hollywood film ending.

So many books I love already mentioned... will add a few that haven't been so far.
Children first......
Ask Me No Questions - Ann Schlee. Set during the1848 cholera epidemic, thoughtful and sad [age 11 +].

The Moon in the Cloud - Rosemary Harris(+ 2 sequels). Noah's Ark, talking cats, the royal courts of Egypt- I couldn't stop reading this, at the age of 45! [for age 9/10 upwards].

The Mantlemass series by Barbara Willard. I love love love these books which again I read as an adult. Seven main books plus two outliers [Miller's Boy much simpler, Keys of Mm fill-in short stories]. Start with The Lark and the Laurel in 1485 and go through to the mid 1600s with interconnected familes in the Ashdown Forest. Beautifully written and haunting. For young teens upwards.

Mail-Order Wings by Beatrice Gormley. Nine-year old Andrea orders wings from a magazine and they work! Great fun. 8 / 9up
The Dancing Bear by Peter Dickinson. ' A Greek slave, his dancing bear, and an old holy man journey from Byzantium to rescue the slave's young mistress from the Huns.' 10 up?

My daughter loved Topsy and Tim, the Drina ballet books by Jean Estoril, Snowfall by KM Peyton [Victorian girl climber], and Kiss The Dust by Elizabet Laird [Kurdish children escaping persecution].
My son loved Willard Price, Jennings, Antonia Forest, and My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett, which surprise surprise is all about my father's dragon who has to be rescued from some very nasty wild animals by my father. [ 5-8 ].

I loved Enid Blyton, favourites were Pip the pixie, Faraway Tree series Famous Five and the Cherry Tree/Willow Farm series. I'd love to read them all again!

Books that I've loved as an adult....
Patrick O'Brian's fantastic set of twenty novels that start with Master and Commander. Exciting, moving, enthralling, informative, with characters who live in your mind for ever. Definitely my choice for the desert island.

Elswyth Thane's Williamsburg series set in both the US and England. Very very readable....good flu books! The first one, Dawn's Early Light, is good but not quite as gripping as the later ones, IMO.

Time After Time by Jack Finney . Time travel in New York. Especially recommended if you visit NYC - it adds lots of layers - but a good holiday read anywhere.

The Towers of Trebizond - Rose Macaulay. One of the most idiosyncratic opening lines in English literature !

Period Piece by Gwen Raverat. Darwin's granddaughter's account of her childhood in Cambridge. Very funny. Delightful.

A London Child of the 1870s by Molly Hughes - warm and personal [there are sequels but out-of-print I think]
Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski [very moving ]
and almost everything else published by Persephone.

And lastly but not leastly, everything written by Elizabeth Von Arnim [aka The Author of Elizabeth and her German Garden ]. She was born in 1866 but writes with wry humour and a sardonic and feminist attitude so that her novels feel quite contemporary. Apparently one was featured in Downton Abbey when Molesley gives Anna a copy of Elizabeth's first novel !