to ask you for favourite novel as a child?

[grapeswithseeds]

For me it was probably The Famous 5 series, I love adventure!

"The Master" by TH White.
And the "Jill's Gymkhana" series by Ruby Ferguson.

@MrsSchadenfreude “when Marnie was there” has been made into a Ghibli movie.

They have also made Howls moving Castle by D Wynne-Jones

Both lovely to watch as a family

Little Women and What Katy Did.

@Swelteringmeltering if you are thinking of a step up from a Ladybird book you may be thinking of the book by Alison Plowden - also good but not really one for 6 year olds? Had the Scrotes portrait of Elizabeth as a young princess on the cover? The Jean Plaidy novel was also a chapter book but was very clearly a work of fiction.

Playing Beattie Bow

So many great books mentioned already but one of my favourite authors (still) is Erich Kästner. I have reread The Flying Classroom so many times and cry every time. He brings out the adventures and disappointments of childhood so well.

I also loved The Phantom Tollbooth. And another which I can't remember the name of exactly but was about a girl in a children's home who finds a magic pencil that allows her to get into the world a book is set in and meet the characters.

London mummy, yes! I didn't know that was artist.

Wow! OK. So the Alison one, must be the one. 🤩🤩😍😍 Love mumsnet.

The one I read, I was about 12.
Thank you!!

The Wool Pack and The Great House by Cynthia Harnett. Both set in Tudor times. Made me realise that history was about real people.
The Susan books by Jane Shaw. @NerdyBird I didn't think anyone else would remember them . Fascinating thread.

What Katy Did and I called my daughter Katy 😊

@Campervan69 yes, I loved the 3 Carbonel books, and have just finished reading them to my daughters, who loved them too (they're into all sorts of witchy stories).
Luckily I managed to keep a lot of my childhood books, and was into a lot of those magical/ mystery books (Susan Cooper, Alan Garner...), but the kids won't read them themselves as the printing is too dense and the books 'look old'! But if I read to them, they really enjoy the stories.

Too many others to list!

The Borrowers
Mrs Pepperpot
Secret Diary of Adrian Mole
Chronicles of Narnia
Are you there God? It’s me Margaret
The Earthsea series

I read a book when I was about 12 about a young English girl who’s family moved to the states and travelled across the country I can’t remember what it’s called but I loved it

I loved so many of these. Some not mentioned:

• The Amazing Mr Blunden (originally published as The Ghosts) by Antonia Barber
• Curtain Up by Noel Streatfield
• This Time of Darkness by HM Hoover
• Across the Barricades by Joan Lingard
• Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
• The Gumdrop series by Val Biro

And then there was one I loved and read lots as a child but can’t remember what it was called. The plot involved time travel and a young couple who his father doesn’t treat the mother well. He says he would never behave that way. Through going forward in time she sees that is how he will treat her and it saves her marrying him (she might have an abortion I think instead of having the baby when accidentally pregnant as the version of her she visits did). Anyone remember this and know the title or author?

Oh yes to the Sue Barton series too.... Helen Dore Boylston, I think ? I'd love to re read these, they may well be utterly cringe worthy now!

There's another one about a group of school girls who go on a school tour of Europe and have an adventure in each place but the title and author escape me now.

@NerdyBird
Is that Crooks Tour, also by Jane Shaw?

villanova have you read them the Rosemary Manning books about the dragon who lives in a cave on the beach? I loved them so much as well.

@witchend I read and reread the Lone Pine books, I was obsessed with them. I still have 19 (never found the 20th). Only yesterday I drove past a glider trailer and was reminded of "Wings over Witchend"!

I love Matilda as a young child then dear nobody as a teenager

AthenaMinerva I loved the Phantom Tollbooth as well. Was the boy called Milo?

@Alwaysfrank

Which one haven't you got? I have a few spare copies of some of them. GGBP have been re-releasing them as well.
Wings over Witchend is one of my favourites-it won the latest poll on favourite story over lockdown.
Ds loves the Marston Baines spy series too.

@Campervan69 no - I'll have to look out for them!

Lots of these books were on TV when I was a child ('70s & 80s), which helped them stick in people's heads:
The Diddakoi & The Swish of the Curtain stay with me, plus the dubbed TV series of Heidi, Elizabeth Beresford's Wombles & the lovely Paddington stop-motion.
I also got the feeling there were far fewer books: we had all the stories set in Victorian times (e.g FH Burnett, Secret Garden etc), but, from threads like these, we all seem to have read the same 'contemporary' authors from those times.

Famous 5
Roald Dahl
Malory Towers
St Clare's
Nancy Drew Case Files

When I was a bit older...

Jacqueline Wilson
Harry Potter

Totally forgot about What Katy Did! I feel like I need to read all over again. I was an avid reader growing up and by the time I was 13 I was reading James Patterson and Catherine Cookson etc so my tastes varied quite a bit!

www.amazon.co.uk/Green-Smoke-Rosemary-Manning/dp/1903252296?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

villanova I think this is the first one, they are lovely books.

The Borrowers, Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, the Sue Barton nurse books, the Marston Baines books by Malcolm Saville and Sense and Sensibility. And Ballet Shoes, and Swallows and Amazons....I was a bookworm I can’t choose.