To ask what your favourite children's book is/was

[LaVieEstBelle159]

The book or books that bring back comforting and happy memories.

Mine are Magic Faraway Tree, Mallory Towers and St Clares, all by Enid Blyton.

What are yours?

Ooh and anything by Jemery Strong, tears rolling down my face in laughter with my mum struggling to breathe enough to read the next sentence.

The wishing chair 😁

Dark Is Rising and Diana Wynne Jones. Also the Leon Garfield books and Penelope Lively's books for children. Still remember a children's book set on the Scilly Isles too (not Michael Morpugo) but haven't tracked it down.

Helen Creswell's Bagthorpe Family books
Patricia Leitch, Jinny of Finmory Series
Adventure series by Enid Blyton
Margaret Greaves, The Lost Ones
Michael Rosen, Nasty
Jan Mark, Too much is enough already

Nancy Drew's!

A really old ladybird book called the big pancake. The illustrations now are scary 😂 Old Ted, the enchanted forest because I wanted honey pops, Mr Twiddle if anyone remembers those, Enid Blyton did some short story books and I remember one about a girl that are too many sweets and got sick.

My naughty little sister, I loved it as a child and read it to my own children who were less taken with it. I think it’s a little behind the times nowadays!

Also loved all little house on the prairie books, I read my grans copies of those that she had kept since she was a child.

@TrashyPanda I had forgotten all about A dog so small! I bought it with my own money from a charity shop as a child and loved it.

Also The Indian in the cupboard books, I loved those.

It was called “the car who couldn’t climb down” about a ginger kitten who climbed and climbed, but couldn’t work out how to get down. I got it from Santa, at my reception Xmas party. No idea where it is now or how to find a copy (even worse, If he ever did climb down). But it’s a very very fond memory for me. After that it was an Enid Blyton book about some kids who ran away to a little island and made a house out of willow, caught fish, picked fruit to sell at market etc. My reading obsession carried on into adulthood and I read about 4-5 books a week, sometimes I have more than one on the go. I regularly read books I read as a child, just so I can go back to that place of pure joy discovering what happens all over again……

Chronicles of Narnia

Anything by E Nesbit (Five Children & It, The Railway Children etc)

Chalet School, Mallory Towers, Twins at St Clare's.

*Cat. Not car!!! Wow I’ve been awake too long today!!! Defo a cat not a car….. 🙈

I read Diane Wynne Jones as an adult after a drama series on children's TV. She was excellent

Oh, and Noel Streatfield - Ballet Shoes, White Boots etc.

Enid Blyton
Chalet School
Molly Molly Mandy
The family from one end street
Trebizon series
The silver sword

Famous Five and Secret Seven. All I wanted was to be part of a crime busting gang.

Anything illustrated by Edward Ardizzone particularly Stig Of The Dump.

Oh goodness. So many more!

Anne of Green Gables

Little Women, Good Wives, Little Men, Jo's Boys

Alice in Wonderland

The 'Colour' Fairy Books (The Red Fairy Book, Green, Blue etc)

I was never out of the library when I was a kid

@Fifthtimelucky Going by your list we must be of a similar age!

Early 60s?

The usual suspects by Enid Blyton, Arthur Ransome and Susan Coolidge, including the later Katy series. Rose Red was my absolute favourite character of children's literature ever: I had a bit of a girl crush on her!

Favourite ever: Penelope Farmer's Charlotte Sometimes. Haunting, beautiful story and I also liked the song by The Cure.

Loved 'Heidi' as a child, although as an adult I find it quite saccharine.

Horse stories: Jean Slaughter Doty's 'Can I get there by Candlelight,, Michael Hardcastle's 'The Saturday Horse' and Anne Digby's 'A Horse Called September'.

Also:

The earlier instalments of the Trebizon school series.

Alison Uttley's 'Little Grey Rabbit' books.

Nina Bawden, 'Carrie's War'

Jack London, 'The Call of the Wild'

Lewis Carroll's Alice books

Gene Kemp, 'The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler'

Milly Molly Mandy (I LOVED the little map of the village at the front)
Worzel Gummidge
Faraway Tree
Rosy Is My Relative
The Flower Fairy books. Especially the Autumn one.
The Diddakoi
101 Dalmatians
The Borrowers series

And Laura Ingalls Wilder. Although, I don't think i ever actually finished the later books.

The bear that gets thrown away sounds like
This is the Bear by Sarah Hayes?
Loved the Moomin books as a child.
My children loved The Gumdrop books- Val Biro.
My son still remembers Peter and the Little Fox as being his favourite book.
It was from the Hummingbird Reading scheme infinitely better than the Village with 3 corners and the awful Biff, Chip and Kipper!

There was a beautiful picture book printed before the early 70s, about a little boy who loved a horse on his farm, and liked to think it could fly. At the end the horse dies, and the last picture shows the horse's spirit soaring into the sky.
I've searched several book sites over the years, and can't find a trace of it!

Scrolled through the whole thread and i'm amazed at the number of mentions for Enid Blyton. I wonder if it's fair to assume it's a certain generation (1970s kids and back) mainly answering these as that's when she was at her height. Her work to me is of its time, plus it's quite tame. The biggest reading poll to date was done in 2003 and only one book by her made it into the top 200.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Read

Widely seen as the best children's author Roald Dahl has nine books listed (think I owned about ten books of his so he was my favourite) while all four of JK Rowling's books published at the time of the poll were listed. British children's lit is unsurpassed, but I wouldn't have expected to see Enid Blyton featuring so heavily today as is the case on here (I guess her being read mostly by females is another reason she features more on this forum than a general poll).

My Naughty Little Sister being mentioned brought back memories as that's a series my younger sister read alot. In terms of favourite if I had to pick just one of Dahl's it would be George's Marvellous Medicine.