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Children's books

Join in for children's book recommendations.

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Original poster

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

306 replies

invisiblegorilla · 30/12/2015 19:58

For me:

The Chalet School series. The early ones, when Jo was still a pupil! I brought them second hand. Eustacia, Elisaveta and so on. I remember when Jo and co. were given their prefect rooms in the new building and being in love with the descriptions/idea of it all.

Nancy Drew. Can't remember which ones, it's just a lot of investigations and stories blended it together in my memory.

The Chronicles of Narnia. I found the last book a little strange, but I read the first three over and over again.

And anything by Roald Dahl. There's a lot more (anything to do with boarding schools and midnight feasts had me obsessed) but I'm curious about what books other people remember the most.

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JellyTotCat · 30/12/2015 22:25

Magic Faraway Tree, St Clares/Malory Towers, Naughtiest Girl, Enid Blyton short stories

E Nesbit, Phoenix and the Carpet, Five Children and It

Tom's Midnight Garden

Goodnight Mister Tom (sob)

Little Wooden Horse

Geraniumred · 30/12/2015 22:30

Did anyone read ' the family from one end street' with some lovely illustrations?

angelicjen · 30/12/2015 22:30

Anne of Green Gables. The whole series is just wonderful. I loved all the books by L M Montgomery and desperately wanted to live in Prince Edward Island.

Also the Little Women series. What Katy Did, Chalet School and later Judy Blume.

Themodernuriahheep · 30/12/2015 22:31

Geranium, yes, eve

Themodernuriahheep · 30/12/2015 22:33

Posted too soon, Eve Garnett both wrote and illustrated. Lovely.

How could I have forgotten Little Grey Rabbit? Loved a Traveller in Time, too. That farmhouse us glorious.

Taytocrisps · 30/12/2015 22:43

Most of the books I read have already been mentioned but here's one or two more:-

'I am David' by Anne Holm

'The Silver Sword' by Ian Serraillier

Does anyone remember a book about four children who lived in Turkey (I think)? Their parents were killed in an earthquake and they had to move to the UK to stay with family. They found it very difficult to settle.

FiftyNineOhEight · 30/12/2015 22:43

Thank you for reminding me about Jennings and What Katy Did and Anne of Green Gables - all books I've read many times but had forgotten Smile. And all the horsey books I inherited from my aunt.

Taytocrisps · 30/12/2015 22:46

Oh, and I loved 'New Patches for Old' by Christobel Mattingley. I read it when I was 12 or 13. It's about a British girl who emigrates to Australia with her family when her Dad is made redundant. I'd love to read it again now.

TotalConfucius · 30/12/2015 22:47

I had all 21 of the Famous Five series by the age of 6. When I finally got a Big Dog (rather than a scrawny Yorkie) at the age of 38 I was desperate to call it Timmy.
I wasn't so taken by the Secret Seven.
The Wombles - I still love The Wandering Wombles, and the illustrations in the original were just fabulous.
I had a book that my Mum gave me as she had read it as a child.'Tangletrees' it was called and it was about a girl who goes to live with a mysterious uncle in forest, there appears to be some sort of a gorilla lurking in the forest. Can't remember all the details but it was Very Important to me then.
When I was about 7/8 I went a bit offbeat and started reading a collection of Russian fairy tales, they were a bit dark. (Translated of course)
Born Free series. Love, love, love.
At about 12 I started reading my older sisters Mills and Boons, of which the silly moo had many. I am convinced that overdosing on M&B is why she has had such an unhappy love life, especially since most of her bosses looked like Alf Garnett.
Then Judith Krantz took over and I never looked at the family goldfish in the same way again.
Then I read an Agatha Christie on holiday one year and the murder/mystery/crime thing began, still going strong nearly 40 years later, with the odd venture into horror and apocolyptic stuff.

Witchend · 30/12/2015 22:56

Tayto, could it be Ballet Shoes for Anna (Noel Streatfield) that's 3 children not 4 but otherwise fits.

Also 3 investigators, anything by Geoffrey Trease, Joan Aiken, Willard Price...

I loved Dew Drop Inn in the family from one end street. I've got a couple of their books now, but not that one.

StickyToffeePuddingAndCustard · 30/12/2015 22:58

Black Beauty
The Starlight Barking
Sugar Mouse
Mallory Towers/St Claires/Naughtiest School/Amelia Jane
Most Pullein-Thomson books
Caroline Akrill's Eventer's Trilogy - loved The Comet
Charlie & the Chocolate Factory / Great Glass Elevator

Taytocrisps · 30/12/2015 23:02

Witchend it's definitely not Ballet Shoes.

Dew Drop Inn takes me back............

I loved the Willard Price books. They were very different from my usual fare (school books and horse books) but I loved the descriptions of the animals and I loved the idea of sleeping in a hammock in a tent.

I also loved American series like Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys and Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators. I'd love to read them all again.

Taytocrisps · 30/12/2015 23:04

Oh, sorry, I just saw that you wrote 'Ballet Shoes for Anna'. I've just googled it and I'm sure that's it!

YolandiFuckinVisser · 30/12/2015 23:13

Anything about ponies - follyfoot, international velvet, phantom horse, the brumby ones, the black stallion ones, jockey school, etc etc

Enid Blyton - famous five, faraway tree, amelia jane, Mr galliano's circus, currently revisiting st clare's with dd (fucking hilarious for both of us ref language & attitudes of the girsl)

Anne of green gables - read them all, loved the first one but increasingly impatient with Anne's pious nature in the later books

Gwent Grant's series starting with Private, keep out about a working class girl in a big family living in a small house somewhere I think might be worksop in the late 1940s

Goodnight Mr Tom

The dark is rising

The box of delights

I re-read a million times a book called sinister stories, still have it but impossible to open without all the pages falling out, a collection of short stories with supernatural themes like dolls brought to life, flourescent mushrooms grown in an English shed by a secret nazi agent as an air raid beacon, sping-heeled jack attacking innocents on their way to the corner shop in Manchester. Loved that book!

FithColumnist · 30/12/2015 23:13

When I was really young, anything by Enid Blyton. Tried Narnia, never got into it. After about 8 or 9 maybe I became a total fantasy geek. Terry Pratchett and David Eddings especially, but also Tolkien. I'm still a total fantasy geek, although I have outgrown Eddings now.

ShadowsCollideIsSurroundedByAd · 30/12/2015 23:14

Oh, and 'Under The Hawthorn Tree'. The story of Peggy, Eily, and Michael had me sobbing my eyes out when I was 7.

timelytess · 30/12/2015 23:16

I liked descriptions of heroines' bedrooms, and their clothes! See Eight Cousins and The Little White Horse.

Sofiria · 30/12/2015 23:16

More!

The Worst Witch books
Frost in May
The Borrowers
Alice in Wonderland
A Little Princess
Carrie's War

I also had a series of books telling the life stories of important/inspirational people. I can't remember what the series was called but I remember books about Nellie Bly, Margaret Mead and Harriet Tubman.

AWhistlingWoman · 30/12/2015 23:18

Fattypuffs and Thinifers! Loved that one clopper

So many of those already mentioned
Anne Of Green Gables
The Animals of Farthing Wood
The Magic Faraway Tree (although Mr Topsy Turvy was absolutely terrifying for some reason)
Ballet Shoes
The Little White Horse
What Katy Did - DD1 only narrowly escaped being a Clover!
Little Women but mainly Jo's Boys!

Joan Aitken's 'Necklace of Raindrops' (DC love it too!) and 'The Wolves of Willoughby Chase'
Susan Cooper's 'The Dark is Rising' Series
'The Silver Crown' by Robert C O'Brien. So scary! Still haunts me now.
Anything by Diana Wynne Jones but particularly the Charmed Life / The Lives of Christopher Chant books.
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

'The Bewitching of Alison Allbright' by Alan Davidson, another that has stayed with me for many year.

Oh and 'Charlotte Sometimes' by Penelope Farmer.

Will never forgive 'Goodnight Mister Tom' for making me cry in 'silent' reading and getting taken the piss out of me in Yr 4!

Sofiria · 30/12/2015 23:19

Ack! I forgot Charlotte Sometimes which I reread an absurd number of times.

Geraniumred · 30/12/2015 23:21

Joan Aiken's 'All But a Few' was really good too- fairy tale short stories set in the real world.

echt · 30/12/2015 23:22

E.Nesbit
Mary Plain
What Katy Did
Little Women and Good Wives
The Little White Horse and Henrietta's House
All the Narnias
The Adventure series by Blyton
The Wind in the Willows
The Little Grey Men and Down the Bright Stream
Lots of animal adventure books be Chipperfield
My Friend Flicka, Thunderhead and The Green Grass of Wyoming
Oddly, Biggles Goes to School.

zwellers · 30/12/2015 23:26

was overjoyed this Christmas to get blade of the poisoner and master of fiends by douglas hill. first read them aged in 1986 aged nine and have never fogotten them.

educatingarti · 30/12/2015 23:26

As well as lots mentioned here, I loved the Malcolm Savile books Lone Pine Five, Mystery at Witchend etc.

fourkids · 30/12/2015 23:29

comeLuckyApril, omg that looks very familiar - made me feel a bit weird! I've been trying to identify that story for decades!! Thank you so so much :) I mean really really much - two glasses of Pinot and I feel a bit over-excited :)
Maybe the grain of rice story was in something else - I was a book a day type kid...

I also loved The Changes, and Olga da Polga...