What was you favourite book when you were a child?

[Dropinthe]

Mine was The Faraway Tree series.

Amazed by how many people loved Marianne Dreams. I thought I knew a lot about children's literature but I had never heard of this book till last year. Read it and was really scared by it, evenhad to ask dp to go and turn on the lights before I could go upstairs one evening, when I had been reading the bit about the stones outside watching them!

The other day, my stepdaughter, who is 14, went back to bed the other afternoon, under a pile of duvets and blankets and with a mug of hot chocolate to read Agatha Christie. I was SO jealous! The joy of reading them for the first time. Bliss.

The stones are incredibly scary, aren't they?
And when the scribble turns to bars. ooooh!

marianne dreams..

Yep really spooky as I remember.. but what age is it aimed at?
I reckon I must have been 9/10 when I read it.

Who wrote it? What else have they written??

Ooh lordy, I'm going all tingly about it again. I don't think I will re-read it for years if ever, it really creeped me out.

3PRincessees, I'm currently reading When The Siren Wailed. It's MUCH better than The Time Traveller's Wife.

It's Catherine Storr ,isn't it? Who also wrote Clever Polly and The Stupid Wolf and adult books and other really great children's books

Our Island Story.

When you've finished it you MUST read Cold Christmas (says 3Princesses in a slightly mad, staring-eyed way). It's brilliant.

ooh, how exciting (she replies, insanely ) I haven't even heard of it. Sounds delightfully seasonal.

Beautifully seasonal, bit creepy, but in a satisfying way. The epitome of all that a book should be IMO. Am still looking for that quality in all the books I read as an adult-- think that was the first one I ever found it in.

(Should that be 'in which I ever found it' as this is a literary thread?)

By Noel Streatfield too, I assume?

No, sorry, got so carried away in selling it I forgot to say. Nina Beachcroft, mentioned further down. She's a great children's writer, now oddly forgotten and out of print. Also wrote a really wierd book called Under the Enchanter about a family who are staying in a holiday cottage when the boy falls under the spell of a strange old man in the barn next door. Gave me a longstanding fear of outbuildings as a child.

Alice in Wonderland

Books about Mardie and Lisbet - two little girls - but can't remember the name of the books or the author...

Agatha Christie stories!! Mum used to tell me them......

The books look fantastic, but are all out of print - though you can get them via Amazon.
I think I might treat myself for Christmas.

Have got Cold Christmas, Under the Enchanter and A visit to Folly Castle (not as good as the other 2) if you'd like to borrow them...

Wonder why she is out of print? The books are in a similar vein to Harry Potter etc, but so much better.

Oh, thanks 3Princesses, but have bought them already! From Amazon and Abebooks.co.uk
I am so looking forward to them now.

Eeeek! Am excited!

Can't remember the last time anyone took any notice of any of my book recommendations. Spend my life finding books that I think look interesting for the dds, only to have them tossed aside with a sneer in favour of a lurid Jacqueline Wilson...

(Of course, shall worry now incase you think they're rubbish.)

They sound exactly the sort of thing I like.

I also bought Ping The Duck!

Did Nina Beachcroft write Well Met By Witchlight? About a little old witch called Mary and a girl called Lucy...I think...
The Tree that Sat Down
The Mountain of Magic
The Stream that Stood Still, Beverley Nichols
Farmer Boy was my favourite of the LIW books
Loved the Family at One End Street, Just William, Mary Poppins, 101 Dalmatians, the Starlight Barking, I Capture the Castle.
The Little Wooden Horse and Gobbolino the Witches Cat scared me witless. I remember Mum giving them to me to read on holiday, staying in a hotel room by myself with my sisters...I used to wander the corridors looking for Mum at night.
A Little Princess was my all time favourite though. Miss Minchin was SO horrible and Sarah was so cold and starved, I wanted to rescue her.

Ohhhhh, lovely books!!

Confession time: I still reread things like Tom's Midnight Garden, the Green Knowe books, The Dark is Rising, Arthur Ransome...... they make amazing comfort reads for when I don't feel in the mood for gritty adult reality.

Does anyone remember Grimble by Clement Freud? A lovely book about a boy whose parents are very forgetful, and one day they go off to Peru and leave him home alone for a week, having left lots of notes around the house telling him what to do.

My sisters and I thought it was hysterically funny (at age 8-10 approx), and could recite reams of it. Slightly offbeat humour, eg I still enjoy the definition of "disgruntled" - "somewhere between all right and angry".

Anyone else remember it? Out of print now. Can't wait to read it to dd.

A Puff of Green Smoke - About a dragon that lives on a beach and likes to eat cake. A little girl finds him and they fly off and have adventures

Anne of Green Gables
Animal Farm
1984
The Hobbit
The Cherry Tree Farm series - with Tammilan the wild man
famous Five books - all of them
Charlotte Sometimes - I remember she climbed onto a glass roof to get a German girl's ribbon, it was wartime, and all the other girls called her a Hun-Lover
The Magic Faraway Tree - Yes, it was fab
The Silver Brumbies - I wasn't a horsey girl at all, in fact was scared of them but loved these books. They were (IIRC) quite adult though.
The Little Wool Mill - Strange book, was written from the father's perspective about a very young girl.
The Narnia Books, especially the Horse and his Boy.
Black Beauty. I cried. A lot.
Minka and Curdy - About a woman's cats.

And there was a book about a grown woman who had a fairy at the bottom of her garden, but can't remember what it was called.

Ooooh lovely question!

Pre - school it was Ant and Bee for me, they were the first ones I was able to read without mum or dad helping.

the first story books I read myself were The Borrowers series (dad started to read them to me when I was in hospital and I continued when I got home )

More from when I was little - the Just So stories and Grimmes Fairy tales, I've even called my new baby boy Conrad after the boy in The Goose Girl

later The Midnight Folk - Mistress Masham's Repose - The Hobbit

Bambi by Felix Salten. I recently bought a copy from ebay as I want to read it to DS.

But anything by Enid is fab. I have recently bought from ebay old copies of

Malory Towers
Mr Gallianos Circus

Would love to read

naughty little sister
St Clares
Wishing Chair ones.

Pretty much read most of the stuff mentioned. However on a darker note, my dad used to have Pan books of horror on his bookcase and they were sooooooo scary. Don't know why I read them .....at night.....with a torch.....what a silly girl.

Also his Harold Robbins taught me a few things about life that I didn't know! I wouldn't want my daughter to read that at 10.