What Were Your Favourite Books as a Child?

I have a long, long way to think back to when I was a child - but I do know that I always simply adored reading, my nose was never out of a book. My parents didn't actually read stories to me, but my dad told me stories every night, he made up stories about Tom Thumb - who was , it seems, responsible for the holes in the tips of my slippers!! I started reading at a very young age with Enid Blyton books - I think I must have read them all! As I have just mentioned in a discussion I have started, I can remember absolutely loving Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World, I simply adored The Secret Garden, Heidi,The Just So Stories (oh how I loved that book!!) the Katy books and oh so many more. The books you mention were more what my daughters read - they all loved Judy Blume books, and I read The Very Hungry Caterpillarto all my children and granddchildren ( I have actually just started a discussion about that book!!) Reading is such a joy and I do wish more children read these days as we did in my childhood!

When I was very small, I remember my favourites being the Mr Men books, I just loved the different characters, and I also had Winnie the Pooh Stories, but I was a big fan of fairy tales. As I got into my teenage years I began reading the books by R.L. Stine - they were my favourite, because I loved ghost stories, and he wrote the best books for children because they were so easy to read. I also loved The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe, by C S Lewis, but it was the only one that I read, even though now I have got a whole book, full of the stories. I just couldn't get into the others. I also had Adrian Mole, and romantic books. When I got older I even tried out one of my mum's mill's and boon books lol, but did not really enjoy them, but I did enjoy some of the books by Danielle Steele, that my Mum had. Nowadays I actually read more than I ever used to, but I tend to go for books that are romantic or emotional, and books that are ghost stories or paranormal, I love that kind of stuff

Hi Karen, Oh I loved the Hungry Caterpillar and still have it now as all my chuildren did too. I was always reading but can'tthink ofany particualr author I read as child, I do remember reading the Famous Fiver series though and would go off on imaginery adventures with them, even my dog was called Rinty after Rin Tin Tin. My girls as teenagers read Philip Pullman and also The Harry Potter books too. My son who is 6 atpresent reads any books that are to do with cars or pirates. Huggles. Ellie :D

Like you I have read loads of Enid Blyton books. The ones that I can remember off-hand were The Famous Five and Mr Twiddle for some reason! I have also read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis and Charlie and The Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. All of them ACE books. However, when I was about 9 or 10 I was heavily influenced by a teacher who (looking back now) held kids in the palm of her hand without being strict, rather like Princess Di. In fact, she looked like her. Anyway, the books she read in class were The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien (and probably some of the trilogy afterwards as well) plus the amazing Watership Down by Richard Adams. My childhood would not have been complete without reading those books. Mum read the James Bond books when younger and she said that Daniel Craig is the closest she has seen to the CHARACTER in the books. His blonde hair is an irrelevance..plus the fact he's fit!

The first book I loved was Harry Potter . I was 9 when they first came out and I felt in love with the characters , the sights and the atmosphere described there . I thought it's another world , a better one and I also loved magic . Then I saw the movies and slowly I became a Harry Potter fan . After this I started paying attention to fantasy books like The Spook's Apprentice , The hunger games , Percy Jackson , Fableheaven and lots more . Then the Twilight fenomen came out and I started reading all the vampire books that were released . I know it's not healthy to read only this kind of books so I started recently to read other types of books and traditional Romanian literature.

I used to love Enid Blyton, at the time I diddn't realise who the author was, but I just read loads and loads of books by her. I had a very good friend as a child who was also into books and she introduced me to a lot of other books like C.S Lewis, Tolien, Terry Pratchet,I am so grateful for that, becuase all that fantasy reading really developed my imagination, my language skills etc.

My mom and dad read us the Seuss books and dad read us the Oz books we had (nearly all of the Baum books and 3 others.) I didn't really like to read until I discovered the horse books and then I read all of Farley's books and Hinkle and Henry's books http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Farley http://www.janebadgerbooks.co.uk/usa2/hinkle.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marguerite_Henry

wow you seem to have read many good books. for me, i'm more of a fiction lover, tending more towards adventure, romance and mysteries. but i remember ever since i was young, nancy drew and hardy boys were my cup of tea then. in fact, i was so into them that i finished reading all the nancy drew books that my school library had. haha well i couldn't seem to find any new ones so i assumed that i finished them anyway. nowadays, romance is a must for me, with action, mystery, adventure in too. recently though, i've been more into paranormal romance although i feel that that mood will wear off soon.

when I was younger,we had a mini-library.my aunt used to work in a school library.she will bring old books that the library administration doesn't want to use anymore.I loved story books.I also loved coloring books.when I was around 10 or 12 my "formal" love of books started with the Sweet Valley series.I had everything - Kid,Twins,Unicorn Club,High,University,Magna,Thrillers.

Wow, there are so very many books that I could choose from as far as the books that I loved when I was a child. I loved the books like the Frog and the Toad and I loved all of the I Can Read books that we collected over the years. Then when I got a little bit older, I started to really love the Babysitter's Club series and at one time owned the first 100 books from the series. Additionally, I also really enjoyed reading books by Lurlene McDaniel.

Ohhh - I still collect childrens books! My 5 year old loves to read books too - so my collection does double duty. My 7 month old has an interest in playing with fabric books - hee hee. I have my favorites as an adult, but as per your discussion, I'll try to list my favorites as a child. I loved Beatrice Potter - and her Peter Rabbit series. I absolutely loved the illustrations and the smaller size books. Roald Dahl was a favorite - I loved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but also James and the Giant Peach. My teacher used to read a chapter each afternoon and it just made me crave peaches!! Dr. Seuss books - any of them! I particularly remember The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, besides the rest of his classics. Charlotte's Web - E.B. White - now my daughter's favorite only because of the animation. The Very Hungry Caterpillar - Eric Carle. I love his illustrations - who can resist his lively colors and textures!! My daughter has many of his books. Maurice Sendak books - like Where the Wild Things Are, Chicken Soup with Rice, Little Bear, Pierre, Frog and Toad . . . all of his works!! The Giving Tree - written and illustrated by Shel Silverstein. His silly poem books were awesome too! The Boxcar Children - by Gertrude Chandler Warner. Not the series, but the original book. Another one that my teacher read every afternoon. karen1969, I could go on forever listing all my favorites. I absolutely love childrens books!!!!

I'm don't really like reading a lot of books when I was still young because most of the time i'm more interested on looking at the pictures in the book more than it's contents. Most of the books that I read are the fiction short stories of Asia and other fairy tales.

I love the R.L. Stein books. Fear street was great. V.C. Andrews was another. I couldn't get enough. I also like the Babysitter's Club books. I love all these. They were great.

I loved the Malory Towers books too. I know there was another series similar, St Claires or something like that that I loved but I can't remember that as well. My favourite book from my younger childhood was Mr Magnolia. I used to make my dad read it to me every single night for years. I enjoyed the Roald Dahl books too, with The Twits being my favourite.

As a child I loved Amar Chitra Katha comics and Tinkle comics which are hugely popular in India. These have nice stories involving animals and old Indian heroes and warriors. Most of the stories have nice morals at the end of each story. I loved it as a child. After some time I migrated to the Enid Blyton stuff which introduced to me to the world of novels. Then I moved on to Hardy Boys and a few Nancy Drew books. After this during my college days I moved over to popcorn fiction. I call the likes of Jefferey Archer, Robert Ludlum etc. as popcorn fiction where the stories are fantastically contrived, without too much brain work involved, just go through the flow of the book. Then I was introduced to the world of Isaac Asimov and I was blown out of my minds by his books. I still have a fantastic collection of his books. Cheers! Ram

One of the first books I ever read was The Cat In The Hat.. I actually taught myself how to read with that book, because I memorized the whole thing, so learned what the words looked like. I also read the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.. and actually the entire series by CS Lewis.. the rest of the series wasn't nearly as good, I wish they could have just followed the same characters!

I don't know if I could pin-point any one book I called my favorite (I still can't think of a favorite book.) But I know that I loved Chronicles of Narnia (I practically lived and breathed them.) I read anything that had a unicorn in it, including the Unicorn Chronicle by Bruce Coville. I also liked Bruce Coville's Magic Shop series, My Teacher is an Alien series, and Aliens Ate my Homework series. I also really loved anything by Gail Carson Levine (She wrote Ella Enchanted and a lot of other mixed up fairy tale stories), and this old children's classic called "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

I loved Nancy Drew mysteries and to this day enjoy suspense stories. I read a lot as a child and am getting back into that mode as I become older.

I wasn't able to read all that much as a kid :( I was, however, able to borrow from the school library a LOT, but I didn't remember much of the books I read. There was one that stood out, though. It's called "The Little White Horse" by Elizabeth Goudge. I was so amazed by the world that Goudge created, and that a girl would hate the color pink. There are so much memorable characters just as there are interesting twists! Not too long after reading this, I read a Jeffrey Archer novel (Abel and Kane) and didn't go back to children or young adult fiction until about 6 or 7 years ago! I do plan to read "The Little White Horse" soon. (I watched the film version, and sadly, it fell short of a lot of things)

I've finally joined! - how do I add you to my friendship list? Also to answer your question, I really enjoyed reading Topsy and Turvy (I think that is what they were called) but went out of circulation after the early eighties. Most of the books I read were Sunday School related or reading material from school, but were far too advanced for my mind at ten years old, I went to a special needs school and so it took me years to become literate, now I am well ahead of myself! My mother managed to get hold of some Enid Blyton from a jumble sale in 1983 so read these as much as possible in bed, I used to love the pictures more than the stories but children are creative in lots of ways I guess!. The strangest book I ever read was about a boy called Sebastian who had a cat and they both went on night travels getting into danger and then out of it again: I couldn't really get to grips with what that was all about but taught me words I didn't even knew existed in the English language system! my teacher knew that I was capable of reading more advanced material and so assigned me this for one summer, I think I eventually threw it over a fence because I didn't want to be ahead of myself. My earliest memories are far more hazy but sometime in 1979 when I was six years old, I was fascinated by something called Meg and Mog, I was terrified of the witch in that but the cat made all the difference for reasons I still can't understand. I'm also positive that I had something called Miffy the rabbit - this craze still lives on today after almost a 40 year career and so every young generation that includes ours will have many fond memories!