Children's Books

[lyrasilver]

Ack! Word word word Dwanollah. Return to the Secret Garden traumatized me. I read it a few years ago at the tender age of about 12 or 13, and I remember being horrified throughout. I don't want to post specific traumatic moments since the spoiler thing is kind of tripping me up at the moment, but it was just all wrong. There should be some kind of law preventing the destruction of children's classics with scary, pervy sequels.

[MrsOldManBalls]

I find that my sons aren't interested in books that don't have humor in them, so we stay away from the sad,sappy stuff. (My daughter never had much of a sense of humor. she prefered something with a moral. Weird.)

If You Give A Moose A Muffin, and No David! are very popular bedtime stories around here. As well as Mercer Mayer's "Little Critter" series.

[Deleted]

I loved "A Little Princess." I always got goosebumps at the end of that book. Maybe because I loved it so much I never liked the movies. Although I remember watching a made for TV version that was pretty good-very faithful to the book (maybe a BBC version?).

Although I like the Harry Potter books, I think J.K. Rowling falls a little short of the mark when it comes to fantasy--Diana Wynne Jones was a favorite when I was a kid and even a teen. Fantasy, drama, humor, even romance; she can pull it all off. The Chrestomanci books include all of the above!

[Deleted]

Funny, stargirl, I was just coming here to bump this thread up. Looks like you beat me to it.

We found a couple of books at a local thrift store that my kids love. There are no cutesy animals or cartoon characters, yet my kids love them. Color me chocked.

One is The Man Who Didn't Wash His Dishes by Phyllis Krasilovsky (Copyright 1950). It's about this little man who hates washing his dishes (big surprise there). He uses up all of his dishes, and ends up eating out of every convave surface in his house - the flower pots, ash tray, soap dishes, etc. Finally, it starts to rain, so he loads up his pickup w/ his dishes and the rain washes them all. All the work of loading and unloading his dishes convinces him to wash everything as soon as he eats off if it. Cute.

The other one (I think I might have posted about this one on The Other Side) was Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton (Copyright 1939). It's a cute story about a guy who helps build a Town Hall for his town w/ his steam shovel, Mary Anne. All of the other steam shovels like Mary Anne had been scrapped, and Mike spends the first half of the book trying to find work for his poor steam shovel. All of the artwork was drawn by hand (no fancy shmancy printers back in 1939). For me, that's my favorite part of the book.

[Deleted]

Several years ago, my sister and I became obsessed with hunting down favorite childhood books, through Interlibrary Loan (most public libraries in the U.S. participate in this, I think). One of the very first titles was "The Man Who Didn't Wash His Dishes."

Others?? Books by Lenora Mattingly Weber, Rosamunde du Jardin and Catherine Woolley(?) were all staples of our childhood.

[mrpancake]

If you thought there were issues with Love You Forever before, a quick glance at Robert Munsch's website reveals how the song came to be:

Love You Forever started as a song.

"I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
as long as I'm living
my baby you'll be."


I made that up after my wife and I had two babies born dead. The song was my song to my dead babies. For a long time I had it in my head and I couldn't even sing it because every time I tried to sing it I cried. It was very strange having a song in my head that I couldn't sing.

That's pretty damn depressing. Makes me think of the book differently. I also loved the Frances books, Ira Sleeps Over, Mrs. Armitage On Wheels, Bernstein Bears, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, and Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs to name a few. This thread reminds me of my carefree days.

[tinyshoes]

lyrasilver said:

Ack! Word word word Dwanollah. Return to the Secret Garden traumatized me. I read it a few years ago at the tender age of about 12 or 13, and I remember being horrified throughout. I don't want to post specific traumatic moments since the spoiler thing is kind of tripping me up at the moment, but it was just all wrong. There should be some kind of law preventing the destruction of children's classics with scary, pervy sequels.

Return to the Secret Garden sounds like a VC Andrews book to me.

[dwanollah]

Return to the Secret Garden sounds like a VC Andrews book to me.

Yeah? It read like one, too.

[Deleted]

Moving onto another set of books: these books are sort of silly, but still lots of fun: the books written by Gordon Korman, mostly back in the 80's or early 90's. What made me think of him was that a friend called to tell me he was coming to speak at a nearby neighborhood library recently. I went with two good friends who were just as thrilled as I was. The audience was mostly comprised of other adults, carrying bags filled with old paperbacks published 10 or 20 years ago (rather than his more recent books). MacDonald Hall, No Coins, Please, Losing Joe's Place, Radio Fifth Grade, I Want To Go Home!--well, these are books I still can smile at when I reread them.

[Deleted]

I'm not sure whether it's a children's book or whether we're creeping into young adult fiction, but I'm not the only one on the planet to have read Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli, am I? I so dearly love this book, but no one in my little literary circle will cop to knowing and loving it to. It's written as a children's book (Spinelli's forte) but in a way you have to read between the lines so often it's an adult book for the child inside them.

I really love the way he portrays home in the book, not necessarily as a ready-made thing but something that has to be created and worked toward, which resonates with a lot of today's younger kids who don't have a "normal" home that fits within that narrow stereotype.