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Classic kids' books that you read and remember from childhood. What's your fav?

"Mr. Twigg's Mistake" by Robert Lawson, author & Illustrator. A wonderfully witty and sarcastic love story between a bored pre-teen and his pet mole one summer. Unfortunately, they feed the mole "Vitamin X" (accidentally dumped in one single box of "Bities"... hence the title) and the mole grows a couple of inches each day.
Eventually he's the size of a large dog and has learned 50 "tricks" to amuse and rescue his human family.

(A wonderful story with great dated artwork to read aloud to the kid in your life. The ending made me cry and wail when my sister read it to me at a very young age, so be aware of over-attachment!)

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17 Answers

  • Cinnamon_004_copy_small
    Reputation: 138

    I remember Roald Dahl books, especially The Witches! Amazing story. :)

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  • Keaton401_small
    Reputation: 92

    THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH by Norton Juster, with Jules Feiffer's brilliant illustrations. Just exactly the kind of book to give to an imaginative and bored sixth grader to get him out of his funk at how boring school is. I'm very lucky to have been given it to read by the world's greatest sixth grade teacher, the divine Diane Ridgley (God bless and keep you wherever you are, dear lady).

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  • Cateyes_small
    Reputation: 2173

    The Laura Ingalls Wilder books were the first books of any real length that I read as a child; I think I read them sometime in kindergarten. These books made a huge impression on me -- though they were set in the burgeoning American frontier of the 19th century, the characters felt as real as the people in my own life, sometimes even more vivid. I remember stories from these books so vividly that it is as if they are my own memories. They really are amazing, wonderful books -- I should go back and reread them.

    One other book that had a profound impact -- though I was much older -- was Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen. For those who haven't read it, it's about a boy who goes to spend the summer with his father in the northern Canadian bush. The pilot of the Cessna carrying him has a heart attack and dies; the young teenager spends the summer surviving with the aid of a small hatchet his mother gave him as a gift before the trip. I found the book remarkable because the boy seemed so fearless to me, so resourceful.

    There are others, but I think those are at the top of my childhood favorites list.

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  • Deadlyfingers_2_small
    Reputation: 67

    My favorite when I was learning to read: "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day"

    For stories to read aloud: my Mom read us a couple of chapters from "The Hobbit" each night before we went to bed. Pretty tough to beat that.

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  • Kermitsex_small
    Reputation: 2421

    Not sure all of these qualify as classic, but...

    Anything by Madeleine L'Engle

    Where the Wild Things Are

    Anything Richard Scary

    Huckleberry Finn

    White Fang

    Anything Roald Dahl

    Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys

    Anything Judy Blume

    Lots of Erma Bombeck when l got a bit older

    Anything Shel Silverstein

    Lord of the Rings series

    Choose-Your-Own-Adventures series

    The Serendipity books - the illustration was awesome. l'm not sure how many people read these; l've only run into a few who knew about them when l mentioned them, though l'd say the troll ones are the most popular.

    The Little Prince

    Those that have already been mentioned:

    The Phantom Tollbooth!!! Totally forgot that one, thanks, Roscoe.

    Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day

    Definitely Narnia, Treasure lsland, the Laura lngalls books, and Black Beauty

    Watership Down

     

    That's all l remember off the top of my head.  l'll probably end up adding to it.

     

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  • Photo_49_small
    Reputation: 306

    I loved Where the Red Fern Grows so much, and it makes me so sad that my husband has never read it.

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  • Avatar_default
    Reputation: 112

    "The Velveteen Rabbit or How Toys Become Real", by Margery Williams, illustrated by William Nicholson, in which a toy rabbit, once teased by more expensive toys, becomes real through the love of a little boy with scarlet fever- just in time to escape the fires of the incinerator. Man I loved that book.

    Also- "Fox In Sox". On box on Knox. An often overlooked Dr. Seuss classic I had memorized before I could read it, in which the uptight Knox gets his comeuppance by stuffing the jive-talking, tongue-twisting Fox into a bottle.

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  • Veronica-lake-by-rosejuvenal_small
    Reputation: 480

    The Cat in the Hat
    Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking-Glass
    Pippi Longstocking
    Harriet the Spy
    Farewell to Shady Glade
    My Side of the Mountain
    The Rescuers
    The Hobbit
    Watership Down

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  • Sacri_ordines_by_charism_small
    Reputation: 3723

    The Big Orange Splot, Daniel Pinkwater
    "Our street is us and we are it. Our street is where we like to be, and it looks like all our dreams."

    The Ordinary Princess, MM Kaye

    Pedro, the Angel of Olvera Street, Leo Politi

    Make Way for Ducklings, Roberty McClotskey

    Where the Wild Things Are / In the Night Kitchen

    and my personal hero of creativity and child-led learning,

    Harold and the Purple Crayon, Crockett Johnson
    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4671937

    then,
    Shel Silverstein was probably my leading gateway drug to real literacy: Light in the Attic, Where the Sidewalk Ends

    As I got older (3rd grade thru 5th), the Three Investigators, Calvin and Hobbes collections, and the Narnia Series were well-loved/well-worn, as was anything I could talk my mom into buying me from the Troll book club.

    ???

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  • Ht00073a01_small
    Reputation: 728

    My parents were hippies and so I had a very interesting assortment of more 'eclectic' children's books. One in particular was called Hepzibah, which was very rare and published by Eel Pie Publishing - a small press started by Pete Townsend of The Who. It was a story about a very eccentric witch-like woman who lived in a dilapitated house where everything was chaos. I don't remember the plot, but I'll never forget the pictures. I would like to get another copy of it for old times sake.

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  • Avatar_default
    Reputation: 0

    These are very little kid books, but I still love them:

    In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
    The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf
    One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss
    The Berenstain Bears - I loved all of them. Especially "The Big Fight," and "No Girls Allowed."

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  • Lookalikes_small
    Reputation: 2589

    I didn't actually read children's books when I was a kid; I was reading adult books (some of which I admittedly didn't understand large sections of) by the time I was about 8. I actually had a special library card that allowed me to check out any book from SPL, not just from the children's section.

    So I went back and read kids' books as an adult, which probably gives one a rather different perspective on them. But, to make an overlong story shorter, my favorites are Where the Wild Things Are (a triumph of minimalism!), Chronicles of Narnia, the His Dark Materials trilogy, and certainly the Harry Potter books.

    I did read the Little House books and Little Women/Little Men/Jo's Boys as a young teenager; some of the Little House books are really absorbing. Treasure Island is still the greatest adventure story ever written.

    Oh, and Black Beauty still makes me cry.

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  • Guild_1024x768_small
    Reputation: 277

    The Harper Hall Trilogy by Anne McCaffery
    Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
    Wayside School is Falling Down by Louis Sachar
    The works of Beatrix Potter
    The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
    Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

    Aside from some of the things mentioned here.

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  • Crystalcanyon_small
    Reputation: 324

    The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy was my favorite - does that qualify as a 'classic'

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  • Basicdnd_small
    Reputation: 138

    I've been reading a lot of kids books in the last six years (because I have a kid who is six.) and so my impressions are tainted by my new readings.

    The Oz series is really good. They're very modern for being very old books.

    Anything that Maurice Sendak was involved in is great. The man is a genius.

    Seven Wild Sisters by Charles deLint is a book about fairies which you can read to a six year old kid but isn't as traumatically dumb as Fairy Realm, Rainbow Magic, or all the other fairy-related books on the market. SPL has a good illustrated edition.

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  • Avatar_default
    Reputation: 15

    "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats

    All the Trixie Belden books.

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  • N3207299_5250_small
    Reputation: 138

    Dear Mr. Henshaw. I think it probably taught me many great lessons about writing... and probably about personal feelings. A valuable lesson, since I was a withdrawn loner.

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