Loved Misty of Chincoteague, Strawberry Girl, Big Red...

I loved the Nancy Drew series once I was old enough to read. We had a set of encyclopedias that had a children's literature collection and there was a poem book in it that I loved. Would treasure having a copy of it if I could find it somewhere but can't recall the name.

Stuart Little! Also LOVED The Patchwork Girl of Oz. It featured a glass cat, which intrigued me to no end.

Narnia! I loved those books. I read them over and over again. I also liked Nancy Drew.

Mboston, were the books dark red? We had a set too.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Bookshelf for Boys and Girls

Misty of Chincoteague and all the other Marguerite Henry books. I liked King of the Wind even more - either the Godolphin Arabian or two other Arab stallions are found in the bloodlines of every modern thoroughbred! I would get lost in the beautiful illustrations! Also Walter Farley's Black Stallion series and Jack O'Brien's Silver Chief Dog of the North series. Jack London's White Fang and Call of the Wild. Anything about dogs and horses!

Ah, sable, yet again our tastes coincide :) Did NOT like _Black Beauty_, though. But Marguerite Henry, OH yeah...and the Black Stallion series too, even the crazy ones.

I have memories of reading my Nancy Drew books under the covers with a flashlight when I was supposed to be in bed asleep. I couldn't get enough of Nancy Drew and her friend, Bess, driving around in her roadster, wearing their frocks and solving mysteries!
I also loved Little Women.

No, the covers were dark green on all of the books except the poetry book. It was different, maybe red and gold with a picture on the front. Seems like the green books were historical. Years ago I came across a copy in one of the schools I worked in but at the time all to be discarded books had to be processed through the County Office and it was supposed to be sent back to our school so I could keep it - never made it back before I moved out of state after school let out.

I loved The Secret Garden. It was the first "big" book that I ever read. I was so proud.

Some of my favorites were Island of the Blue Dolphins, the Nancy Drew books, the Oz books and Snow Treasure, which is a story about Norwegian children protecting their town's gold from the Nazis during WWII.

Oh yes -- Island of the Blue Dolphins...and Julie of the Wolves. Harriet the Spy (and The Long Summer) I loved so much, it actually had me keeping a notebook for a while that I carried around with me. When I looked at the book with my daughter, though, it seemed much more meanspirited and unpleasant than I remembered. Strange.

Also strange, but something I guess I just took for granted back then, is how many books of that time relied on a death about 5/6 of the way through to be The Big Event.

Oh--one more book that I was probably WAY too cool to read when I was a kid, but that we discovered with DD, is a complete classic, amazing book: Hitty: Her First Hundred Years. Newbery Award of 1930. If you get it, make sure you get the *original*, NOT updated version. Just remember, when you read some of the episodes, that it was written in 1929. The social history is nigh onto unparalleled in a kids' book, IMO.

I noticed that too, flyleft, about Harriet the Spy being kind of mean-spirited, when I thought I was going to re-read it awhile ago. The movie was like that too, and Rosie O'Donnell as Miss Golly was just wrong!

Another book I liked as a child was "Caddie Woodlawn", about a pioneer girl and her adventures.

Lord of the Rings
Narnia
books by E. Nesbit
books by Enid Blyton
Asimov for sci fi
many sword & sorcery books

"Caddie Woodlawn"! I thought about mentioning it, but then figured that no one had ever heard of it. My mother got me that book because her best friend was an Ohio farm woman named Caddie, but she and I came to love it mainly for its story.

My all-time favorite when I was very young, too young for the Black Stallion et al, was Maminka's Children, by Elizabeth Orton Jones. This is the tale of three children on a farm in Old Bohemia, which is why my fiercely proud Czech mother got the book. Their adventures are sweet, soothing life lessons of love of family and animals, and the illustrations are beautiful. I would enter those pictures and get lost in those lives. Jones wrote the book based on stories she heard from two Czech girls who worked for her family. Google came up empty when I did a search yesterday, but this morning I searched the author's name and found the book on display at the University of Oregon (Go Ducks!). It's out-of-print; my copy is an autographed first edition, so I should probably take very good care of it. Along with Mamimka's Children, my other favorites were Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. Also, The Rutabaga Stories, although the pictures sometimes unnerved me.

When my sons were toddlers they were completely over the moon for anything by Richard Scarry. Turns out that DGS also loves hiim!

Here is a link that might be useful: Maminka's Children

When I was a small child I LOVED "It's Time for Bed Sleepyheads" by Normand and Sandra Chartier. It's about a bunch of animals getting ready for bed. The pictures were great and I remember them vividly. I still have the book.

"Little Cottontail" (Golden book) - Again, loved the photos of this book.

"Are You My Mother?" by P.D. Eastman

I liked "Caddie Woodlawn" the "Little House" series, Nancy Drew, and all kinds of fairy tales. They had a series of fairy tales in different colored books at the library where I grew up. I also liked the Madeline books, "The Secret Garden" and "To Kill a Mockingbird".

I loved all books. Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys were definite favorites, but I also liked The Secret Garden, The Little Princess, and all of the Lloyd Alexander books. This thread made me find another book from my childhood that I'd been thinking about, Shadow Castle. I don't remember why I liked it so much, but I just ordered it from Amazon to read again.

The book I loved to read over and over again was The Velvet Room by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. Loved it!

My Side of the Mountain by Jean George.

This book had a huge impact on me growing up - I read it over and over - and both my sons did, too. I'm convinced it's a large reason my oldest son is working for the national park system today and my youngest son is in the mountains in CO - it really shaped their lives.

And in a nice twist, the move made from the book is actually quite good.

Here is a link that might be useful: My Side of the Mountain

I loved My Side of the Mountain too, dlm. Another favorite was The Twenty-One Balloons.

When I was 10 we visited my grandparents in Maryland for Christmas. They lived out in the country and it had snowed. since we didnt have snow boots, coming from AZ- she drove us to a little thrift shop to look for boots.( the Surprise Shop is still there btw)
There were quite a few Bobbsey Twins books- my Grandma asked me if I had ever read them and I said no. She bought them for me. Back to the house and I started reading and got hooked. Also Old Mother West Wind Books were a favorite of mine as a kid- I found the whole set at a yard sale for $2 .
BTW- these books were ancient before I read them! Somehow I only had antique books that my Mom and Dad had as kids. My Dad had a set of My Bookshelf(not sure of title) green books.These are hands down my favorites. Grimm fairy tales, fables, etc. The pictures inside are that orange and green ink.

terriks How I loved Snow Treasure! I think I was in 4th grade when I read it.

I also loved the Nancy Drew books and Trixie Beldon Books.

The Hundred Dresses
All of a Kind Family
Blue Willow

terriks How I loved Snow Treasure! I think I was in 4th grade when I read it

I think I was about that age also. It was definitely a flashlight under the covers book. My friends and I would pretend that we were the children hiding gold from the Nazis. Two of my 3 children also read and loved the book. The 3rd just wasn't much of a reader, until he discovered Harry Potter and Lemony Snickett.

I also remember my 3rd grade teacher reading us a series of books about an African girl. I think the books were 31 Brothers and Sisters?
I was also a huge Pippi Longstockings fan.

I loved: Curious George
Madeline
The Borrowers
Henry Huggins
Beazus and Ramona

the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler- I wanted to go and hid out at a museum like they did.

How could I forget Pippi! I LOVED those books.

The Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton really caught my
imagination. Loved the whole series and all her books.

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
Tales of Beatrix Potter
The Borrowers
Greatheart by Joseph Chipperfield