Children's Books discussion

What classics are getting lost as more and more shiny new books get released? What books did you read over and over as child? What books were formative to the person you are today? When you reread them, do they hold up well enough that you'd like to see them re-released?

I choose a cutoff date of 1967, the year I learned to read. If popular request says this is too old, we can run a companion thread for books from 1968 to, say, 2000; just let me know.

Focus, please, on middle school and YA books. (This stipulation because we have a Picture Book Club already.)

Also please remember that if you've written a long review, it'd help us all if you give a quick summary and a link to your review so we can scroll through the comments here more easily. Thank you!

These are my favorites; I almost have them memorized and probably won't reread them:

The Princess and the Goblin
Farmer Boy
The Phantom Tollbooth
The Secret Garden
The Hobbit
The Little Prince

The books I do intend to read are:

The Forgotten Door - a childhood favorite that I don't quite have memorized, 1965
The Little Cow and the Turtle - a fairly recent discovery that I've read twice so far, 1955
Fairy Tales of Frank Stockton - includes The Bee-Man of Orn and some others we've probably seen in other collections, mostly from the late 1800s
The Grey Goose of Kilnevin - for which I have high hopes, 1939.

I wasn't born yet in 1967 but my school and public library were both around 100 years old and the libraries didn't seem to have any NEW books coming in. Not that I noticed... I only wanted to read old-fashioned books.

None of my favorites are read anymore. Little House on the Prairie is on the cancel culture hit list. Anne of Green Gables might still be read because of the Netflix series but my nieces wouldn't read it unless it was the graphic novel version and only one read it. Little Women is on the outs with some feminist moms and while the adaptations are popular, I'm not sure kids are still reading the novel. Niece #1 may have read an abridged version I gave her when we were going to visit Orchard House.

Niece #1's mom read her A Secret Garden and A Little Princess abridged versions when she was little but she never showed any desire to read the full versions on her own.

Pollyanna who's that? They've never even seen any of the adaptations I don't think.

Heidi I was going to push niece #2 to watch one of the adaptations (not Shirley Temple) when was supposed to go to Switzerland but she didn't get to go and probably never watched even the most recent movie.

The Golden Name Day is out of print and the public library seems to have weeded it. NOO! I wanted to own that!

The Borrowers is still around thanks to the anime movie. Nephew #2 read and enjoyed at least the first one.

Niece #1 watched Pippi Longstocking but the book I gave her hasn't even been touched.

Misty of Chincoteague hasn't been touched in spite of niece #2 being a horse girl. She read a few pages of Welcome Home! (Misty's Inn), got hung up on the unfamiliar words and that was that.

Caddie Woodlawn
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
Eight Cousins
Rose in Bloom
An Old-Fashioned Girl

Gosh so many favorites! I have a whole bookcase downstairs of please read books and they haven't read a single one. Little Women is down there too but the rest of my LMA collection is rare so they're upstairs on the hands off shelf. I put them up high to keep little hands from reaching them and now the little hands are bigger than mine, two of the little people are taller than me and I can't reach my shelf!

QNPoohBear wrote: "I wasn't born yet in 1967 but my school and public library were both around 100 years old and the libraries didn't seem to have any NEW books coming in. Not that I noticed... I only wanted to read ..."

Lots of the books you have listed are childhood favourites, but I have not gotten around to reading Pollyanna, Caddie Woodlawn and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.

And The Golden Name Day is back in print (my local bookstore found me a recent paperback version), but the two sequels are both not in print and really difficult to get.

Might want to reread Heidi (the Eileen Hall translation which I consider the most readable and the original German), Black Beauty and one of my favourite Louisa May Alcott stories aside from Little Women (namely Jack and Jill) and L.M. Montgomery's Emily of New Moon and The Story Girl series (as well as the AOGG series, but I actually consider both Emily Byrd Starr and Sara Stanley a bit better more kindred spirits for me than Anne Shirley).

I would love the read some of Geoffrey Trease's old historical fiction again. Some are easier to find than others, mainly because they went into paperback quite early, but many that had only a hardback edition have become too expensive.

In the Land of the Mogul (1938). Set in the early days of contact between England and India.
The Hills of Varna (1948). Published in the U.S. as Shadow of the Hawk. A search for an ancient manuscript in the Balkans.
The Secret Fiord (1950). Adventure set in medieval Norway.
The Crown of Violet (1952). Published in the U.S. as Web of Traitors. Adventure in ancient Athens at the time of Alcibiades.
Word to Caesar (1955). Published in the U.S. as Message to Hadrian. A boy from Britannia has to journey across the Roman Empire to take a message to Rome.
Mist Over Athelney (1958). Published in the U.S. as Escape to King Alfred. Three children carry a warning to King Alfred the Great about the advancing Viking army. Probably my favourite when I was about ten.

There are many others, Cue for Treason is the standout bringing in Trease's love of Shakespeare and acting, but there have been many editions over the years.

Hands down and until we moved to Canada in 1976, my favourite novels to read by myself were the German translations of Astrid Lindgren (although the Pippi Longstocking novels were not my favourites, as I liked the Emil, the Madicken, the Noisy Village stories and Seacrow Island much more).

I actually never encountered English language translations of Astrid Lindgren until I joined Goodreads in 2009 (and indeed, there were no Astrid Lindgren novels in English translations available at the libraries of the schools I attended in Canada, which bothered me a bit, but since I had taken my collection of German Astrid Lindgren translations with me when we moved to Canada, I just kept reading and rereading these, and which I still tend to do periodically). But just to say that the English language translations of Astrid Lindgren I have read for the American market, tend to make me cringe with all the abridgements and very deliberate changes which are in my opinion totally ridiculous.

Found this Astrid Lindgren bibliography on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrid_...

I am not purchasing all that many books at present (and the Hamilton public library has pretty much nothing by Astrid Lindgren), so I am going to check if Open Library has any Astrid Lindgren in English translation books I have not read. I would love to read the YA Kati novels, but they look very hard to find either in German or in English translation.

Len wrote: "I would love the read some of Geoffrey Trease's old historical fiction again. Some are easier to find than others, mainly because they went into paperback quite early, but many that ..."

I have had Cue for Treason on my to-read list for ages, thanks for the reminder. And I will be rereading Three Children and Shakespeare by Anne Terry White and Will Shakespeare and the Globe Theater by the same author (which I just got a copy of recently).

Manybooks wrote: "Len wrote: "I would love the read some of Geoffrey Trease's old historical fiction again. Some are easier to find than others, mainly because they went into paperback quite early, bu..."

C. Walter Hodges, who was probably better known as an illustrator, wrote a few books on Shakespeare's theatre both for the young and for adults.

Enter the Whole Army: A Pictorial Study of Shakespearean Staging, 1576–1616
Playhouse tales
The Globe Restored: A Study of the Elizabethan Theatre
Shakespeare and the Players
THE GLOBE PLAYHOUSE 1599-1613: A CONJECTURAL DRAWING.
Shakespeare's Theatre
Will Shakespeare and the Globe Theater

Len wrote: "Manybooks wrote: "Len wrote: "I would love the read some of Geoffrey Trease's old historical fiction again. Some are easier to find than others, mainly because they went into paperba..."

Thanks for the list.

Manybooks wrote: "There were no Astrid Lindgren novels in English translations available at the libraries of the schools I attended in Canada, .."

That's weird. She was so popular! Did you see the Swedish-German TV series or films? Niece #1 enjoyed that and the ballet I took her too. She loved making pancakes but never read the book.

I'm excited to read The Golden Name Day is back in print but dismayed it has NEW illustrations. I LOVE the Garth Williams illustrations. They make the book extra charming.

Ew no. PASS!
https://www.purplehousepress.com/prod...

My mom liked and passed on to me The Tall Book of Make-Believe also out of print

and Lois Lenski's books about girls Shoo Fly Girl was a big hit with me. I LOVE Shoo-Fly pie! I also loved Strawberry Girl which might be out of print because of dated language.

Oh and who can forget All-of-a-Kind Family?

Five Little Peppers and How They Grew is kind of obscure and I know it's still around because I've seen a reprint of the first edition. I chose not to buy that one and go for an illustrated early 1900s edition instead but the books pop up for sale in Concord here and there rather inexpensively. The best one is the first one!

Daddy-Long-Legs is lovely too!

Another series I liked about animals, not girls, was The Cricket in Times Square

Edward Eager's Magic series is back in print. I gave nephew #2 two of the books. My brother SAYS they read them but I doubt it.

I loved Beverly Cleary

all the Dell Yearling Classics reprinted in the 80s!

And... of course as my screen name implies, Winnie-the-Pooh, another one the nieces and nephews haven't touched even though my sister and I tried to get them to call me "Auntie Queen Pooh Bear"!

AND the one author who is still in print and beloved by... moms at least is Judy Blume! She doesn't fit your pre-1969 category but she sure was a staple of Gen X. and Millennial childhoods and still getting banned from school libraries so I guess she's still popular.

QNPoohBear wrote: "Manybooks wrote: "There were no Astrid Lindgren novels in English translations available at the libraries of the schools I attended in Canada, .."

That's weird. She was so popular! Did you see the..."

I watched Pippi Longstocking in German and later in English, as well as the the Emil, Madicken and the Noisy Village books but only in German as none of the last three I have ever found available in Canada and/or dubbed into English (likely because in all three shows, there are brief scenes of full albeit totally innocent nudity).

I did not really enjoy Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, too much emotional exaggeration for me and too many serendipitous coincidences.

QNPoohBear wrote: "Manybooks wrote: "There were no Astrid Lindgren novels in English translations available at the libraries of the schools I attended in Canada, .."

That's weird. She was so popular! Did you see the..."

Yes, Judy Blume, but I also really love Paula Danziger and Ellen Conford (all three authors I discovered and adored after we moved to Canada).

We for SURE have the Pippi movie available in the U.S. It's referenced in Gilmore Girls! I'm not sure I ever saw a movie of Noisy Village but we did have the books in my school library. The movie must have been dubbed in English. IMDB has a cover: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090610/...

Child nudity wasn't banned until just these last few years. Some fringe people tried to put diapers on Mickey In the Night Kitchen but no one fussed about naked babies or Waldo!

Ooh, I would love to read Pollyanna and The Golden Name Day this month; they were indeed books I very much enjoyed as a child.

And the cover of Pollyanna reminds me of another favorite, Roller Skates. Unfortunately I found, when I read it for the Newbery Club here, it was an entirely different reading experience. I hesitate to give it another chance as I'm trying to remain fond of the feelings it gave me when I was young.

Yeah I liked Roller Skates well enough when I was a kid. I don't know why it wasn't a favorite but as an adult reader, I didn't love it. The ending was a bit of a surprise.

QNPoohBear wrote: "Yeah I liked Roller Skates well enough when I was a kid. I don't know why it wasn't a favorite but as an adult reader, I didn't love it. The ending was a bit of a surprise."

I never read Roller Skates as a child and when I tried reading the book a couple of years ago, I found the writing style very removed and distracting.

Manybooks wrote: "I did not really enjoy Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, too much emotional exaggeration for me and too many serendipitous coincidences."

I agree, as an adult. But something about it charmed me when I was a girl.

Another one I just remembered is The Pushcart War. Definitely set my socio-political values.

I just reread A Tree for Peter for a different reason and realized it's perfect for this thread. Written between the Great Depression and WWII, by the author of the Newbery book, The Good Master (and others), Kate Seredy.

It's a story that surely could have a profound effect on a young child, encouraging them to work hard to achieve miracles in their community. If small Peter can create a garden in Shantytown, what can we, with more resources and more strength, do?

Cheryl wrote: "Manybooks wrote: "I did not really enjoy Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, too much emotional exaggeration for me and too many serendipitous coincidences."

I agree, as an adult. B..."

I never encountered Five Little Peppers and How They Grew as a child but as an adult I just did not like the story all that much.

I am rereading Marguerite Henry's Misty books (except Misty's Twilight) and I just reread King of the Wind and realised how much of an emphasis there is on both horses but also on food. Think I might also try some of the Marguerite Henry novels I have not yet read like Brighty of the Grand Canyon, Gaudenzia, Pride of the Palio and Born to Trot.

Oh, yes, I loved King of the Wind, probably the best imo. I definitely remember loving Justin Morgan Had a Horse and Black Gold, too. I might reread that last, as I don't have it memorized yet. :)

Cheryl wrote: "Oh, yes, I loved King of the Wind, probably the best imo. I definitely remember loving Justin Morgan Had a Horse and Black Gold, too. I might reread that last, as I don't..."

I am glad you enjoyed Black Gold, I really did not like the story at all and in particular that Black Gold ended up being raced with a cracked hoof.

Manybooks wrote: "I never encountered Five Little Peppers and How They Grew as a child but as an adult I just did not like the story all that much.
.."

No! It's didactic and parts of it are horrifying, like everything that happens to Phronsie. But when I was a kid, I loved it. I have a set of Juvenile illustrated classics and that was one of the books in the set. I liked The Peterkin Papers in that set too but I haven't read it in adulthood. I'll have to go get it off the shelf and read it. I have read other books by Laura E. Richards, who was the daughter of Julia Ward Howe.

QNPoohBear wrote: "Manybooks wrote: "I never encountered Five Little Peppers and How They Grew as a child but as an adult I just did not like the story all that much.
.."

No! It's didactic and parts of it are horrif..."

Yes, it is horrifying in places, overly didactic and the weird coincidences make adult me totally cringe (never got around to reading the sequels even though I think I might actually have the entire set on my Kindle, but not really interested).

And just to say that both Heidi and Five Little Peppers And How They Grew were written in 1880 and 1881 respectively but Heidi is much better and not nearly as didactic (and also in the German original with quite a bit of sly satire).

Manybooks wrote: "And just to say that both Heidi and Five Little Peppers And How They Grew were written in 1880 and 1881 respectively but Heidi is much better and not nearly as didactic (and also in the German original with quite a bit of sly satire)."

Heidi is Swiss and not a New England book. Five Little Peppers is VERY Yankee! The author and her family lived at The Wayside, the home of the Little Women. It's the house where Louisa and her sisters lived at the time Little Women takes place, where they played Pilgrim's Progress and put on plays in the barn. She purchased the home on purpose because of the literary tradition. (Nathaniel Hawthorne lived there too at one point). Her husband was Daniel Lothrop was a publisher and Ellen Emerson babysat their daughter and told stories about her babysitter, Louisa May Alcott. All that influenced Harriet Lothrop to write children's stories under the name Margaret Sidney.

There was also that pressure to write moral tales ("Moral pap for the young." that Jo March faces in Little Women. It was very real and LMA hated it but it sold stories.

Margaret Sidney also wrote A Little Maid of Concord Town and other books long out of print. I got ahold of one and it's out of print for a reason!

Laura Elizabeth Richards was less didactic and more fun, writing later in the early 20th century.

I collect antique children's books by local New England authors, primarily LMA and some others. I have a few non New England authors too.

Well, my cataract surgery made my eyes worse for now, and it could be awhile before I can get the new glasses. I'll be reading less and may have to leave this thread open, or maybe won't even get around to all the books I planned.

But I think I do need a good dose of Pollyanna right now! :)

Cheryl wrote: "Well, my cataract surgery made my eyes worse for now, and it could be awhile before I can get the new glasses. I'll be reading less and may have to leave this thread open, or maybe won't even get a..."

Hope your eyes feel better soon, Cheryl.

I always turn to Heidi and Anne of Green Gables for comfort reading.

Pollyanna hit the spot this time! I'm currently working on The Grey Goose of Kilnevin which is new to me but is, I have been given to understand, a childhood favorite of many.

Glad Pollyanna helped you feel better. I liked the Disney TV movie with the youngest Cosby girl, Keisha Knight-Pulliam. It was set during the Civil Rights Movement and had fun Motown music. It's on YouTube if anyone wants to see it. Polly (1989)

Is anyone else into the Betsy-Tacy series? I read some when I was a kid but only after Little House and Anne so they didn't do anything for me. I rediscovered them when Borders was going out of business and I had a gift card to spend. I bought the young adult later volumes and went back and read the whole series. I can't believe I didn't love them when I was a kid! They're so much fun and more accurately portray childhood than the classics I loved. There's even a character from Syria (now Lebanon), a refugee and a visit to her family. I relate to Betsy but also a bit to Tacy. ("This is her best friend Tacy, whose real name is Anastasia, and then in the next book Betsy and Tacy become friends with Tib, whose real name, I am sorry to tell you, is Thelma.” -Kathleen Kelly, You've Got Mail)

... I just LOVE the movie "You've Got Mail". The whole shop is filled with my favorite books! Every time I see the movie I want to buy the whole store!

I helped organize books for the library book sale and made a big stack of classics kids don't read and won't read.

Treasure Island
Swiss Family Robinson
I think Pollyanna was in that stack too
one of my personal favorites, Little Women - I have my eye on purchasing that one with the Jessie Wilcox Smith illustrations but I'd rather have a first edition.

I also stacked up modern classics my nieces and nephews won't read. They can watch the show on Netflix/movies on another streaming app (eyeroll)
Those included
Harry Potter
Redwall
A Series of Unfortunate Events
maybe Artemis Fowl but I think kids might still read those. I thought there was supposed to be a Netflix series but haven't heard more about that. There was a movie that came out during COVID closures but I haven't heard the nieces and nephews mention seeing it.

Oh I loved the Betsy-Tacy series, but only discovered them after my kids were mostly grown.

Treasure Island was interesting, but my brother recently told me how terrible Swiss Family Robinson is so I'm def. not going back to that. No interest in Unfortunate Events, and dnf'd the first Artemis Fowl and the first Redwall, too. Those last are, again, ones my kids might have caught but I don't remember if they did.

The Grey Goose of Kilnevin is odd, but I did enjoy it. I just can't seem to figure out whether young me would have or not, though. (I'll write a bit more in a review soon.)

The Redwall series gets better as it goes along. I like the ones that share the history of the Abbey. They're probably better as audiobooks since Brian Jacques first told the story to a school for blind children where he was the milkman.

I managed NOT to visit my favorite used/rare bookstore over the weekend! I still have a big stack of antique children's books I need to read FIRST before I buy new ones.

I found a new Little Free Library today and it had a whole row of children's books including one of those classics kids will never read. I'll keep checking to see if anyone takes it. I suspect the same person/family donated the books to the library because there were some of the same books.

:smiles:

Fairy Tales of Frank Stockton is a mixed bag. I probably would have loved it when I was a kid, but some are just too dated for me now. Especially the Ting-a-Ling stories, which I didn't finish... very violent and casual about it. Others, otoh, might have been part of the childhood of Norton Juster as they seem a bit like primitive The Phantom Tollbooth.

Ronia, the Robber's Daughter is a bit too new for me, but I sure do wish more youngsters would read it now. Plot, characters, themes, details, setting... oh my goodness the setting.... All wonderful.

Dang Lindgren is brilliant. Young me would have adored this, and benefited from it. I'd be braver, wiser, and less satisfied with mediocre literature. Why isn't more of Lindgren's work translated & available? Big Kudos to Patricia Crampton for the grace & honesty of her English words & phrasings.

"Of course Noddle-Pete insisted that nobody had been kept captive there [in the dungeons] since time immemorial, when great men and small kings had ruled from Matt's Fort, long before it had become a robber stronghold."

Cheryl wrote: "Ronia, the Robber's Daughter is a bit too new for me, but I sure do wish more youngsters would read it now. Plot, characters, themes, details, setting... oh my goodness the setting......."

They do or rather they watch the show on Netflix.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronja,_...

or when my niece was younger, the anime show by Studio Ghibli
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronja,_...

They don't READ when they can WATCH on Netflix. I gave away my copy of the book long ago but I remember liking it a lot.

Cheryl wrote: "Ronia, the Robber's Daughter is a bit too new for me, but I sure do wish more youngsters would read it now. Plot, characters, themes, details, setting... oh my goodness the setting......."

I do not think I have read anything by Astrid Lindgren that I have actually hated, but I do wish that there was more of her work available in English and also with better translators (I have tried to like Astrid Lindgren translated into English but I just find the German translations I loved and read over and over again as a child much better).

Cheryl wrote: "Ronia, the Robber's Daughter is a bit too new for me, but I sure do wish more youngsters would read it now. Plot, characters, themes, details, setting... oh my goodness the setting......."

Another book that I read several (4) decades ago. I remember enjoying the story immensely. I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads, because I added it decades after I had read it, and that was my best guest for how much I enjoyed it.