Chicks On Lit discussion

I can never forget to kill a mockingbird, it's one of my favourite books from my childhood and Buckingham Palace from a South African authour as well as I am David :-)

I can never forget reading Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, I remember being about ten years old and not being able to put it down. I still have it in my collection today and will read it again at some point.

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell. I was entranced and, odd as it may be, I hardly remember the story now. Just know that it was full on worship mode. Held it so gently, loved the cover art on the edition that read and linked, and when my eye glanced over it on the shelf, my heart was a little happier. What was in that book, eh?! hehe

Winter of Fire by Sherryl Jordan!!! I loved this book so much growing up because it wasn't mainstream and it was so inspiring! I still own two copies, the second because the first is duct-taped together and barely readable. lol.

Just as Long as We're Together by Judy Blume - in fact, most of her books were my staples for a year or two. By the time I was in 6th grade though, I had graduated to adult books. I'm so envious of preteens / teens these days, because there is so much more variety in young adult. They just didn't have that when I was growing up.

I will never forget The Giver. I read this in about grade 5 or 6 and still to this day think its a fantastic concept.

Where the Red Fern Grows, that book broke my heart. I have always been such an animal lover!
Also, I could never forget the Ramona Quimby series. Ramona was my idol growing up! LOL! I also loved anything by Roald Dahl especially Matilda, The BFG and The Witches!

Oh, and I will never forget hearing my mom read The Secret Garden to my brother and I for the first time!

This book made such an impression on me when I was a young girl that I tracked down and bought a copy---and read it again!---as an adult:

Mara, Daughter of the Nile by Eloise Jarvis McGraw.

I read this book and it was the first book I cried reading. I permanently stained this book with my tears. I wasn't a child per say but it a book that had a profound effect on me. I was 14 when I read this. At Risk

Harriet the Spy was my absolute favorite book as a kid. I wanted to BE her! I'm thrilled this book is now available in Kindle form. I can't wait to read it now as an adult.

I think I must have read Misty of Chincoteague about 50 times as a kid! :-)

Renee, is that the book about 4 friends - one name's Rachel? I remember reading that when I was 11!

Jess and the River Kids - Judith O'Neill.
First read when I was about 10, read again and again, atleast half a dozen times, till the ripe age of 32

The Secret Garden was one I re-read over and over.... never got tired of it.

A Hive For The Honeybee

The Babysitters Club series. I had them all..haha. I read Little Women when I was 9 or 10 and fell in love with it.That was probably my absolute favorite.

Jenna wrote: "The Babysitters Club series. I had them all..haha. I read Little Women when I was 9 or 10 and fell in love with it.That was probably my absolute favorite."

Oh, I loved the Babysitter's Club! I had so many of them!

I also remember Sweet Valley High!!!!!

Little Women, A Little Princess and Huckleberry Finn.

Candice wrote: "Renee, is that the book about 4 friends - one name's Rachel? I remember reading that when I was 11!"

yes! It is about those 4 friends, I can't remember all thier names. I read that book many times when I was 10 and 11. It seemed so realistic to how I felt at the time. She wrote a sequel to it to that was good too.

Funny thing - I tried getting my daughter (she's 11) to read this book, because it was so awesome to me, and she was like, Oh this is dumb. Books today for her age are much different.

I also read the Sweet Valley High books. I had at least 20 of them. :-)

For me it had to be the Little House on the Prairie books.

I very much enjoyed "The witch of Blackbird Pond" by Elizabeth Speare and "Bridge to Terabithia" by Katherine Paterson. I read these as a univ student and read adult books at school. It was a matter of supply. Am still reading children's and YA books to make up for missing out - never too late?

I don't know if this counts or not but I remember a wonderfully illustrated book of fairytales that my parents brought me after a trip they were on and I had to stay behind. I remember my niece and I went to the lake with a sister in law and we got sunburned. So my sister covered us in noxema and my mom gave us that book so that my sister could read it to us. I was probably 5. I think my mother still has that book saved for me. Since it was read to me I have read it numerous times growing up.

The first book I remember reading myself was a sort of knock off Little house on the prairie type book. I don't remember the name but it had a wagon on the cover. I wonder what that was??

Gaynor wrote: "I very much enjoyed "The witch of Blackbird Pond" by Elizabeth Speare and "Bridge to Terabithia" by Katherine Paterson. I read these as a univ student and read adult books at school. It was a matte..."

I understand Gaynor. I feel I missed out on lots of YA books and am slowly reading them now as an adult (lots older than you I bet). I love your pic. Where are the turbines located?

Gaynor wrote: "Am still reading children's and YA books to make up for missing out - never too late?"

It's never too late to read! I only read a couple of books in the Chronicles of Narnia series as a kid, but I plan to read the whole series now :)

I just loved all the Judy Blume books. "Are you there God it's me Margaret?". Loved them all!

Renee, I loved all of the Judy Blume books as well. My daughter is starting to read her books now.

KrisT , thank you for the compliment about the pic. This will probably surprise you, but it was taken a few miles from where I was born in a small town, Cleve, South Australia. The population is about 400. When I go home I see the turbines from the road, and because there is no heavy industry (its a farming district)I am told they supply the surrounding area with enough electricity. I live in Indonesia now.
Unfortunately cannot take the credit for actually taking the photograph myself but like you, I liked it and it meant something to me.
Your pic is very nice too, unusual in black and white and I like the way you seem to be "arriving" into the picture.
And you are not lots older than me. But as we know it is never too late to read and I really enjoy "catching up" on the books I didn't have the opportunity to read at school.
If you've got time, try "The miraculous journey of Edward Tulane" by Kate DiCamillo. You will finish it quickly, but it is the type of book which draws you in. It is quite new though, having been published in 2006.

My overwhelming favorites from the grade school days were Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Huckleberry Finn. And then I read Shakespeare and Emerson and been gloriously hooked ever since!!

My favorites from elementary age were Happy Hollisters, Nancy Drew, Babysitter's Club, Little Women, A Wrinkle in Time, The Secret Garden, Katie John, and Bridge to Terebithia. There were probably others, but this is what I can think of off the top of my head.

My sister bought me A Giving Tree for my 10th or 11th birthday. Miss Polakowski suggested I read A Wrinkle In Time about the same time. I had the Little House on the Prairie set and all three of the E.B. White books. I had more but these were my favorites.

The books I remember loving from elementary grades are Black Beauty and Johnny Tremain.

There were so many...Little Women, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the Bobbsey Twins, the Happy Holisters, Harriet the Spy, to Kill a Mockingbird, Anne Frank, the mary Poppins series, The Secret Language, the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and many more....I'm dating myself a bit with these choices but when I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, I was a varacious reader! My daughter was into the Babysitters Club series, the Alice series, Anastasia Krupnick, and some others until she grew away from reading. Now at 22 she has gottent back to it with Twilight, and is now into jodi Picoult and Chelsea Handler. I don't care what she reads, just that she is reading again..lol!

How could I forget the Trixie Belden series? Especially the first one which was my favorite:

Trixie Belden and the Secret of the Mansion

Also, of course, Nancy Drew, and The Three Investigators series. The Mystery of the Whispering Mummy is especially vivid in my memory.

I adored Helen Keller and Little House on the Prairie. I remember riding my bike to the library and coming home with a basket full of books.

Pippi Longstocking - even though my mother technically read it to me, my sister and our cousins on a vacation to Florida. I will never forget Pippi and her life. I was just enchanted.

But of the books I read as a kid, Harriet the Spy, the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, the Nancy Drew mysteries and the Babysitter's Club stick out in my memory the most.

Mandy by Julie Andrews Edwards

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

I still have both of my original copies from when I was about seven years old. They were from my Mom and are two of my most sentimental prized possessions.

The first book I remember making an impact on me was Charlotte's Web read aloud after lunch by my third grade teacher. I loved the story, but more than that, it inspired me to read read read. We had a bookmobile come out to our neighborhood each week and I would check out lots of books. Betsy Tacey books, a series about a boy named Augustus on a houseboat, my mom giving me her 1932 edition of Little House in the Big Woods. Our grade school teachers always had a big chart on the wall where we got to color in a square when we finished a book. A different color for each genre; mystery, biography, animal, etc. One other girl (my good friend) and I always read the most books. It was a fun, friendly competition because we would swap and read the books the other one had read.

My parents didn't really read to us when we were young and I didn't get into reading on my own until I was around 11 when I transferred to a school that had book fairs. I used to be into R.L. Stine back then and the Ramona Quimby books, but one book that really stands out to me was The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes. Another that I can't forget was one I read when I was a bit older (early high school years), The Wind Blows Backward by Mary Downing Hahn.

My 3rd grade teacher read The Boxcar Children to us and I fell in love immediately. I so loved this book and was thrilled to be able to pass it on to my nephew. I can also remember reading a Trixie Belden. My papa used to go to garage sales and auctions. He would buy stuff and then have his own garage sale. It was so much to search through his garage for treasures. I found the Trixie Belden book there and I believe I still have it. It was a fun read and now just hearing her name brings back memories.

AngieA wrote: "The first book I remember making an impact on me was Charlotte's Web read aloud after lunch by my third grade teacher. I loved the story, but more than that, it inspired me to read re..."

I loved the Betsy/Tacy series also! And I remember the book fairs, and going to the school library, taking out books and being allowed to read them when we got back into the classroom! My father used to take me to the library almost every Saturday so I could take out the limit of 10 books at a time. Even then, I guess you could say I was a book nerd!

In the school I am working in this year the English teacher has talked with the students about their reading history and it made me think a lot. I always hated reading because it was something I had to do alone and there was no one there to help me as I stuggled through it. I don't have a lot of memories of my parents reading to me. I do remember having two copies of a book about a boy going to the space station and reading it with anyone that would read with me.

My teachers started to influence my reading history in the 4th grade when Mrs. Hussey read Brightney of the Grand Canyon and Charlotte's Web to us after recess every day. In 5th and 6th grade I remember reading Pippi over and over again even after Ms. Polakowski suggested A Wrinkle In Time. I avoided all the required reading in grammar school. I did not pick it up until I was in high school and then I read Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird.

AngieA wrote: "The first book I remember making an impact on me was Charlotte's Web read aloud after lunch by my third grade teacher. I loved the story, but more than that, it inspired me to read re..."

Ah, Angie, Betsy and Tacy. I own the entire series. So much fun to read, wasn't it?

Has anyone ever read the Beany Malone series by Lenora Mattingly Weber? Beany Malone

I haven't read them Rosemary but they sound like books my 15 year old cousin would like....do you think?

No doubt it would be Where the Red Fern Grows. When my son and I read it together we had to take turns reading at the end, because both of us were crying. Masterful story of a boy and his dogs.

Cindy wrote: "I haven't read them Rosemary but they sound like books my 15 year old cousin would like....do you think?"

betsy-tacy books begin when the girls are five and on until they are married. It's an adorable series set at the turn of the last century and before. Depending on how mature your fifteen year old cousin is, she might like the books from when the girls are in high school, abroad and getting married.

One Unicorn My mom picked this one up for me at a small little bookstore and I loved everything about it as a little girl. Recently she found a copy again on ebay or something because they are now hard to come by and I just cherish it.

I love this thread....brings back memories of a childhood spent reading. I don't remember not knowing how to read...I must have picked it up really early. I used to bring home the readers on the first day of school in first and second grade, and read it all the way through. We had the Alice and Jerry series, not Dick and Jane, and when we started getting the anthologies, I would do the same thing. I also remember reading Mr. and Mrs. Bojo Jones, and the Beverly Cleary books for children and then young adults. I don't remember having a lot of series other than the mystery ones (Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, etc.), but I used to look for books by the popular authors at the time. Ahh...memories.