What Books Did You Love Growing Up?
And do you still have them?
Hi, Friend.
It’s Valentine’s Day, and one thing’s for sure: I love books. I have always loved books. Sometimes I cheat on one book by reading another one at the same time. Don’t tell.
Now that my own debut picture book is in the world, I’ve been thinking about the books I loved as a child. My favorite book when I was a very young was a 1977 edition of Dean’s A Book of Fairy Tales, illustrated by Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone. The illustrations were phenomenal. I spent so much time with those stories.
Looking at the books that made a lasting impression on me as a child—the books I read and reread, the books I gave my own children as soon as they were ready for them—I see some strands running through them: independence, imagination, world-building, problem-solving.
The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl
The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
I recently found some of my childhood books in a box in my basement. They’re worn and yellowed, and they have that slightly mildewy paper-stored-in-a-basement smell. But it’s so cool to have the actual objects my young hands held.
The Patricia Reilly Giff book is signed, so I must have met her at a school visit or book fair. Rats, Spiders & Love has my name inside, inexplicably without an E at the end, and in some very 80s handwriting. It made me smile. When the Dolls Woke I clearly, ahem, borrowed from my fourth-grade classroom, because my teacher’s name is printed neatly inside.
Oh, Maggie. (Oh, Maggi?)
Dear Lifers, I’m curious: What were your favorite books when you were young? Do you see any threads between them? And do you still have some of the original copies?
Booklovers forever—
Maggie
They're certainly decaying, but I do have my most favorite - A Wrinkle in Time - along with By the Shores of Silver Lake and Alice and Wonderland. I still regret not hanging on to my collection of Nancy Drew... When I was quite young, I remember always reading a couple chapters of Charlotte's Web before bed, and starting it over once I finished it. I do think I enjoyed books about people learning how to do the right thing.
Oh, so many to delve into here, but I'll start with the standouts: the Anne of Green Gables series, the Little House series, the Trixie Belden series, The Secret Garden...most featured a spunky girl character who went on adventures. Many of them are now on my teenage daughter's bedroom bookshelf. I know she hasn't read most of them and maybe never will, but it's somehow comforting to me to know they are still in close proximity to a young girl. (I have many of them downloaded to my Kindle, and re-read them all yearly.) (Actually just started Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery because I never got around to it as a child, but I figured it's never too late for more L.M. Montgomery!)