What was/were/are your favorite children's book(s)?

[Fausto]

I'm thinking around the 6 to 9 age range.

My own would be a split between Where the Wild Things Are, Strega Nona and anything by Chris Van Allsburg.

[Doggett]

R.L. Steins 'Goosebumps' books I read a lot as a child.
I also read lots of 'Point Horror'.

Before that Mr. Men books and 'The Hungry Caterpillar'.

[Mr. DS]

Green Eggs and Ham/Fox In Socks and I actually read them read to my youngins now.

I also like the book "The Runaway Duck" which I first learned about on Reading Rainbow.

I had this book (still do) that was all about what makes things work like cars, boats and everyday devices.

[The Burgomaster]

I was a big fan of the ALFRED HITCHCOCK AND THE THREE INVESTIGATORS series.  The stories were sort of like Hardy Boys mysteries, but I liked them better than the Hardy Boys.

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

We like Mo Willems at our house.
http://www.pigeonpresents.com/books.aspx

[Killer Bees]

I learned to read from a very young age and once I learned, I read everything I could get my hands on, including fare that was for much older readers.

My favourites were and still are (in no particular order):

1.  Come Back, Lucy - Pamela Sykes.  From what I can remember a very conservative young girl goes to live with outgoing distant relatives after her much beloved guardian Aunt dies.   She has trouble settling into the new home but befriends a strange girl who transports her to the Victorian England every time they meet up.  Lucy's life then becomes a battle between the pull of Alice the Victorian girl and Lucy's present day family to see who will lay claim to Lucy's affections.  (If I'm wrong on any of this, please feel free to correct me.  I haven't read this book since I was a kid).

2.  Where The Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak.  No explanation necessary.  I wanted to go with Max swhen I was a kid.

3.  The Agaton Sax Detective series - Nils Olof Franzen.  A wonderful series that had me riveted.

4.  The Famous Five - Enid Blyton.  I absolutely LOVED these books.  I could hardly wait for the next one to come out.  I heard that they revamped the writing for today's audiences.  Blasphemy!  You can't mess with perfection!




4. 

[BoyScoutKevin]

6 to 9. That's been over 50 years ago, so that period of my life has become one big blury memory, but I do remember the teachers reading to us in the classroom. So some of my favorite books, probably come from that.

Fiction
My Father's Dragon
Ruth S. Gannett

Because the hero and I share the same name.

Blueberries for Sal
Robert McCloskey

Not autobiographical, but what happened to Sal in the book happened to me. When I was growing up on my grandfather's farm, the area in which he lived was still wild enough that there were bears in the area. So when you went picking berries--blackberries--on the hill behind the farm, you had to watch out for bears. Yep. There was a bear there at the berry patch.

Waydown Cellar
Philip D. Stern

Still one of the funniest books I ever read.  I started laughing so hard at the antics of the characters, both literally and figuratively,  I fell out of my chair during class.

Wind in the Willows
Kenneth Grahame


The book is good, but Disney'v version, "Ichabod and Mr. Toad," (IMHO) is better. Not the least because, umlike in the book, Toad is unrepentant and goes from motorcars to aeroplanes. Just make sure you get the unedited version. There is a great sceme at tje end, when Toad and his friends take on Winkie and the Weasels for the deed to Toad Hall. But recently that scene has been so edited out, that has become incomprehensible. And "Ichabod," that stands for Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," which is also worth watching.

Non-fiction

The Rainbow Book of American Folk Tales and Legends
Almost sixty years old, but still a good introduction for children to the folktales and legends of America.

Welcome Aboard
Also by Monica Lewis

Now that I think about it, probably the first book that I ever read that got me interested in cruising.

[RCMerchant]

When I was 8 I read.....
.The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler by William Shirer. It was a Scolastic Books edition.
. A biography about Geronimo.
. Some book on haunted house. I read and reread these three many times. In between I was reading comic books and monster movie mags.

[InformationGeek]

I enjoyed the Baily School Kids personally.  It was an interesting and enjoyable series about a group of 3rd graders trying to find out if certians adults in their lives were more than what they seemed; like vampires, werewolves, sea monsters, angels, ninjas, and the like.  It probably contributed to my interest in the supernatural and unusual creatures, like in b-movies.

Also, The Magic Treehouse series.  Great books and I learned a few things at the same time.  Very cool if I do say so myself.

The book I probably read the most as a kid was Give Yourself Goosebumps: Beware of the Purple Peanut Butter.  I have no clue why, but I always kept coming back to that book for some reason.  Maybe because it had the most unusual of endings in all of those Choose your own adventure style books, but I'm not sure.  Still fun to read after all this time.

[ImaginaryFoot]

SuperFudge, On Beyond Zebra by Dr Suess, Where The Wild Things Are, and this book about The Bell Witch, drawing a blank on its name though. It scared the sh!t outta me since im from Tennessee about 2 1/2 hours from where it happened, loved it though

[claws]

Anything Dr. Seuss until I was 5 or 6. I started reading Famous Monsters and Fangoria after that.

[Trevor]

I was a big fan of the ALFRED HITCHCOCK AND THE THREE INVESTIGATORS series.  The stories were sort of like Hardy Boys mysteries, but I liked them better than the Hardy Boys.

There were two of the Three Investigators books that made me go  ~ The Secret of Terror Castle and The Mystery of The Green Ghost.

I liked those books but I wanted to slap Jupiter Jones upside the head sometimes: he always came across as a little snotty.

[Hammock Rider]

Where the Wild Things Are
The Curious George books
Ferdinand the Bull
Anything to do with Dinosaurs
We had a neat little Disney Illustrated Fairy Tales book that featured a lot of the public domain stories.
Later I read at least 2 dozen of the Hardy Boys books and as much Encyclopedia Brown as I could get my hands on.

[retrorussell]

One of my favorites was the first book I had: A Bargain For Frances.  Bread And Jam For Frances was a good one too.
The Bill Peet books were enjoyable and had great illustrations.
Another one I really liked was Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.
Just about anything Dr. Seuss.
Also, In The Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak.  I liked that book because it cracked me up everytime due to the depiction of a naked kid in it.  I'd never seen full frontal in a kid's book before (and haven't since).  I remember my classmates and I would beg the teacher to read it to us and finally, because we kept getting into a fit of laughter, they said no.

[ChaosTheory]

At that age, I read a lot of Mercer Mayer, especially the Little Critter books and What Do You Do With a Kangaroo (the girl in the illustrations looked like me!  )
Like Hammock Rider, I liked anything to do with dinosaurs.  I can also remember back in the 80's you could get the Peanuts comic strips in pocket-size paperback collections and I must've had 2 dozen of those.  Ripley's Believe It Or Not had little paperback books too, with graphic novel-styled illustrations instead of the photo editions they do now.  I was kind of fascinated by those books and all their bizarre little factoids.
My favorite writer as a kid was Beverly Cleary though.  I think I went through everything she wrote about 10 times by the time I reached age 10.  I still think she's the best when it comes to actually grasping how children think.