Favourite child's book

[Gizzie]

Sweet Valley High 8 and all its spin offs), goosebumps and roald dahl.
my particular favorite is matilda

[Dan1980]

I used to love the goosebumps books when I was younger. Also I read loads of the famous five books.

[mrk2010]

I used to like funny bones the ones with the three skeletons loved them as a kid.

[SlipknotRlZZ]

Winnie The Pooh
Lassie
The Spiderwick Chronicles
and mm My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

[Beaux]

The Far Away Tree Series

[Bookworm]

Narnia Chronicles
Wind in the Willows
The Famous Five
Paddington Bear series :biggrin:

[Puck]

Did anyone ever read The Chronicles of Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander as children? Those were some of my favorite fantasy books when I was 10 or so.

I also loved David Eddings as a child, but find his prose a bit dull now as an adult.

*sigh* bittersweet nostalgia...how I love, yet loathe you....

[Pix]

Oh, I loved The Cat Who Wished to be a Man by Lloyd Alexander. I read that book over and over in 5th grade (when I discovered it in the school library) and have read it a few times since, including once as an adult. If I ever see it in a used book store I'm getting it.

In retrospect that might've been my first real romance book, too. It's amazing how vivid I can recall how much it affected me when the cat turned human by his wizard is being drowned "like a cat" in a bag in the river and he manages to get out his magic wishbone to wish himself safe back with his wizard and describes the sweet, safe life so vividly, contrasting with the horror of being drowned in the name of greed, but as he breaks the bone at the last second he wishes instead to be with the woman he's fallen in love with Gillian (who is also being murdered). That scene still affects me.

Damn, now I'm going to have to read it again.

[Pix]

Btw, anyone else read Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep when they were a kid? In retrospect I can't believe the Jr. High/Middle School I went had that in the library (and the one that went with it), and that having it that it wasn't stolen for either its poems or its artwork (OTOH, not many kids who liked horror checked out the poetry section). It affected my stories I wrote back then, really did inspire nightmares (though I couldn't stop reading it again), the artwork was mesmerizing, and affected me even as an adult. For example, these 2 poems:

The Ghoul

The gruesome ghoul, the grizzly ghoul,
Without the slightest noise,
Waits patiently beside the school
To feast on girls and boys.

He lunges fiercely through the air
As they come out to play,
Then grabs a couple by the hair
And drags them far away.

He cracks their bones, and snaps their backs,
And squeezes out their lungs.
He chews their thumbs like candy snacks,
And pulls apart their tongues.

He slices their stomachs and bites their hearts and
Tears their flesh to shreds.
He swallows their toes like toasted tarts,
And gobbles down their heads.

Fingers, elbows, hands and knees,
And arms and legs and feet.
He eats them with delight and ease,
For every part's a treat.

And when the gruesome, grizzly ghoul
Has nothing left to chew,
He hurries to another school,
And waits, perhaps, for you.

--Jack Prelutsky, The Ghoul, from Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep

Contrast to this from its sister book:

The Zombie

Upon your bed you sleep in pain,
For nightmares swirl within your brain.
You waken with a fearful start
As horror grips your heart.
You sense a presence standing there,
And all at once it meets your stare,
A zombie waits within your room,
And with it dwells your doom.

And you shiver, and you scream!
And you hope it's all a dream as the Zombie nears your bed.

The Zombie, spawn of voodoo's charms,
Has come to take you in its arms.
It longs to crush, it yearns to clutch,
And lethal is its touch.
It does not live, yet is not dead.
Two sockets burn within its head.
It does not see, it does not hear,
It does not head you fear.

And you shiver, and you scream!
And you hope its all a dream as the Zombie nears your bed.

Closer, Closer to your bed,
Closer comes this thing undead,
It nears you at a steady pace,
And oh, its awful face.
Closer, Closer, Closer still
The Zombie nears with icy will.
Its face remains expressionless,
As you feel it's cold caress.

And you shiver, and you scream!
For you know, it's not a dream, as the Zombie nears your bed.

--Jack Prelutsky, the Zombie, from The Headless Horseman Rides Tonight: More Poems to Trouble Your Sleep

And because I read these poems so many times I got confused when I saw zombie movies going, "Those aren't zombies, those are ghouls!"

And technically I'm right.