# What was your favorite book(s)/Author..if you know...to read as a kid?



## Jace (Jan 31, 2022)

Every week we'd go to the local library..and I'd "stock up" on Nancy Drew mystery (s).
Still like mysteries or thriller (s) "to this day".
Too many favorite (s) to say.

.


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## Pappy (Jan 31, 2022)

Mine was a fellow named Pease. Can’t recall first name. The school library carried a series of his books on the old sea life aboard ships.


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## bingo (Jan 31, 2022)

huckleberryfinn....


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## JustinCase (Jan 31, 2022)

Early adulthood, John D McDonald & Mark Twain.  Black Beauty was 1st book read cover 2 cover.


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## Chet (Jan 31, 2022)

If you can call someone in high school a kid, my favorite book was called "Pigs Is Pigs". It was the book in the school library with the least amount of pages, and everyone read it when it was time for a book report.


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## Pepper (Jan 31, 2022)

The All of a Kind Family was a series of children's books by Sydney Taylor.  It was about 5 Jewish sisters growing up on the Lower East Side of NYC at the turn of last century.  My mother read this to me till her voice wore out.  She also read comic books to me, Little Lulu being my all time favorite.  I have a major collection of these, by Marjorie Henderson Buell "Marge"  Have a collection of original Nancy Drews by the series of authors all named Carolyn Keene.

In third grade I read my older sister's book Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes and loved that too.  It's about a teenage boy during the American Revolution.  Disney came out with his movie the same year and I was very excited to see what I had read.


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## officerripley (Jan 31, 2022)

Although I read all the time, I don't remember liking or being impressed by anything much 'till I discovered T_he Lord of the Rings_ when in my teens. Nowadays I don't enjoy fantasy very much but back then, the _LOTR_ helped me to escape when I needed it.


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## Della (Jan 31, 2022)

We went to the library in Charleston WV once a month.  It was like a fairyland, the library was housed in the old capital building with a domed ceiling, the children's library was on the second floor where you could look down from the landing and up at the dome till you were dizzy.  There was a marvelous huge doll house all fitted out with handmade Victorian furniture.  I could have looked at it all day.   Our mother would sometimes drop us off there for hours and we never got bored.  

I read hundreds of books from that library and the only one I can remember is_ Pippi Longstocking.  _


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## jujube (Jan 31, 2022)

"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn "


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## Snow74 (Jan 31, 2022)

I read lots of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and of course loads of French books that i will not name...the book that stayed the most with me was Little Women....


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## Purwell (Jan 31, 2022)

The Wind In The Willows.


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## Rah-Rah (Jan 31, 2022)

As a really young child, I would say The Lorax by Dr. Seuss and Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl. As I got a little older the books I loved were Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson and Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt.


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## hollydolly (Jan 31, 2022)

I never owned a book as child, none were ever bought or given to me, but I was an avid reader, so I used the school and the public library often...I actually would read pretty much anything I could get my hands on... One favourite that I remember all these years on was Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm... by Douglas Wiggin

Enid Blyton was a great favourite too....


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## Gaer (Jan 31, 2022)

Very little, 3-4-5, it was Childcraft books and "the Lillle Engine that could", any stories about cute little ducks, Cinderella, Snow White, "The Little Match Girl".
I was absolutely fascinated by Margaret Ely Webb, the artist for children's books in the 1930's!  I used to study her designs and thought her GENIUS! (She illustrated in the Childcraft books)


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## Aunt Bea (Jan 31, 2022)

The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

It makes me sad that Mrs. Wilder has been branded a racist over her depictions of Native Americans on the western frontier.

IMO she was simply a product of her time like so many of the other wonderful people that helped to shape my life.


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## Pinky (Jan 31, 2022)

My earliest books were Uncle Arthur's Bedtime Stories. Always with a moral to remember.
I read only the Classics, like Treasure Island as a child.
It was in my teens that I branched out with my book choices, at the public library.


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## Snow74 (Jan 31, 2022)

I just have to spill the beans///when I was a teenager....my father often had to go out of town and my mother taught school.so I was often alone..this one day I  happened to spy these books that had been put on a high shelf..of course I was curious and with the help of a chair got the books in question...twas..."Lady Chatterlley's Lover"  by D.H.Lawrence  something told me I should not be reading it...but...well..curiosity won over...I made sure to put it back in its place...it took me a couple of months to read it...I do not believe they ever suspected....


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## Sachet (Jan 31, 2022)

The Homer Price series by McCloskey.


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## Autumn72 (Jan 31, 2022)

Sarah plain and tall.


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## Pepper (Jan 31, 2022)

Snow74 said:


> I just have to spill the beans///when I was a teenager....my father often had to go out of town and my mother taught school.so I was often alone..this one day I  happened to spy these books that had been put on a high shelf..of course I was curious and with the help of a chair got the books in question...twas...*"Lady Chatterlley's Lover"  by D.H.Lawrence * something told me I should not be reading it...but...well..curiosity won over...I made sure to put it back in its place...it took me a couple of months to read it...I do not believe they ever suspected....


That's so funny Snow!  And familiar as in the seventh grade I took that book out of the Public Library and I know my mother saw the book.  My classmate suggested I read it.  It only took me 2-3 weeks to read it, as I didn't renew it.


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## JustBonee (Jan 31, 2022)

I remember   Little  Women    was one book that impressed me  as  a   kid..  I  loved the March sisters and their lives.
I have a copy of the book  saved to this day.


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## Bellbird (Jan 31, 2022)

Enid Blyon was my favourite, All my pocket money went on buoying her books if I couldn’t find them in the library.


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## Chris P Bacon (Jan 31, 2022)

The Catcher In The Rye by JD Salinger


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## Feelslikefar (Jan 31, 2022)

Any book by H.G. Wells.
Also bought the pulp magazines like "Analog Science Fiction and Fact"; any mag with space travel and space monsters.
Mom thought they would 'warp' my brain.  
Maybe she was right...


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## ElCastor (Jan 31, 2022)

Oz books -- L Frank Baum
My grandmother (Nana) got me started, and I read more when I learned to read. Later, scifi.


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## palides2021 (Jan 31, 2022)

I read voraciously when I was young. We never bought any books, but I used the school library and public library, and books from the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, and the classics, were some of my favorites. That's probably what helped me win the spelling bee in fourth grade. When we came from Greece to the US when I was 4 1/2, I didn't speak any English, and my first day in kindergarten, I didn't understand what the teacher was saying. I've come a long way since then! I think reading is one of the best things a young child's mind can do to learn about the language, world, cultures, etc. I encouraged my son when he was young to read books and visits to the library and bookstores were plentiful. He grew up reading as voraciously as I did.


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## JustinCase (Jan 31, 2022)

After joining USAF @ 18, I found I had a lot of idle time.  Money was tight, got a library card in Okinawa, then Germany.  Read all the classics I could get.  So many, the list would take forever.  Paperbacks were prime trading material.  Then had to read tech books for my career and pleasure reading was put on the back burner.  Don't read at all now, wife makes up for it though.


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## Shero (Jan 31, 2022)

Have always loved books. When I was very little read Enid Blyton, Charles Perrault and Hans Christian Andersen. Many French writers enthralled me, some favorites being Emilie Zola and George Sand. the Bronte sisters and so many others and then. I graduated to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. I was mesmerised.

I fell in love with Russia, its history and its literature. Many years ago on a trip to that country, visited the home of Dostoevsky ( now a museum) and Yasnaya Polyana home of Tolstoy. I was captivated, enchanted and more in love than ever.


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## Jupiter (Jan 31, 2022)

I loved Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle!


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## gamboolman (Jan 31, 2022)

Thanks for the Post Jace,

I had to go to Remedial Reading class in 2nd grade.  I am so thankful for the teachers who held my feet to the fire...
It worked, and I became a voracious reader.  I still am to a good extent.

I remember several and then I remembered some more.... I will be rereading a good many of these this next year

My Side of The Mountain - this was one of the first, if not the first book I read all the way thru once I got to where I could read.

Then I just started reading all the time when we was not playing football or baseball or hunting or fishing or shooting - or working after school.

The Swiss Family Robinson
The story of Albert Schweitzer
Instant Reply by Jerry Kramer
Marine - story of Chesty Puller
WW1, WW2 stories and the Civil War stories - due to all the relatives and near every man having served in the wars.
Reading years and years worth of Readers Digest at my Grandparents Farm
Tom Sawyer
The Red Badge of Courage
Guadalcanal Diary
The Biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower
Two Years Before The Mast
Stacks and stacks of Outdoor Life, Field and Stream and The American Hunter
The Sherlock Holmes stories
Diary of Anne Frank
To Kill A Mocking Bird
365 Days
Johnny Got His Gun
All Quiet On The Western Front
History of the Marine Corps
To Hell and Back
Forgotten Soldier
Storm of Steel
Blood Red Snow
Several on Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett
Run Silent Run Deep
Twenty Thousand Leauges Under The Sea
Around the World in 80 Days
Journey To The Center of The Earth
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Biography on Annie Oakley
Legionnaire - 5 Years In The French Foreign Legion  -  just reread this one afew month ago
The Old Man And The Sea
The Grapes of Wrath
Lord Jim
The Call Of The Wild
White Fang
The Sea Wolf
Captains Courageous
Treasure Island
A Texas Cowboy - Or Fifteen Years on The Deck of A Hurricane Deck of A Spanish Pony
Death In The Long Grass
Crocodile Fever - A True Story of Adventure
Crow Killer: The Saga of Liver-Eating Johnson
Patton biography
Stories and accounts of Civil War Battles
Fast and Fancy Revolver Shooting by Ed McGivern
For Whom The Bell Tolls

So many more !
ETA - I read all of these multiple times before I turned 18 and went to work full-time in the Oilpatch for the next 43 year.  Now that I think on it - I really did not read that much for pleasure all them years as I was working all the time and busy with ms gamboolgal and the kids.  I read tons of technical stuff for work... just the way it was.

One Book I started as a young man in the mid 1990's and I have not been able to finish is "The Federalist Papers".  For some reason I have a hard time with this one?  Maybe because I have to reread it over and over to let it sink in....I reckon I will find it and make it a effort to read completely now.


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## Murrmurr (Feb 1, 2022)

Jonathan Swift was my favorite author until I was almost a teenager. Then it was J.D. Salinger and Earnest Hemingway.

But I didn't read much and I still don't.


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## oldiebutgoody (Feb 2, 2022)

As a kid I loved reading Mark Twain's  *Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn,  *and *Tom Sawyer Detective*.


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## JaniceM (Feb 4, 2022)

I guess I'm in the minority with this topic, like with most things     .  After I outgrew children's material-  Little Golden Books etc.,- in early elementary school, I moved on to adult-level material and never read any of the books that were written for the preteen age group.  Maybe I missed a lot of "neat stuff."


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## JimBob1952 (Feb 4, 2022)

I used to love books about WWII.  Guadalcanal Diary, Thirty Seconds over Tokyo, and a book about the Marines by Robert Leckie called Strong Men Armed.  Before I could read, I used to make my sisters read me the story "Rikki-Tiki-Tavi" by Rudyard Kipling.  When I could read, I loved his story "The Drums of the Fore and Aft"  (which would make a great film).  I liked stories by Jack London, Bret Harte, O. Henry and Mark Twain as well.  There used to be lots of short story anthologies with stories like "The Lady or the Tiger" and "The Most Dangerous Game."

There used to be a series of books called Landmark Books, which were based on American history.  I loved them but I can't remember whether they were historical novels or just histories.  

Liked the Hardy Boys, Sherlock Holmes, Jules Verne, so many others as well.


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## carouselsilver (Feb 4, 2022)

The Diary of Anne Frank, Little Women, Nancy Drew series, and the Little House  on the Prairie series.


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## richard_saunders (Feb 4, 2022)

Tolkien, Herbert, Heinlein.  I just discovered that Franklin W. Dixon was a pseudonym a couple of weeks ago.


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## Pepper (Feb 4, 2022)

richard_saunders said:


> Tolkien, Herbert, Heinlein.  I just discovered that *Franklin W. Dixon* was a pseudonym a couple of weeks ago.


Yeah Dixon is part of the Carolyn Keene gang.


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## richard_saunders (Feb 4, 2022)

Pepper said:


> Yeah Dixon is part of the Carolyn Keene gang.


Not that there is anything wrong with that...


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## oldpop (Feb 4, 2022)

There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly
Pam Adams

Matthew Looney
Jerome Beatty Jr.


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## Victor (Feb 8, 2022)

AA Milne...
Half-Magic
Twilight Zone stories


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## Signe The Survivor (Feb 8, 2022)

Charlotte's Web- E.B. White
Anne of Green Gables- Lucy Maud Montgomery
Little Women- Louisa May Alcott
Winnie the Pooh- A.A. Milne
The Secret Garden- Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz- L. Frank Baum
Stuart Little- E.B. White


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## Lara (Feb 8, 2022)

Before my father died, he gave me his little
childhood book that I also enjoyed as a child.
I just noticed, when looking for this pic
that it's worth $78 now...but priceless to me


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## Don M. (Feb 8, 2022)

In my younger years, I enjoyed reading books written by Earnest Hemingway (Old Man and the Sea), and John Steinbeck (Grapes of Wrath).  As I grew older, I found myself too busy to do much reading....it's probably been decades since I read a Novel, etc.


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## Mrs. Robinson (Feb 8, 2022)

I pretty much lived at our local library when I was a kid. I read everything by Beverly Cleary,the Oz books,Little House On the Prairie series.
My aunt gifted me a Nancy Drew book for Christmas when I was 8 and I was hooked.Read that entire series.

In high school,although I still loved to read and always had a book going,I HATED to read assigned books. I wanted to choose my own books lol. Years later,we had an employee who was also a voracious reader. He would recommend books for me to read and I would tell him when I read a good one. But one day he told me that he had a hard time reading something when someone told him "You just HAVE to read this book!" Said it sounded too much like a school assignment and he just couldn`t make himself do it. I laughed-and agreed 100%!

RIP Mark Ramirez.


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## Alligatorob (Feb 8, 2022)

Jacques Cousteau - read all his books, several times, saw all the films and documentaries also.


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## Gaer (Feb 8, 2022)

Oh! forgot, age four, "Little Toot!" read that over and over!


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