Win Puffin classics!

Heidi - one of my all-time favourite books.

I am so excited that the DGD are old enough to start enjoying 'Heidi' now so that I can enjoy the books all over again.

Heidi Grows Up and Heidi's Children were wonderful too, although the last book of the trilogy was written by Charles Tritten and not by the original author of Heidi, Johanna Spyri.

Oh, I forgot to say why Heidi was my all-time favourite:
The story of a little girl who, despite a sad start to her life and many adversities, learned the joy of living a simple life with people she loved and shared that joy with her friend Clara.

Children have so many 'dressing up' clothes these days - I only had one and that was a Heidi costume with golden plaits made of straw, the tops of which tended to stick painfully in my ears. But I still wore them!

The Secret Garden is one of my all time favourite books, I first read it as a child aged about 9 when stuck in bed with tonsillitis, have read it frequently ever since, as an adult, usually about every five years or so. Every time I read it I discover something that I didnt see last time, a book of many levels for all ages.

Black Beauty was my favourite childhood book and always made me cry but I still read it many times. I loved the friendship between Beauty and Ginger and the lovely little pony, Merrylegs. This book has everything I want in a book - a good story, well drawn characters and information about a topic of which I knew very little. I learned a great deal about the way of life in Victorian England especially as it related to horses.

Black Beauty & Little Women are on my list of all time favourite books. I had no sisters and loved the stories of the March family with their four girls. Black Beauty gave me a life long love of horses. There were tear stains on every page !

I actually have my very old copy of Black Beauty; why I've still got it when my mum threw all of my other books away is a mystery. The pages are turning brown with age and the cover has all but fallen off. I find it terribly sad that Anna Sewell didn't live to see how popular her book became and will never know how beloved it still is of generations of readers. The Call of the Wild was the first book I ever got from a lending library and I then became as besotted with wolves as I was with horses. My husband always read The Piper at the Gates of Dawn chapter from The Wind in the Willows to my daughter at Christmas time. Strangely enough, of the other books in the list I'm not sure if I've read them or if I've just absorbed them in some way [the Korda film of The Jungle Book being my favourite film when I was a child]. Heidi's Children was given to me as a school prize but I've passed it on to someone who was looking for it to give to her grandaughter; I hope she loves it as much as I did. As for Alice in Wonderland I enjoy reading it as much now as I did when I was little [and can still recite most of the poems [I think]. I just hope that future generations of children will still find time to enjoy sitting down with a book and entering all the magical worlds that are in them.

Alice in Wonderland was my favourite. Once I started reading it, my family had to shake me to make me take any notice of them, I was so absorbed.
I've read it to all my grandchildren and can recite all the poems.

Anne of Green Gables and The Secret Garden are my joint favourites.

I think I identified with Anne and Mary as they didn't have mothers, and neither did I - so many children's books at the time were centred around happy family units. I was so glad when they blossomed in their respective ways!

My favourite is Little Women. I loved reading about how different the 4 girls were from each other and they became my adopted sisters.

The Wind in the Willows is my all time favourite children's book. My grandparents sent it to me for Christmas when I was 7 and by that time I was able to read it all by myself. My favourite character is Ratty, a resourceful individual who introduces the Mole to life on the river; and who wouldn't warm to the avuncular Badger? Then there's the incorrigible Mr Toad - a great comic character.

Wind in the Willows is my favourite children's book too. It combines humour with excitement and describes some of the simple pleasures in life such as picnics and messing about on the river.

Ratty is so sensible and avuncular. Mole needs support from his friends. And the wonderful Mr Toad is the Boris Johnson of his day.

I think Wind in the Willows is probably my favourite book ever - kids' and adult fiction included.

Love the Boris Johnson comparison. Very apt.

Anne of Green Gables because she is so plucky and spirited, despite her difficult start in life. The scrapes she gets into are entertaining (dying her hair green - we've all done something daft like that in the pursuit of beauty). She is also entranced by the beauties of nature.
I have just re-read Rilla of Ingleside - a much later book in the saga which charts the progress of Ann's youngest daughter, who is 15 at the start of World War 1. Very interesting (400,000 Canadians volunteered out of a population of 7 million!) but not as good as the first in the series, which has given pleasure to so many generations.

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. So sad with, of course, a happy ending. It was my Mum's favorite book and I was named Sara after the Princess

Little women Louisa May Alcott.
The page where little Beth dies was unreadable as it was so smudged by my tears.
I was a silly sentimentalist from a very young age.
Also an voracious reader, at least one book a day with a few favourites re read many times.

Peter Pan. No one wants to grow up. My favourite, but my boys didn't enjoy Mum's choices. They preferred watching He-Man and i did read to them the stories, also spent hours drawing all the characters, as well as making Castle Grey skull out of paper mache. Fun days many years ago.

Heidi and Alice in Wonderland were my favourites.

I loved the Anne of Green Gables book , but equally enjoyed The Secret Garden and Little Women

Little women Louisa May Alcott.
I loved this book and had a lovely hard cover copy, which i still have.

I also loved Little Women and I must have read it ten times . I also read Jo's Boys.
When I first read it, I really wanted to be like Amy with her long, wavy blonde hair and dainty ways ,as at the time my Mum had just had my hair cut really short, as I had nits.

I love Wind in the Willows & have about 10 different copies - I absolutely love all the characters, especially Ratty & Mole! It's the kind of book I always want to read aloud. I hope it's a favourite for many generations to come & is definitely a book which will be passed down the family.

My favourite was The Secret Garden with its heroine Mary Lennox. She was a spoiled brat at the outset but gradually developed into a likeable Yorkshire lass! I loved her friendship with Dickon and his wild creatures and her gradual awakening to the beauty of nature and the garden.

Heidi and Heidi's Children were my favourites - and I still have them. I just love the story of this little girl.