A book loved in childhood: do you remember?

GoodAfternoonTea

Not as a child, but I am reading now all those books I missed: Minnow on the Say, A Stitch in Time, Tom's Midnight Garden etc. I am now starting the Green Knowle series. Oh, and Enid Blyton's Famous Five. Just love them as they are pure escapism. From my childhood: The Coral Island, Treasure Island, The Wind in the Willows, Black Beauty, etc.

I’ve started watching The Box of Delights and The Children of Green Knowe at Christmas. It’s become a big part of my Christmas now.

Babs03 - Amazon have The Incredible Journey as either a new or used paperback or in Kindle format. I've treated myself to the Kindle version and will look forward to curling up with it over the weekend. 🙂

My childhood mainly revolved round Swallows and Amazons, Monica Edwards pony books, and E.Nesbit. All library books because we couldn't afford to buy them. I also loved The Secret Garden.

Jamesandjon33 I was just typing ‘ what Katy did and what Katy did next! I won these as a prize at school and I agree how wonderful these books were. I was an Enid blyton book fan as well my love of books has always been a constant escape for me!

Grandma70s

M0nica

I used to read all the Biggles books, but he was not among our favourites. My absolute favourites were the Swallows and Amazons series.

Oh well, opinions differ! My brother read Biggles, but when he went back to them as an adult, wondering whether he should give them to his son, he was really shocked by them.

Well, like your brother I was reading them as a child. I am very sure now I would find much in them to deplore. We cannot expect books written 50 or 100 years ago to play to current social values.

I am sure 50 or 100 years from now many of the children's books everyone so approves of now will shock our great great grandchildren with their archaic and unacceptable social values.

M0nica

I used to read all the Biggles books, but he was not among our favourites. My absolute favourites were the Swallows and Amazons series.

Oh well, opinions differ! My brother read Biggles, but when he went back to them as an adult, wondering whether he should give them to his son, he was really shocked by them.

Oh yes, Just William. I suspect they belonged to my brother, but I read them too. My brother also loved Arthur Ransome, whereas I found his books boring. How dull and characterless those children were! Same goes for Enid Blyton’s one-dimensional characters. Character-painting was what Noel Streatfeild was really good at. Think of Pauline and Petrova in Ballet Shoes, or Jane in The Painted Garden (now published under the appalling title Movie Shoes).

Actually, my very favourite books were the ten volumes of Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopedia. I loved the poetry sections, and Things to Make and Do - not that I ever made or did any of them, but I enjoyed reading about them. I remember thinking that I would never be bored as long as I had those volumes. Now I feel the same about the Internet!

Lorna Hill - the Sadlers Wells ballet books. I so wanted ballet lessons! Never happened.
The Swish Of The Curtain - made me want to act! Never happened either.

I used to read all the Biggles books, but he was not among our favourites. My absolute favourites were the Swallows and Amazons series.

I don’t often post on Gransnet but this post brought back such nostalgic memories of childhood and the wonderful libraries we had. I remember so many of the books already mentioned but being somewhat a tomboy also read with great enjoyment the Jennings books by Anthony Buckeridge, all the William books by Richmal Compton and The Family from One End Street by Eve Garnett. Happy days and a lifetime of reading.

A book I've never been able to find belonged to my grandad. It was about a dinosaur like creature called a Dilemma and he had sharp horns. It looked as if it was written around 1910/1920.

I am surprised no-one has mentioned the boarding school stories of Dorita Fairlie Bruce - she is most famous for the Dimsie books but my introduction to her books was the Springdale series, set in Scotland. Most of the books I owned came as Sunday School ‘prizes’. I often got two books, one for attendance (I think pretty much any child who had any connection got a book) and one for being a goody-goody who enthusiastically answered questions in our classes 😂

The Faraway Tree and the other books in the series. Fanny is now called Franny!
I loved the Bobbsey Twins too but I can’t remember much about them now.

I had read all of Arthur Ransome’s books before I was 12.

ViceVersa

As a horse-mad child, mine was Black Beauty, the Jill series of books (Jill's Gymkhana etc) by Ruby Ferguson and Christine Pullein-Thompson's books. But I was an avid reader as a child (still am) and would devour anything I could get my hands on.

Me too, I was an avid reader of anything I could get my hands on. I loved The Bobbsey Twins, Gerald Durrell, I read The Kin-Tiki Expedition by Thor Heyerdahl when I was 9 and went through my father’s huge library of books.
Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise to Candleford was another, I still have that edition 60+ years later.

My favourites were "The Borrowers" by Mary Norton, which my Dad gave me for Christmas when I was 7, and later "The Little White Horse" by Elizabeth Goudge. I still enjoy a re-read of both of these. The Borrowers" was a first edition, but it has been read so often that it is not worth anything, except to me!

All the William books, which had belonged to my father.

I have read the Cynthia Harnett books but as an adult, my late OH had lots of children's books that I didn't know. Ring Out Bow Bells, The Wool Pack I particularly recall, they seemed to be hard reads for the children they were aimed at.
In my childhood I read the Chalet School books by Elinor Brent Dyer and the Sadlers Wells ballet books by Lorna Hill, as well as the usual Enid Blyton books, especially the slightly old one like River of Adventure, Mountain of Adventure.

The Wind in the Willows, I’ve read it many times and still have my original copy. I wouldn’t part with it for the world.
My other favourites were Little Women, the Katy books, Black Beauty and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I re-read the latter two recently, they still leave me feeling sad.

Alison Uttley the little grey rabbit books.
Anything from Enid Blyton

Black Beauty and later The Chalet School Series by Elinor M Brent-Dyer . I still have copies of both and read Black Beauty to my grandchildren . It made my one grand daughter cry

Isn't this lovely. Thank you for sharing these.
Its particularly interestingt o read of some I've never heard of before.
Clealrly some authors gave us a great deal as children

I should add that they were toy soldiers, so not a book that TheWeirdoAgain60 would enjoy!!

Heidi was a favourite - and Black Beauty reduced me to such sobbing that my mother refused to let me read it again. Enid Blyton's Magic Faraway Tree, and the Mallory Towers series. Such pleasure and escapism.

The Twelve and the Genii by Pauline Clarke. It was a book that was read to my class chapter by chapter at the end of the school day by my teacher. It is about a family who move to a house that was previously lived in by the Bronte family. The children discover the soldiers that had been hidden in the house by the Bronte children. The soldiers come to life and have all sorts of adventures.

It stuck firmly in my mind through the years, and I was able to source a copy online. I re-read it and it is now on my bookshelf for my younger grandchildren to read when the mood takes them.