Your fav author from childhood

Bonji
You are so very right. We were brought up on a council estate, very far removed from my middle class heroines, I longed to go to Mallory Towers, or sail to Kirren island, and the wholesome quality of their lives so appealed to me, still does to be honest.

Alison Uttley’s A Traveller In Time is a wonderful story. I reread it a few years ago and I was astonished at how sophisticated the language was for a children’s book. It’s a time-slip tale, of a young girl staying in her grandparents old house and she is transported back to the time of Mary Queen of Scots.

Also mentioned earlier was the Jalna series. I loved those too, and read them while pregnant. I had plans to give my children names such as Pheasant and Finch, but luckily dh intervened!

I was brought up in a pit house , pit village . Really wanted to be George ....

I enjoyed adventure stories featuring three children, Bill, Jane and Oliver, but I don't remember the author or any titles. They were similar to Enid Blyton's books, but I don't think they were written by her.
Can anyone help with any recollection of theses books?

I won a lovely book as a Sunday school prize - A Dog so Small. I had an imaginary dog for ages after reading it.

SueDonim

I read all the Jalna books when I was pregnant too!! I was determined to finish them all before DC1 arrived, and I did; luckily the library was just down the road.
What a coincidence.

Sorry Delila, I don't know. What era was it?

Does no-one else remember the Susan books by Jane Shaw?

I now have a yen to re-read some of the books mentioned on this thread.

This is a lovely thread, brings back many memories.
When I was growing up , during WW2, you couldn't get new books. All paper was put to use for the war effort.
When books for public use started to be printed again they were in small numbers and mostly in public libraries.
My friends and I always asked for a book for a birthday present, a different one each, then we swapped.
Enid Blyton first. And I remember BB. Little Grey Men, as someone mentioned earlier.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Grey_Men

Delila Th author was M E Atkinson and the children you mention featured in her books about the Lockett family www.fantasticfiction.com/a/m-e-atkinson/

I remember the Abbey Girls too, the Narnia books and Heidi.

I wonder if I should some of my favourite children’s book now I am....erm.....older, and read them again?

I loved the brer rabbit stories, Enid Blyton, what Katy did (my absolute favourites) The water babies.

Enid Blyton initially, especially the Famous Five, then the Pullein-Thompson sisters and their fantastic pony books, many of which I still have well over 50 years later!

Also Anna Sewell (Black Beauty) and Dodie Smith (The Hundred and One Dalmatians), but only for that one classic from each author. I didn't have either book as a young child but borrowed them both repeatedly from the village library.

Giulua. I , too, remember Pookie. I used to get them from the library. I now work in that same library. I managed to buy one of the Pookie books many years ago to read to my own children. But somehow I never got round to it. The book looks so very "wordy " compared to modern day picture books. But I am still so glad that I have the book.

How exciting Grandma2213!
I had a trip to Alderley Edge with a friend one summer. SUCH fun.
It was years after we read the "Wierdstone" but so many happy memories of that day!

I do remember learning to read with Wide Range Readers. Kitty , Rover etc. I was so excited when the pedestrian books became proper stories like The Three Billy Goats Gruff .

Then of course Enid Blyton, Noddy then Famous Five. After that, the library with endless choice.

This is a lovely thread!

I still have many of my childhood books.

Was having a look and spotted Something to Do. I had this book as a young child and found it quite fascinating at the time

I was never able to make the mouse out of a white handkerchief though

Callistemon, thanks for responding. It must have been in the 50s, around the same era as Enid Blyton's books. I've tried to find out more about them for so long I'm beginning to think I must have imagined them. They were very similar to Enid Blyton, you know, adventures on holiday with Aunt Jane in Dorset and lashings of ginger beer.

Oh, thankyou MOnica!! I've just seen your post with the information I've been looking for. I haven't been imagining things after all?

I remember the Susan books by Jane Shaw. I think they had a green hard cover but I can't remember the details of the stories. Were they the ones where she went to the Alps and discovered beds without blankets, just continental quilts?

Another vote for Noel Streatfield, I read Ballet Shoes and White Boots so many times. I also loved Heidi by Joanna Spyri, Anne Of Green Gables and all the sequels by LM Montgomery. I also loved to read my brother’s Just William books and I did read some of Enid Blyton’s adventure books but wasn’t a huge fan of hers. I also liked the Mallory Towers books but when I took the eleven plus and was actually offered a scholarship to a very upmarket boarding school I refused to go. I also loved Jane Eyre when I was a little older and read it several times.

Very late to such a lovely thread but had to mention Eleanor Farjeon, as did mrswoo about five pages ago, and her wonderful retelling of the rumplestilskin story "The Silver Curlew". Also "Cue for Treason" and it's magnificent hero Kit - my first crush?..a runaway boy on a mission in Elizabethan times who joins a band of travelling players with secrets of their own...marvellous!

It was by Geoffrey Trease..sorry

Richmal Crompton, Arthur Ransome (Swallows and Amazons) and then Gerald Durrell when I was a bit older

Patriciageegee, I met Geoffrey Trease when I was a teenager. He came to give a talk at my school. I did enjoy his books, but don’t remember them well now.

Thanks for that Grandma70's. Cue for Treason was the only one of his I read but it clearly made a big impression! I seem to recall it being connected with school too somehow so maybe he was interested in promoting reading and it was a suggested book?