Childhood Favorites

Here's what led to this post: A link to a Madeleine L'Engle interview that I'll post about some time soon, dreamy thoughts of A Wrinkle in Time and how it transformed me, the realization that everybody and her brother has that on her favorite kids' books list, thinking about a few of my other not-so-popular favorites, wondering what books (both usual and not-so-usual) might be on other peoples' lists.

Here's my incomplete Top Books I Read As A Kid (let's say ages 5 to 10) list. (I was both precocious and morbid as a child, so by age 10 or even before, I'd moved on to things like Death Be Not Proud. Did I say precocious? Did I say morbid?) You are encouraged--nay, ordered--to either leave a few of yours in my comments, or in your journal (and then let me know they're there so I can peruse them).

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Look Through My Window by Jean Little
Wren by Marie Killilea (which led to Karen and With Love From Karen, both by Marie Killilea, but those were adult books that I read at a ridiculously young age)
All of a Kind Family by Sydney Taylor (and all the sequels, though none was as magical as the first one for me)
Mama's Bank Account by Kathryn Forbes
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
a children's biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that was part of a series
a children's biography of Abraham Lincoln that was part of the same series
the entire Little House series

These are the books that I read not just once, but over and over and over again, the books that are now sitting on a shelf in my house waiting for Em to be ready or interested in reading them, and then for Noah, if he's into it. (Em and I have actually already read All of a Kind Family together, and she was just as transported as I remember having been. I am hoarding Look Through My Window, a book with utterly transformed me, though almost nobody else I know ever even read it, for when she's ready to read on her own, because it's much better as a private journey, I think. And Lori, if you're reading this, you must, must, must, must find this book for Emma. Must. You have a few years, but you must. And you should read it, too. Trust me on this one.)

There are other much-loved books, too--I was a big Bobbsey Twins fan when I was five or six, and I loved the Ramona the Pest series, and I enjoyed Pippi Longstocking, and The Secret Garden, and Little Women, and I read all the requisite Judy Blume books. But those on the list were the books that I adored and savored and held onto and reread and reread and reread and pretended I was part of. That kind of thing.

So. Your turn.