What juvenile reading, or children's movies, do you still find charming?--Al

-- Al Schroeder (al.schroeder@nashville.com), December 21, 1999

Answers

Just to name a few stories.... "The Secret Garden" and "A Little Princess" by Frances Hodgson Burnett, "The Little Lame Prince" by Diana Muldock (I think those were the title and author... I had to give those books back to Mom when I moved *sigh*), "A Wrinkle In Time" and its companions, by Madeline L'Engle, and The Chronicles of Narnia from C.S. Lewis. Oh, and The Velveteen Rabbit was always one of my favorites, too.... how do you become Real? By being loved and cherished.

-- Lisana (lisana@lisana.dreamhost.com), December 21, 1999.

i think my favorite of all favorites of childhood is robert louis stevens, "a childs garden of verses." although i read widely and enjoyed what i read, i read so many it is almost impossible to do the, (pick-of-the-litter) routine. a "childs garden of verses" puts me back into the world of a seven year old, it was my first time. i passed it on to m y daughter for her kids, but every time i travel to her city on a visit, i spend enough time with it to read it through.

-- ici jongleur (ionoi@webtv.net), December 22, 1999.

I still read a volume of the Chronicles of Narnia when I'm sick or can't sleep. I like reading my son anything by Doctor Seuss -- his books are made to be read over and over, out loud, which is exactly what the baby wants.

-- Tom Dean (tdean@haese.com), December 22, 1999.

I still enjoy "Where the Wild Things Are". I was so glad to have an excuse to buy a new copy of it..you know, to read to the kids...of course. : )

Also will never tire of "Watership Down". Classic. Just lent it to the 11 yr old that lives next door to us. I am so excited for him. Heh. Hope he likes it as much as I did.

-- Bob Beltran (kelly-bob@excite.com), December 22, 1999.

"no flying in the house"; "bambi"; "the secret garden"; any of the "mousekin" books, and anything by sendak.

-- summer-girl (thegirl@summer-girl.net), December 22, 1999.

Just finished "secret garden", and the christmas chapter of "wind in the willows", anything by judy blume (ramona, sheila the great, are you there god?) is a fave.... and winnie the pooh always makes me cry at the end. Andrea

-- andrea (renhold@nbnet.nb.ca), December 22, 1999.

Anything by Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, The BFG, etc.), the Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis), Maurice Sendak (Chicken Soup with Rice, Where the Wild Things Are), Judy Blume (Otherwise Known as Shiela the Great, Superfudge), and J.K. Rowling, infamous for the new "Harry Potter" series. [By the way, the "Ramona" series is by Cleary, not Blume.]

-- Cindy (adenosine_triphosphate@yahoo.com), December 23, 1999.

My favorite book and story of all time is "The Velveteen Rabbit". I remember seeing a movie of it before I ever read the book. I was in 4th grade and we watched it at school. I was the only kid who saw the significance of the story and cried.

And to this day the story still gets me teary eyed. "Love makes you real."

-- Katie L. (missmermaid@hotmail.com), December 23, 1999.

Any juvenile reading or children's movies that I *ever* found charming, I still do. Which is to say, almost all of the books, and whichever movies didn't seem hopelessly condescending and cloy. (er, I suppose that was my book criterion too, but there seemed to be fewer condescending, cloy books than movies.) Comes from being raised by a children's librarian, I guess - I never got the feeling that kid's books were 'just for kids'. The movies that come to mind? The Brave Little Toaster (which I always forget was written by Thomas M. Disch, strangely appropriate though it seems), any of the classic Disneys, particularly Fox and the Hound, and more recently, Nightmare Before Christmas, Babe, and the Pixars... As for books, listing them would take months, let me just share the titles on my shelves *right now* (this of course excludes the books left in the safe surrogate care of my mother back in Canada, and those on my shelves but blocked off by boxes we should have put in storage by now, and includes a few books that would raise a few eyebrows at being lumped in with picture books and fairy stories - but i figure if it made an indelible impression on me before I turned ten, it's a kid's book to me): The Narnia Chronicles (C.S. Lewis), The Wind in the Door series (Madeleine L'Engle), The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy (JRR Tolkien) - it's probably worth noting that in all of those 3 cases I went to considerable effort to make sure I have the edition I used to read and re-read as a child, and that I have 2 and a half editions of the LotR trilogy - , Night of Wishes (Michael Ende), The Little Lame Prince (Diana Murlock), The Missing Piece and The Missing Piece Meets the Big O (Shel Siverstein), Green Eggs and Ham (Dr. Seuss), Very Far Away from Anywhere Else (Ursula K. LeGuin), Tales from Watership Down (Richard Adams - this one stands in the place of WD itself, which is in Canada), Myths of the Norsemen(Roger Lancelyn Green), Fuzzypeg Goes to School (Allison Uttley/Margaret Tempest), Fun with Dick and Jane, Classic Book of Children's Stories, Morte D'Arthur (Thomas Malory), Animal Farm (George Orwell), Wild Animals I Have Known(Ernest Thompson Seton), The Velveteen Rabbit (Margery Williams), a multitude of the Calvin and Hobbes books (Bill Watterson), There's A Hair In My Dirt!: A Worm's Story (Gary Larson), Encyclopedia Brown Shows the Way (Donald J. Sobol), Mister God, This Is Anna (Fynn), Little Grey Rabbit's Christmas and Little Grey Rabbit's Second Storybook(Allison Uttley/Margaret Tempest), all the Paddington Bear books (Michael Bond), Come Follow Me...(Guy Fujikawa), Bedtime Stories (Thornton W. Burgess). Phewf! I find that there are just a few others I have to mention even though I DON'T (yet) have them on the shelves: E.B. White's books, particularly The Trumpet of the Swan, everything by E. Nesbit, and the Frog and Toad series (particularly Frog and Toad Are Friends) by Arnold Lobel. Hopefully some of the books above will trigger a fond memory or two in someone reading this:).

-- Marianne Aldrich (marseillaise@hotmail.com), December 30, 1999.

I read two books as a child that made a big impression on me, but due to my youth I did not pay attention to things like authors and titles. I think they would have been published in the late 50s or early 60s. One was about a young girl growing up in the out back (Australia) who had a dingo named Ajax, a bull terrier named Spike, and a kangaroo that was rescued from boxing. The other book was inspired by the finding of two mummies, or preserved bodies of some kind, of a young man & a young woman in Great Britton (maybe Druid or something similar). The story was about the life they might have led and what led to their early deaths.

Did anyone else read these - and know their titles? Janet (and still reading!)

-- Janet Coe (janetcoe@sover.net), September 20, 2003.

The Guy Fujikawa nursery rhyme book (Come Follow Me)? Does anyone know where I might find a copy? Mine was lost in a move.

-- randy ullrich (randyullrich@paulhastings.com), May 12, 2004.