Children’s Books
I was asked to nominate my favourite childrens books from my own childhood: TOO hard. This is as much as I remember…
- ALL the Swallows and Amazons Books – Swallows and Amazons, Swallowdale, Peter Duck, Winter Holiday, Coot Club, Pigeon Post, We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea, Secret Water, The Big Six , Missee Lee , The Picts and the Martyrs: Or Not Welcome At All , Great Northern? . Of those, I think We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea is one of the best sea stories and children’s books ever written.
- C.S. Lewis, the Narnia Books
- Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time, The Owl Service
- Alan Garner, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen
- JRR Tolkien. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (I got it for my 12th birthday)
- R.L. Stevenson, Kidnapped, Treasure Island
- John Christopher, The Tripods series and the Burning Lands Trilogy
- Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Books, Kim
- C.S.Forester (not really a children’s author, but I discovered Hornblower at 13): The Happy Return
- Hugh Lofting, Dr Dolittle
- Hendrik Van Loon, Van Loon’s Lives
Where are the Australians? This is so Anglo-centric! I read most of them – Thiele, Southall, etc, especially the wonderul To the Wild Sky.
With a mother who was a teacher and later a school librarian, I never lacked for reading. I seem to have read most of the Newberry Medal Winners until about 1973. I read most of the rest until about 1990 when I did my Dip.Ed. with Ken Watson. That was a wonderful year of reading a childrens’ novel every evening on the way home in the train.
Once I went to Boarding School, I tended to browse the shelves. I remember starting at A and reading anything interesting, and that was the end of Children’s Lit for me.
