TOO MANY TO COUNT by Eleri Grace

Oh, children’s books – one of my favorite topics! I’m supposed to pick just one? Yeah, I don’t think I can do that. Not only do I have my own childhood favorites, but now I have treasured memories of special books that I shared with each of my children. One of my Pandemic Projects was to reorganize my library shelves, clearing out some books to be sold on Amazon or donated. I must have spent an entire morning happily flipping through some of our favorite books on the children’s shelves. 

Here are our favorites for youngest readers: my personal favorites were Go Dog Go, Teddy Bear of Bumpkin Hollow, and The Jungle Book (Little Golden Book version). My daughter’s favorite board book was Going on a Bear Hunt, while my son preferred The Monster at the End of the Book.

 

In preschool and kindergarten, my daughter’s personal favorite was Paper Bag Princess,

which is an absolutely fabulous "girl power" book if you've not read it. My son, to my delight, loved not only fairy tales but also turned increasingly to the “fractured fairy tales” that take an unusual twist on the familiar stories. He had gone through a stage of only wanting to read picture books with construction vehicles, trains, cars, any sort of vehicle at all, so the fairy tale stage was a welcome change of pace. These are some of his favorites. We read the Steven Kellogg version of The Three Little Pigs so many times he could recite it in dramatic fashion from memory.

My favorite elementary school books included Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series. I’ve remained a steadfast fan of her work into adulthood – for many years, I researched her life with the intention of writing an adult biography. Though that biography project has been set aside (not to mention that Caroline Fraser’s recent Pulitzer-Prize winning biography probably undercuts the need for another one any time soon), Wilder’s books – and her late-blooming career as a novelist – continue to inspire me.

My daughter’s favorites from elementary school as depicted in this collage include a couple of choices that are a little on the dark side, but then, children’s literature has always had a dark vein. She had an ongoing love-hate relationship with Kathi Appelt’s The Underneath, re-reading it several times much to my surprise given how upset she was by the issues of animal cruelty.

My son and I enjoyed reading the Harry Potter series together when he was in 1^st and 2^nd grade, and he asked to listen to the audio versions on a continuous loop for several years after that. As a huge fan of Rowling’s classic series, I also read them with my daughter, though she was less enthusiastic. Even as a younger child, she was drawn to more realistic literature rather than fantasy (though I will note that she came to a later appreciation for both the books and films and now happily binges on the movies).

Here are my other favorite titles from later elementary school and into my junior high years. Where the Red Fern Grows was the first novel I cried over. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret was a staple for tween girls in the 1970s and remains a popular choice today (my daughter read it). Though we didn’t then have a Young Adult literature section in bookstores or libraries, The Outsiders was an early example of literature aimed at a teenage audience, and it too has stood the test of time. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this month's prompt and hope I've passed along some appealing suggestions for good children's books you might enjoy all on your own or with your children or grandchildren.  

Learn more about me and my writing on my website, and you can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. 

You can find my Clubmobile Girls books on Amazon