This week's Top Ten topic over at
The Broke and the Bookish is a little bit different. It's a rewind where you go back to the archives and choose a topic from previous ones. Since I came to Top Ten Tuesday late in the game, I selected the very first topic: Childhood Favorites. Here are ten books that helped make me the reader I am today.
The Nutshell Library by Maurice Sendak Perfect for little hands, the Nutshell library is made up of four tiny books: an alphabet book,
Alligators All Around; a counting book,
One Was Johnny, a book of months,
Chicken Soup with Rice; and my favorite,
Pierre, a Cautionary Tale, in which a little boy learns the importance of caring after he's gobbled up by a lion. Each book is marvelous in itself; together they make an extraordinary collection and are a must for every child's bookshelf.
The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack Poor Ping! The little duck finds himself all alone on the Yangyze River. How did he wind up in this predictiment? The last duck up the plank of the wise-eyed boat is always spanked and Ping doesn't want that happening to him. So the little duck hides and spends the night alone. The next day he's captured and almost ends up as a first course on a dinner menu. Luckily, a little boy frees him and Ping swims back to his family. Once again, he's tardy, but this time he marches up the plank and receives his spank. For whatever reason, being lost has always terrified me, so books about protagonists separated from their family who find the way back home resonate with me. This picture book was the first to do so.
The Tall Book of Make-Believe This collection of fantastical poems and stories won my heart as a child. I especially remember being enamored by "Bad Mousie" by Martha Ward Dudley. Rereading it today, I see how really strange it was. A misbehaving mouse lives with a little girl named Donnica and her mother. The mother is fed up with Mousie's bad ways and attempts to get rid of him. She sweeps him outside and she locks him out of the house. He comes back. She ties him in a box and tries to drown him. He escapes. She ties him to a fence post so that an owl will eat him. (I'm not making any of this up!!!) He gets away. But he still continues to misbehave. So finally the mother ties him to an old umbrella and the wind whisks him away. At last, lonely and afraid, Mousie vows to behave. All Mousie has done is the usual things that kids do, scribble on walls, track muddy prints through the house, etc. How does that compare to attempted murder? Anyhow, Donnica helps the little mouse learn to be good and the mother relents and allows him to stay. Now, really! What is the moral? Learn to behave or else mommy will kill you? Still I loved this story, especially the illustration of Mousie tied with a pretty bow to the fence, waiting for an owl to descend and tear out his guts.
Georgie by Robert Bright How this book delighted me as a child. It didn't have much of a story, but the illustrations were so wonderful. Georgie, a littl
Disappointingly enough, I did not quite make my goal of 200 books this year. I actually low-balled my goal, thinking I would probably read closer to 300 books, but knowing I was pregnant and all, I gave myself a whole bunch of wiggle room, however, I only got to approximately 190 books in 2008, not counting picture books or the few non-fiction children's titles I read.
These are the favorites in no particular order.
Picture Books
Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox
Peg Leg Peke by Brie Spangler
The Little Big Scary People by Emily Jenkins
Bats at the Library by Brian Lies
I Am Not Sleepy and I Will Not Go to Bed pop-up by Lauren Child
Two Bobbies by Kirby Larson and Mary Nethery
How I Learned Geography by Uri
If Animals Kissed Goodnight by Ann Whitford Paul
Little Hoot by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
Junior Readers
Houndsley and Catina and the Quiet Time by James Howe
Are You Ready to Play Outside? by Mo Willems
Middle Grade
Lizard Love by Wendy Townsend
Into the Wild by Sarah Beth Durst
The Hound of Rowan by Henry Neff
The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan
Clementine's Letter by Sarah Pennypacker
White Sands, Red Menace by Ellen Klages
Cicada Summer by Andrea Beaty
Waiting for Normal by Leslie Connor
The Leanin' Dog by K.A. Nuzum
Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass
Young Adult
Sister Wife by Shelley Hrdlitschka
The Disreputable History of Frankie-Landau Banks by E. Lockhart
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Opposite of Invisible by Liz Gallagher
Thaw by Monica Roe
Perfect You by Elizabeth Scott
The Last Exit to Normal by Michael Harmon
The Patron Saint of Butterflies by Cecelia Galante
The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson
Fact of Life #31 by Denise Vega
Adult
Saturdays with Stella by Allison Bittman
Where the River Ends by Charles Martin
Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult
The Dogs I've Met by Ken Foster
The Dogs Who Found Me by Ken Foster
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
I definitely chose my adult books wisely! Those are almost all the adult titles I read last year, minus only a few, and they were all great!
Now...for my goals of 2009. Here's the small list:
Read 250 books.
Review every book that I finish. I had a hard time with this in 2008 due to pure busyness.
Read more non-fiction, both children's and adults. I love to learn and these books really fulfill that love, I just need to focus more time on those.
Keep track of the picture books I read. I've never done this before, only recorded my favorites. I really want to see how many I read.
Do a monthly post on what I've completed that month, along with an overall yearly list of titles. I keep track of all the books I read, but in a very haphazard Word document. Definitely want to polish that up.
Finally, I want to make my blog pretty! I've gotten advice from a couple of blogger friends as to how they made their blogs look so nice, I just need to actually sit down and DO IT.
Here's to a great 2009 everyone, more reviews start tomorrow!
I've finished two more for the 888 challenge, though I'm still far, far behind. My own fault for putting so many long books on there! These will be short reviews, being that most of you have already read both books. No need for lots of repetition on my part!
Being a big fan of the Percy Jackson books created by Rick Riordan, I was very much up for the mythological adventure set up by Anne
Ursu in
The Shadow Thieves. When Charlotte's cousin
Zee comes to stay with her, all the way from England, she's hoping he might spice up her boring life with something interesting. When her and
Zee become involved in a plot of overthrow the Lord of the Underworld, Hades, Charlotte begins to regret her wish. She and
Zee must travel to the Underworld to stop a crazy "man" from ruining the world of the Dead, before it's too late.
The book is fast paced and cute, though it doesn't stand up against the Percy Jackson books. It is the first in a series and I will be searching for the others, as books such as these have caught my attention and I have found I very much enjoy.
The Secret Garden by Frances
Hodson Burnett, is a much loved favorite of so many and I'm book I'm sure all of you has read a time or two. This is probably my third time reading the book, but I enjoyed it just as much as if it were the first time I have read it.
When spoiled Mary is forced to move from her home in India after her parents die to an old country mansion in England, she is less than thrilled. She is a wretched child to her nurses and believes she should have everything handed to her on a silver platter, until she discovers a secret garden on the grounds. Mary's whole world begins to change, very much for the better. She becomes healthy, spending long days in the fresh air and sunshine and makes a couple of friends, which increase her social skills. Mary begins to find not only herself, but helps her cousin Colin become a better boy as well, not to mention her withdrawn Uncle.
The garden seems to hold all the magic of this story, though I love the characters Burnett creates. My only complaint about this book now, as it probably was years ago when I first read it, is the difficulty of reading a Yorkshire accent that Mary's nurse has. I swear it took me five minutes to read a page when that woman was talking! Maybe I just need to increase my knowledge of different dialects.
Fun memories! I love your picks.
I heard "Pierre" so much as a child that I can still quote the whole book to this day, much to my children's amusement and dismay! My children have stopped saying "I don't care" because everytime they do I launch into "One morning when Pierre climbed out of bed, his mother said..." They roll their eyes and groan, "OK, I care, I care!"
I remember that Ping book! The art fascinated me as a kid: it was my first time seeing another part of the world in art.
I haven't heard of a lot of these, but who doesn't love Charlotte's Web?!
I love your blog's mission statement posted at the top. And I agree.
Great list of childhood favorites. Love this meme.
I loved Charlotte's Webb and how could I forget the Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe? I have been meaning to re-read the Narnia series but never seem to get round to it.
A Wrinkle in Time was my favorite book for many. many years. Ahh...Happy memories.
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A Wrinkle in Time is one of my childhood favorites too. Charlotte's Web is wonderful as well, but I did not read that one until I was in college.
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I first read A Wrinkle in Time when I was in fifth grade and I think I've read it (and the other books in the quartet) at least four times over since then. It made such an impression on me and jumpstarted my love of dystopian novels.
In fact, I actually chose IT as one of my all-time favorite villains for my Top Ten Tuesday list this week.
http://gabrielreads.blogspot.com/2011/04/top-ten-tuesday-rewind.html
Nice list!!! I wish I read more when I was a kid :)
Here's mine:
http://peskypiksipesternomi.blogspot.com/2011/04/top-ten-tuesday-1.html
I'm surprised by how many of these I was unfamiliar with. For my list I would add some Nancy Drew (I couldn't get enough of them), Wind in the Willows and Peter Pan.