books I read as a kid and liked

[juldea]

A mention by some fellow net-chatters of the book/movie Tuck Everlasting led me to compile this list, probably not at all complete but still gives a good idea...

Books I read as a kid and liked enough that I still remember them now.
Tuck Everlasting
Bridge to Terabithia
The Girl with the Silver Eyes
Summer of My German Soldier
Where the Red Fern Grows
The Witches
Hatchet
Tiger Eyes
The Little Gymnast

...more as they come to me...

Comments

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

Girl with the Silver Eyes... I'd forgotten about that one.

The Little House books
Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes
Sign of the Beaver

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Never heard of the last two... never read the first.

I LOVED Girl with the Silver Eyes.

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes is about a little girl who was in Hiroshima when they dropped the atomic bomb. Nine years later she got leukemia from the radiation, and she tried to fold 1000 paper cranes so the gods would grant her wish to be healthy again. She died before she could finish. (I still have my copy of this)

Sign of the Beaver is about a kid who is left to hold the homestead in colonial Maine while his father goes back (to Boston maybe?) to get the kid's mother and gets stuck for the winter. So the kid stuck, alone for the winter, except for the handy neighborhood indians that help him out. It's been a while since I read it...

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Oh man, Sadako sounds definitely like a cry-at-the-end book.

Sign of the Beaver reminds me of Hatchet.

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

I believe Sadako was in fact, the first book to make me cry that I can remember.

[tpau]

sadko is a real story too. ther ei sa statue to her somehwere. reading about her was all the rage in russia, it was in our reading textbook and everything. all about hte evil of americans
(ok, no not really, but it BECAME all abou hte evil of the americans onceit got itno our reading textbooks) :)

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

I know that... the statue is in the Hiroshima Peace Park in Japan.

thinking about the decision of using the bomb is an interesting excercize in "what if." I always come out of it thinking "I would not have wanted to be anywhere near Truman's shoes during that."

[tpau]

indeed. it is amusing to me to look at it in retrospect and pl;ay "spot the propoganda" in my recolections :)

[tpau]

mm, i read the little gymnast, and i loved the summer of my german sodier.

let me think, these are all form when i was 12 and got here:

starring sally j freidman as herself
devil's arithmetic
all american girls books
braiden's brides (one of "those" novels, highly educational)
exodus



what i read when i was acutall young:
war and piece
3 musketeers
queen margot
little savages
tom sawyer
uncle tom's cabin
wizard of oz
pinnochio
everythign by andersen
everything by perault
castaways (verne book)
moomintroll books
mary poppins
pippy longstoking
my family and other animals
3 in a boat, not counting the dog
solaris

hmm... iread odd things as a kid

[juldea.livejournal.com]

I have not heard of many of your books. I should rectify this - I LOVE children's literature, as long as it is in fact literature. Heh. And I love actual literature too, so many of those books you read that were not really children's I should read too. ;)

[crimson5.livejournal.com]

Hmm, Summer of My German Soldier and Where the Red Fern Grows were both required reading for me in school. Didn't really care for Summer, but I remember enjoying Red Fern. Given how much I read during those years, I'm amazed that out of the books listed, those are the only ones I've read.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Indeed - Hatchet was a big "boys should read this" book as far as I remember. You might even enjoy it now, if you want to give it a check. :)

Summer was WONDERFUL! Was it too much about being a girl for you? ;)

[crimson5.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I think it was more a complete lack of relating to the main character. Male, and while I had a half-sister, I might as well have been an only child during this time period. Just about any of the issues the main character was dealing with, were not facets of my life. Add in the fact that it was required reading, and I was generally reading 3-4 books a week of my choice.... So does anyone remember reading "Island of Blue Dolphins"? (I think that was the title) Or, "The Cheese Stands Alone". (Also think thats the correct title)

[anitra.livejournal.com]

Island of the Blue Dolphins is an AWESOME book.

Man, if I started to make a list like juldea's, I'd be going all day... Like you, I read a half-dozen books every week when I was growing up. My mom even subscribed me to one of those kids' book clubs - Scholastic, maybe? - which is where I found lots of interesting things I wouldn't have picked up on my own - like Island of the Blue Dolphins.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Heh, I blew through books as well, but I seem to have a horrible memory for such things as book titles and character names and plots. The ones I REMEMBER were the ones that made a real impact.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

I remember Island of the Blue Dolphins, yep, but I think I only read it once. Hrm.

[chubbytroll.livejournal.com]

I loved the first 2 you listed.  I've never heard of The Girl with the Silver Eyes.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

I don't think it was very popular at all, but I loved it. It was about a girl with psychic powers!

[chubbytroll.livejournal.com]

Sounds like something I would've enjoyed.

[crimson5.livejournal.com]

Oh, was this the one where she had telekinesis, and could speak to animals, namely the lady next door's cat?

[juldea.livejournal.com]

*thinks* I don't remember anything about talking to animals. She did show some telekinesis some, though. And there were four other kids she found, like her, and they could communicate telepathically.

[zenandtheart.livejournal.com]

Did you ever read Danny, Champion of the Wofld by Roald Dahl? Best children's book ever, imo:)

[juldea.livejournal.com]

No, I was a big Dahl fan but never read that one! Perhaps I should pick it up. ;)

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

You want I should put it on the loan stack? I went through a big Dahl phase when I was a kid, and bought everything he had written. OTOH, he later went and wrote a bunch more that I never got around to. Only read The Witches last year, for instance...

[juldea.livejournal.com]

The Witches was my Favorite Book Ever for a while in my youth. ;) And yes, add it to the stack! Although I still haven't gotten to year 2 (I almost said "season 2!") of the Invisibles.

[zenandtheart.livejournal.com]

*definitely* do.. it's magical. A beautiful read:).

[flyingindie.livejournal.com]

I think I read every R.L. Stine, Beverly Cleary, Dr. Seuss, Bernstein Bears, Anne of Green Gables, and Boxcar Children book ever written when I was a kid.

I also loved sci-fi books like The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm. I still love that book. It's about three mutant detectives in Zimbabwe in the year 2194.

The Giver also had a big impact on me. I think of it as 1984 for middle-schoolers.

I never read Tuck Everlasting because a friend of mine read it and described it to me as the saddest book of all time.

Now I'm addicted to Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket. :-)

[crimson5.livejournal.com]

July 16th can't come fast enough...

[flyingindie.livejournal.com]

I know! But I always get scared before a new one comes out. I get scared that Rowling will pull a George Lucas on us and suddenly start sucking.

[crimson5.livejournal.com]

Seem feeling here. While book 5 was a pretty damned good book, it was also rather dark and angsty compared to her former writing. I know alot of it was intentional, but it makes me wonder about book 6. When I finished book 5, I remember feeling like she was losing things a bit. Details about Ron and Hermie were left out( thier future intentions were ignored, not even a comment) and it just seemed that the creativity that was in former books was missing. Ideas like Bernie Bott's Beans etc. I guess original ideas and creative magic is hard to come up with consistently across 7 books. Although I did love the swamp :) Still, even if the last 2 books suck, the overall series has made it very worthwhile reading.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket are awesome :)

Hmmm, R.L. Stine. Did he do the original I Know What You Did Last Summer?

[flyingindie.livejournal.com]

No, Lois Duncan wrote that one.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Ah. I remember reading that one. And a couple other books like it...

[ezrarashkae.livejournal.com]

Oh! Oh! My mom knows the lady that wrote Tuck Everlasting.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

neat!

[princesscurly.livejournal.com]

OMG!!! I <3 you!!!

I loved Tuck Everlasting, The Girl with Silver Eyes, and I JUST found the copy of The Little Gymnast when I was going through Kaitlyn's bookshelf (she won't read it). OMG!!! <3

[juldea.livejournal.com]

!!!!! You should send me the copy. >_>

[idonotlikepeas]

The Girl with the Silver Eyes? Holy crap. I thought I was the only one that ever read that.

How about the Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander?

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Read 'em in high school; had never heard of them before then. Own them now, of course. High school reads don't count for this list, though. :)

[flyingindie.livejournal.com]

I forgot about The Secret Garden! I loved that one, too. I always forget it was a book because I had both versions of the movie and watched them a lot. (I read the book over and over so my mom bought me the movies.)