Currently I’m enjoying The Secrets of Dripping Fang Forest, the Peter Pan books by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, and The Spiderwick Chronicles. The Narnia books are always good, also. One of these days I’d like to read the Redwall series.
Really, it’s hard sometimes to tell if something is a “children’s book” or just a simply-written adult book.
Some books that I have that I’m pretty sure are aimed towards kids:
A scattering of Dr. Seuss books
Some short stories by Tolkien, including “Roverandom”
Enid Blyton’s “Adventure” series
A few of Boston’s “Green Knowe” books
Some stories by Heinlein aimed at kids in their early teens (as opposed to some of his other books!)
Isaac and Janet Asimov’s “Norby the Robot” series
Barrie’s “Peter Pan”
Milne’s “Winnie the Pooh” stories
Those are all good, as far as I’m concerned. I read some of the Oz books long ago, but don’t remember much about them. And I could never really get into the Narnia books, though maybe I’ll try again some time.
I haven’t really read many children’s books aside from those that I own.
“Where the wild things are” is my absolute favorite. I enjoy the Narnia books. I love “Johnny Tremain” What is unusal about me is that the good kids books are targeted for (in my opinion) the 9-13 yr olds and by that time my reading was way above that age group so I was already reading Anne Rice and Stephen King. I read several kids books with my kids that I did not read as a kid myself. I liked “The Hobbit” but not as well as the LOTR trilogy. I like the Alice in wonderland books and Charlie/Willy Wonka books. Omg I am such a book worm I can list so many that I read later and as a kid I would bore everyone with my list
I’m similar to you in that I was reading books that were ‘supposed to be’ for older readers.
We have quite a collection of children’s books (despite the fact we’re not planning on having kids) now.
Off the top of my head:
Many Enid Blytons
Peter Pan
Winnie the Pooh
The Narnia series
Many by Diana Wynne Jones
The Lemony Snicket series up to book 10 (obviously)
The Green Knowe series
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Owl Babies
The Adventures of Polo Bean (written by a teacher and students at the school where I work. It’s about a deaf polar bear.)
Five of the Curious George books
The Brambly Hedge series (I highly recommend these.)
A Bear in the Air
Guess How Much I Love You
9 Dr Seusses
The Tale of Mrs Tiggywinkle
Topsy and Tim Can Garden
Being a bookhound myself, I loved / still love all sorts of stuff.
Let’s See,
The Black Cauldron Series
The Sime/Gen Series
Heinlien (Almost any of them but esp. Have Spacesuit will travel)
Gates of Ivrel by C.J. Cherryh
Star Rebel Series by F. M. Busby (I actually had to wait for the later books to come out.)
The Belgariad by David Eddings (Same as above)
THe Sander War Series by Ingrid
and many,many more.
I used to alternate between world history, fables/legends, sci-fi, fantasy, and biography. I would spend several months in each catagory and then go off on some wild tangent into another genre.
Oh. And of course the John Norman “Gor” Books. (Given me by a friend of the family when I was 11 or 12)
