Children's books I liked

[Note:  this subject is one that I contributed.]

When I was a kid we borrowed a lot of children's books from the library.  I read a lot of Dr. Seuss. (I actually preferred The Cat in the Hat Comes Back to the original!)  I also liked Munro Leaf's Wee Gillis, a story about a Scottish boy in a kilt.

When I was nine I started reading the Tom Swift Jr. science fiction books, but my mother thought they were too exciting for me, so I stopped reading them and didn't resume till I was thirteen. (That was the first place where I read of drone aircraft!) It was at thirteen that I started reading Hardy Boys mysteries, which I read enthusiastically for almost two years.

Some of these children's books that I read while young I've reread as an adult and appreciated more fully.  One example is Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books, which are way better than the shameless TV show!  Another is L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables and its sequels.

Later I got into longer books.  I read Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and Kidnapped, Charles Dickens' David Copperfield and Oliver Twist, and Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and The Prince and the Pauper.  I heard of Lord of the Rings, but thought it was about circuses!

I've never quite stopped reading children's books.  I read Michael Ende's wonderful The Neverending Story at twenty-three.  I've read quite a few of Roald Dahl's books, largely as an adult.  I recently read C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but I hated it!  Moralistic nonsense from start to finish.