Thursday Thirteen Children's Books

13 Books I loved as a Kid

1) The Ring O Bells Mystery Enid Blyton

In my opinion this is her best ever book. It's about 4 kids (and their dog of course) who go to stay in a village called Ring O Bells to recover from flu (those Enid blyton kids got a lot of flu and their parents were always sending them away to convalesce!). Basically they have an adventure that involves a manor house, an old cottage with a well and a secret passage. Oh yes and all with the help of their friend Barney and his monkey Miranda!

2) The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings - J R R Tolkien

Hard to separate these two out so I decided not to. My mum read these books to me and I have read them to my son too and they are still just as fresh and exciting as ever.

3) The Digginest Dog - Al Perkins

A sad tale with a happy ending. A dog is rescued from a pet store but he doesn't know how to dig and his boy is disappointed in him. Eventually he learns but he gets carried away and digs up the whole town.....

4) Stig of the Dump - Clive King

I absolutely loved this book. It's about a boy who finds a kind of cave boy living in a rubbish dump (one of those dumps in a big pit) and their subsequent adventures. This is a book to captivate your imagination. I wanted to be Stig!

5) Heartease - Peter Dickinson

Peter Dickinson's books are great. This is about the world as we know it gone mad, evryone has turned against machines. The cities have been abandonned and many people have fled to France. Those that are left live in a kind of medievel society where if they suspect you of having any thing top do with machines they stone you to death. The children in the story know this to be wrong and they help one such witch who has been left for dead and help him escape to the coast where they fix a tug boat. Will they make it in time or will they be caught - a very exciting story that makes you think. This trilogy was made into a series for children's tv called "The Changes".

6) The Naughtiest Girl in the School - Enid Blyton

This is about a grumpy girl called Elizabeth and what happens to her when she goes to boarding school. I must have read this book twenty times when I was a child. I identified with the main character because she was always scruffy and getting into trouble without trying.

7) The Enchanted Wood - Enid Blyton

Yes I was a big Enid Blyton fan. She was like the J K Rowling of the 60s and 70s. Easy to read, hooks you in but not too challenging. She did have some great ideas though and when I was very young I loved this book. Some children find a tree in a wood that is massive. Lots of differnent odd charcters have their homes in its trunk : Moon Face, Saucepan Man, Silky the Fairy. The top of the tree pokes up through a cloud and every day a different world is at the top. Brilliant.

8) Princess Anne - Author unknown

This was a great book that I got in a jumble sale when I was abot 10. It was about a lonely girl called Anne who discovers a secret door in her house through to the house next door where she meets another girl. I wish that I could remember who wrote it.

9) The Quangle Wangle's Hat - Edward Lear, Illustrated by Helen Oxenbury

This is a great poem about the Quangle Wangle Quee who lives on top of the Crumpety Tree and invites lots of animals and strange creatures to live on his hat and keep him company. The copy I have has fantastic illustrations by Helen Oxenbury.

10) Are you my Mother? - P D Eastman

Sad story of a baby bird who comes out of the egg to find his mother is not there. He falls out of the nest and sets off on a quest to look for her. The bit that always got me was when he asks a crane (the kind used on building sites) whether it is his mother and the cranes says snort. For those of you who are worried he does find his mum in the end!

11) The King, The Mice and the Cheese - Nancy Gurney

The king gets fed up with the mice stealing his cheese and brings in some cats to get rid of them, but this only makes things worse! The king runs through a whole gamut of animals - dogs, lions, and finally elephants and of course he ends up inviting the mice back again! Fab and funny.

12) One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish - Dr Seuss

It was a close call between this one and "Green Eggs and Ham". This one one out because of the great illustrations. The thing in the bottle in the park in the dark used to really spook me!

13) Abandonned - Unknown Author

Very sad novel about a kitten whose owners abandon him on Dartmoor and what happens to him. I can't remember what happens at the end but I do remember that the book made me cry.