Today’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl is a little open ended, inviting us to consider books for our younger selves. However, what I want at the end of a long weekend is simple and concrete (although I kept having to expand my parameters to get to 10, so I failed). Here, then, are ten books that were published before I left middle school that I liked as an adult and probably would have loved as a kid:
- The Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper: Adolescent and teen me would have loved the moodiness of this series.
- The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin: This caper is great for any age, but I would have loved it when I was in elementary school.
- Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson: I read Paterson’s teen novels and come up with no reason for why I skipped this one, but I had a penchant for melodramatic death novels as a kid.
- The Neverending Story by Michael Ende: I liked the movie a lot.
- The Diddakoi by Rumer Godden: I haven’t read this novel about a Romani orphan with a 21st-century lens and don’t remember enough about it to know whether it would be considered offensive by today’s standards. But when I read it in 2001, I loved it and know my younger self would have as well. (I enjoyed several of her doll books as a kid.)
- The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster with illustrations by Jules Feiffer: I discovered this fantasy novel when I was in college, skivving off from class in the stacks of children’s books housed between my classroom door and the restroom.
- From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg: This is another book I didn’t discover until college, but this time thanks to my friend Rebecca.
- The Tales of Magic series by Edward Eager: My bff, Karen, gave me the first few novels of this series when I moved away to D.C.
- The Swallows and the Amazons series by Arthur Ransome: This is a series that just didn’t get the attention in the U.S. that it should have (or maybe it had fallen out of favor, although I don’t see them in used bookstores like I would expect to if that had been the case) until after the first couple Harry Potter books were published.
- Matilda by Roald Dahl: Charlie made his rounds in my sixth-grade class, but this book-loving, butt-kicking girl arrived just a little too late for us.
How about you? Are there books that were around when you were a kid that you didn’t get to until years later?
Matilda was one of my favourites when I was a kid. My sister liked The Swallows and Amazons books but for some reason, I didn’t want to read them and I’m not really sure why!
My TTT: https://jjbookblog.wordpress.com/2020/09/08/top-ten-tuesday-280/
I’ve never seen The Never-ending Story! That sound change someday. 🙂
My post .
Comment by Lydia 09.08.20 @ 9:19 amI loved Bridge to Taribitha as a kid. Such a great book. I’m glad you got to read it!
Comment by Deanna @ A Novel Glimpse 09.08.20 @ 11:09 amI still haven’t managed to read Matilda, though I think I would have loved it as a kid. I did read some of the Dark is Rising books as a kid, but I don’t think I actually read all of them until I was in college.
My TTT.
Comment by Nicole @ BookWyrm Knits 09.08.20 @ 11:30 amsure. Friend read the Hobbit. I never did. Friends read Zen and the art of motorcycle racing. I started that one. Are you there God it is me Margaret was a thriller! hahah
Comment by kathy b 09.08.20 @ 12:13 pmI still haven’t read The Dark is Rising series, but I really shouldn’t put it off any longer!
Lauren @ Always Me
Comment by Lauren @ Always Me 09.08.20 @ 9:17 pmI agree with your choices, even the ones I haven’t read yet, because they sound like books I’d like to have read. I’ll add “Pollyanna” by Eleanor H. Porter, “Caddie Woodlawn” by Carol Ryrie Brink, “The Egypt Game” by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, “Magic Elizabeth” by Norma Kassirer, and “The Worry Week” by Anne Lindbergh.
Comment by Karen 09.10.20 @ 11:59 am