Capital Kiwi's post about growing up on different books (in the Green Eggs and Spam thread) suddenly makes me want to ask:

What books DID y'all y'all grow up on? favourite childhood reading experiences....

For me, I have fond memories of my father reading Rudyard Kipling to me (particularly The Just-So Stories and The Jungle Book)....I read Cat in the Hat and other Seuss books too, but also books by Molly Brett (British), and the Mousekin books (one where he winds up sort of hibernating in a pumpkin, I seem to recall)....and of C.S. Lewis's Narnia books....and Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books....and Thornton W. Burgess (Green Forest series, etc), and Lucy M. Boston (The House at Green Knowe books), Monica Dickens (The House at World's End books), John D. Fitzgerald (The Great Brain series), Walter Farley (The Black Stallion and all the other books in the series), Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, Elyne Mitchell's Silver Brumby series, the Albert Payson Terhune "Lad" books, Jim Kjelgaard's "Red" books, and OF COURSE....L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series (couldn't call myself Canadian, eh, without them!).....And when I got older I devoured EVERYTHING by James Herriot and Gerald Durrell. If I were growing up now (maybe I sort of am! :o) I'd be reading all those, AND J.K. Rowling's wonderful Harry Potter books.

Actually I'm now volunteering at a local school once a week, as a Reading Buddy, helping a little girl who's having trouble learning to read. It's frustrating because I remember learning to read - and there were some very simple books back then (don't I sound like I'm 90! "when I was a girl...."), with big type and big pictures and simple sentences - not just the Dick and Jane variety, because I remember most vividly one about an airplane. The frustration lies in the fact that I can't seem to find any such very simple books anymore. All the books I'm supposed to help her with have WAY too much type - it's discouraging for us both.....

But it does bring back fond memories, for me, of learning to read and discovering that freedom - and then years and years of reading under the covers by flashlight after my parents thought I was asleep, and reading in lessons I found boring, and reading at recess, reading reading reading....What wonderful worlds!

Would love to hear about other people's fave childhood books and memories of early reading experiences....