What's your favorite Children's Book and why?

Question

what about the book really stands out in your mind?

Answer 1

anything from Dr. Seuss. I'm 29 and he is still my favorite author.

Answer 2

I have a lot of favorates.

Diana wynne jones writes some books based on a character called Chrestomanci.He is a nine-life enchanter.Read the books in the correct order.The best of the lot is magicians of caprona.

Also try the Famous Five book series,R-mysterty series beginning with Rockingdown mystery,Malory Tower series,Secret Island by Enid Blyton.Its about kids have adventures and solve mysteries.

Artemis Fowl book series by Eoin Colfer is about teen age criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl who even plots to steal the gold from the fairies.

Answer 3

I have so many favorite children's books....it depends if you're looking at picture books....or chapter books.

I love Dr. Seuss--he seems a natural choice...I love Sneetches & Other Stories. I love the Sleep book--one of the best presents I ever received.

I love Umbrella by Taro Yashima.

And currently, I love Lauren Child's Charlie and Lola books...

Chapter books....

Winnie the Pooh (Milne) is great.
Charlie & The Chocolate Factory is great. :)

Memorable characters, and memorable writing (lines...) in other words how quotable is it.

Answer 4

It's not a picture book but it's aimed more towards children... "Jacob Have I Loved" (Katherine Paterson wrote it.) Not only does it talk about how life was around the time of World War II, it also deals with a big issue- sibling rivalry. Very beautiful writing- you can just see the emotion coming out of certain sentences.

Answer 5

Chato's Kitchen by Greg Soto. I live in So Cal, and it is a great ethnic book that hispanics can relate to. Teachers think it's too stereotypical, but that's what I like about it. How many picture books can little mexican's read that they can relate to, not just Dick and Jane? The characters in the book are animals, but the illustrations are fantastic. You really should read it.

Answer 6

Hand Hand Fingers Thumb!

Dum Ditty Dum Ditty Dum Dum Dum!

Or The B Book
Big Brown Bear, Blue Bull, Beautiful Baboon blowing bubbles, biking backwards, etc.

Answer 7

Oh, my all-time favorite would still have to be Tom Sawyer. I had a picture-book version before I was five. My sister gave me the real thing when I was eight or nine, and for several years I read it at least once a year. Eventually it led me to Huckleberry Finn, which is still the closest I think we've come to the Great American Novel. In the fifth grade, I was in the operetta (trading a blue bottle for a chance to white-wash the fence), and as a bearded adult I was an extra in the 1973 movie musical w/ Johnny Whitaker and Jodie Foster. I read it aloud to my own five children, and they enjoyed it as much as I had.

More important, it was this book by Mark Twain that made a place for realistic literature for children, stories about real boys instead of King Arthur's knights. It (with Little Women for girls) led the American breakaway from British children's literature. With Tom and Huck, and Jo Marsh, American kids began to see themselves in books written for them.

OK, I know, Tom eventually became the sorta stereotypical all-American (naughty) boy, and the book has some racist sterotypes that, however much we might like to ignore them, are very much a part of our past. Parents reading the book to their children these days will need to have open discussions of these cultural flaws.

As my wife and I read literally hundreds of books to our five children, we developed a whole library of favorites: the Narnia books, The Hobbit, the Little House Books, Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (which also has some unfortunate racial stereotypes), and many, many picture books--none of which had been available to me as a child when I spent all those years with Tom Sawyer. My own favorite from my children's years was the little-known Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban, interesting on one level to adults for its satire and irony and on another to children for its pure animal fantasy (a kind of existentialist Velveteen Rabbit). Then there was Watership Down and The Sword and the Stone and Robert Lawson's books and the Borrowers series. The list could go on and on . . . .

But you asked for my own personal favorite. It's gotta be Tom Sawyer. He still gets his fence white-washed the easy way (that's American enterprise); he still lies to Aunt Polly; he still tries to impress Becky Thatcher; he still becomes blood brothers with Huck, he still gets lost in the cave and shows up at his own funeral. Yep, he's still the barefoot boy we all wanted to be.

Answer 8

The Giving Tree

Answer 9

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

Kids LOVE it, and they can participate. They also get a shock when they get older and realize that the musical Cats is based on the book you read to them as children. I had that experience with my niece.

Answer 10

Guess How Much I Love You-by Sam McBratney

I like it because of the bunnies and because it shows not only the fact that parents have fewer limits on their imaginations than children, but also it shows the tenderness of a parent.

Answer 11

The Wind in the Willows... one of my favorite books as a child, I must have read it 20 times.