This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is about books we hope we love the second time around. Last year I posted about favorite books I’d like to re-read, and I’ve only gotten to one of them. So today I’m going to focus on favorite children’s books I want to re-read, and that I desperately hope hold all the magic they did when I was young.
- Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White – this is the book I think of every time I see a farm animal or an insect. It’s the book that makes me appreciate the artistry of spiders and apologize every time I hurt a bug.
- The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett – I loved this book so much growing up. I felt like Mary Lennox gave me permission to be imperfect, and exploring wild gardens on the moors was my fantasy life.
- Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers – I loved all the Mary Poppins books. Like my other favorite heroines, Mary does what she wants and says what she thinks. And the fantasy in these books is wonderful.
- James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl – I read most of Dahl’s books growing up, but this was my favorite.
- The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman — this is still one of the most terrifying children’s books I’ve read.
- The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald — I don’t remember a lot about this one, but I remember it feeling very adult and mysterious.
- The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling — I didn’t love the first one, but I’d love to re-read at least books 5 through 7.
- The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. Clever and fun, wonderful word play.
- The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton – if you grew up in the 80’s, this book shaped you. Tell me it didn’t.
- Blubber by Judy Blume (or really, any of her books – but Blubber was the first Mean Girls, and the way girls turned on each other in this book was very scary)
- Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary – there are so many great Cleary books, but I loved Ramona’s fascination with the girl with the boing-boing curls.
- Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh – Harriet is smart, tough, and mean. But I loved this book about a girl who loves to write and isn’t always nice (are you seeing a pattern here?).
I could have gone on and on with this one! But these are all books I’d really like to re-read. I’ve read some of these books more than once, but not recently.
Some children’s favorites I’ve re-read recently include Heidi, Betsy-Tacy, The Railway Children, and A Wrinkle in Time, and of course the Oz books.
Which children’s books would you like to re-read, and are you worried they might not live up to your expectations?
