Top Ten Tuesday: Childhood Favourites

Posted on by whatcathyreadnext

Top Ten Tuesday new

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

  • Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want.
  • Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.
  • Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists. Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

This week’s topic is Childhood Favourites. My list includes authors whose books I remember enjoying as a child and authors whose books I read during my teenage years that shaped my interest in the genres I love today, notably historical fiction. I’m conscious I’m showing my age with pretty much all of these!

  1. Dr. Seuss – Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat
  2. Beatrix Potter – The Tales of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, Mr. Jeremy Fisher and Jemima Puddle-Duck amongst other wonderful characters
  3. Roger Hargreaves – The Mister Men series, including personal favourites Mr. Messy and Mr. Tickle
  4. Michael Bond – The Paddington series, starting with A Bear Called Paddington
  5. Enid Blyton – The Famous Five series, such as Five Go To Treasure Island, and the Mallory Towers series
  6. Arthur Ransome – Titles such as Swallows & Amazons, Pigeon Post and We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea (complete with the distinctly non-PC advice: ‘Better drowned than duffers, if not duffers won’t drown’)
  7. Willard Price – The ‘Hal and Roger Hunt Adventures’ series such as South Sea Adventure, Amazon Adventure
  8. Barbara Willard – ‘The Mantlemass Chronicles’ series including The Iron Lily and Harrow and Harvest
  9. Geoffrey Trease – Bows Against the Barons, a retelling of the legend of Robin Hood
  10. Rosemary Sutcliff – Her Roman Britain trilogy starting with The Eagle of the Ninth

11 thoughts on “Top Ten Tuesday: Childhood Favourites”

  3. I loved numbers 2,3,4,5 & 6, these are all ones I have read. If I were to add to those I would probably choose The Magician’s Nephew – CS Lewis, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea – Jules Verne and The Wombles by Elizabeth Beresford. I love reading posts like this as they bring back some fab reading memories xx

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    1. I never read The Wombles books but I remember very well the TV series and I’m pretty sure my sister and I had at least one record of the songs written by Mike Batt. Have you read Bookworm by Lucy Mangan? It’s a lovely book about her childhood reading.

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  5. I loved the Mantlemass Chronicles; in fact I might try and look for copies and re-read them. As for Swallows and Amazons, the first time I stepped into a sailing dinghy I was convinced I knew how to sail it simply because of what I’d learnt from those books; I was right too!

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    1. Yes, compiling my list and looking at my copies did make me think about reading them again. I’m convinced they must have played a big part in my love of historical fiction.

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  6. Funny thing… I don’t remember reading Seuss when I was little, only to kids I babysat for and my own kids. In fact, I don’t think I read many books that were supposed to be for children at all, and almost no series. I mean, I know I read ONE Nancy Drew book, and ONE Borrowers book, but that’s about it (I guess I didn’t like them enough to read more of them). Oh, I did read all the Wizard of Oz books. But I remember reading Little Women when I was pretty young, and I know I read Jane Eyre in like 2nd grade, because of an accident I had and I clearly remember my sister giving it to me to read while I was recovering.

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