Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Top 10 Books From My Childhood (or Teen Years) That I Would Love To Revisit. Putting together this list is a little bit harder than I’d first thought. Since it’s all about books that I want to re-read, I’m going to rule out books that I’ve already revisited with my own kids… making my brain work a bit harder to remember my childhood favorites!
Books I loved as a kid/tween/teen — and which I should surely revisit one of these days:
1) Tall and Proud by Vian Smith: A girl, a horse, polio, bad guys, a dramatic rescue… is this book really as amazing as I remember it? Or did it just perfectly suit 11-year-old me at the time?
2) Light a Single Candle by Beverly Butler: Anyone else remember this book about a 14-year-old girl losing her eyesight, learning Braille, and getting a seeing eye dog? In my tween mind, this was the best thing ever.
3) Merry Rose and Christmas-Tree June by Doris Orgel: It took me years as an adult to track down a copy of this childhood favorite about a girl separated from her beloved dolls. I remember this book as being awesome. I did not remember that the illustrations are by Edward Gorey!
4) Mustang, Wild Spirit of the West by Marguerite Henry: Despite never taking a single riding lesson, I went through the standard-issue young girl horse phase, as evidenced by my obsessive reading of the works of Marguerite Henry. I loved them all, but Mustang, Wild Spirit of the West was my absolute favorite:
5) The works of Judy Blume, especially Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and Deenie. Judy Blume was THE way to learn about bras, boys, periods, and scoliosis.
6) The All-of-a-Kind Family books by Sydney Taylor: I absolutely wanted to be one of the girls in this large, rambunctious family. Somehow, in the books, living in a cramped apartment on the Lower East Side of New York in the early 1900s sounded so glamorous!
7) Lisa, Bright and Dark by John Neufeld: Another tween/early teen obsession: Reading about teens with all sorts of physical and mental illnesses. I remember thinking this one was SO GOOD, but maybe it was just because of the main character’s name…
8) Knight’s Castle by Edward Eager: I had no idea what this book was called for many, many years. I just remember loving a story about a group of kids who kept ending up inside the imaginary worlds that they set up in their playroom each night. Finally finding this book as an adult was a major achievement!
9) The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare: I’d love to read this one again! I remember utterly loving it.
10) And finally, two childhood classics that sparked fantasies and countless short stories focused on running away from home to exciting destinations: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg and My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George.
Which childhood (or tween/teen) favorites would you most like to revisit?
Share your links, and I’ll come check out your top 10!
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