A contest about favorite books can hardly be narrowed down to a single title. In response to this challenge, I offer a series of favorites roughly in order of reading level.
Little Bear
Written by Else Holmelund Minarik and illustrated by Maurice Sendak
This book was already a decades-old classic when I was a child, and its simple short stories about a small anthropomorphic bear and his mother are charming tales with wonderful illustrations. I checked the library shelves today, and this book and the rest of the series were all checked out, so it still circulates well 65 years after it was first published.
Danny and the Dinosaur
Written and illustrated by Syd Hoff
This book is just a crazy roller-coaster of imaginative silliness. Not that it's a bad thing. Hoff's other books were also enjoyable romps, and I remember particularly enjoying Sammy the Seal as well. The art is a simple pen-and-ink style with a charm I find lacking in most newer books.
Go, Dog, Go!
Written and illustrated by P. D. Eastman
Dogs. Cars. Speed. Simple stories emphasizing concepts like opposites and colors. This is just a solid early reader, and Eastman's other books are also superb. He worked with Disney, Warner Brothers, and Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss) before creating his own picture books, so he learned from the best in the business. Check out Are You My Mother? and Big Dog...Little Dog, too.
A King for Brass Cobweb
Written by Dawn L. Watkins and illustrated by Holly Hannon
This is a longer story, and a rather blatant morality tale in a fable about the adventures of Chipmunk as he seeks a king for Brass Cobweb. If they're called a kingdom, they need a king, right? But a king needs to be brave, wise, and true to his friends. Only Chipmunk is willing to risk a perilous journey beyond his home to find such a person. However, each candidate he finds fails on one point or another. When he returns and tells his tale, the other residents elect him as king for displaying the very qualities he was seeking in others.
As an adult, I would now prefer to see a different ending. Something like,
"No," said Chipmunk, "I have no right to rule you. I am not wise enough to make laws which tell you how to live. I cannot be true to my friends if I must tax them and punish them for breaking laws I write. We lived without a king for so long no one remembers when there was one, and we all have the bravery to live that way still."
The Mouse and the Motorcycle
Written by Beverly Clearly and originally illustrated by Louis Darling
Honestly, it's hard to choose a single Beverly Cleary novel. They're all good. But I always enjoyed stories with anthropomorphic animals, and this was just a fun story about a mouse who can make a toy motorcycle move by making motorcycle noises. My copy was a later edition with a different illustrator, and if I still have it at all, it's packed in a box somewhere along with its sequels Runaway Ralph and Ralph S. Mouse.
Cleary's most famous character is probably Ramona Quimby, a precocious (and often downright obnoxious) little girl who originally started as a side character in her series about Henry Huggins. They're all good, and her standalone novels are also worth a look.
The Sugar Creek Gang series
Written by Paul Hutchens
This is a long series of 36 different stories about a group of country kids in the midwest. All but the narrator Bill have nicknames, ranging from the simple Big Jim and Little Jim to the more outlandish Dragonfly, Circus, and Poetry. While a couple books fall a bit short, most are solid adventure stories, especially the first couple dozen.
These books are overtly Christian in the way the characters rely on scripture for moral guidance and personal growth, but there was no supernatural deus ex machina plot contrivance or the kind of end-times plots that tended to clumsily invade Christian youth literature in the 90s and early 2000s. That's right, I'm especially looking at you, Left Behind: The Kids. The Spirit Flyer series started before I was born and holds up better if you want an allegory about spiritual warfare and the end times. For supernatural stories in general, I'd suggest Frank Peretti's Cooper Kids adventures.
Honorable Mentions
I was an avid reader, and this is hardly a complete list of favorites. The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis was an amazing leap into what stories could be,and I remember my father reading an illustrated copy of The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien long before I was old enough to read it to myself, creating a lifelong appreciation for Middle Earth. I also liked the Encyclopedia Brown mysteries. My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George was my favorite wilderness survival story, much more than Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. I read the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, of course, and I should also note illustrator Garth Williams also drew pictures for myriad books I read then, too. I'm skipping Dr. Seuss only because there's little point in just listing pretty much everything he ever wrote here.
What are your favorite books from your youth? Comment for $PIZZA!
