My two favourites from way back are
Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling

and
Struwwelpeter by Dr Heinrich Hoffman -i used to have nightmares about some of the stories here in particular the story of little suck a thumb -the illustrations were so creepy and still feel uneasy today !!

Winnie-the-Pooh (or Winnie ille Pu as it becomes) is superb in Latin:

"Salve, Urse Pu," dixit maestus Ior. "Si mane bonum est," dixit.  "Quod in dubium voco," dixit.

Arthur Ransome was a great favourite of my boyhood but doesn't wear especially well, and doesn't appear to have anything to say to modern children.  A moment of revelation was re-reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, on the point of giving it to my daughter when she was about eight or nine, and suddenly finding the whole thing utterly repellent, despite having read all the Narnia books as a child.

Ah, how could I have forgotten these gems! I only used them in Literacy last autumn, when the children had a go at writing their own Just So tales.


A delightful story...real lump in the throat stuff at the end.  


I met Ian Serraillier's daughter several times when my Headteacher and I were producing a musical version of the story for a school production. I wrote the script whilst he and a friend wrote the songs. She is a charming lady and came into school to talk to the children and showed them the typewriter he used, plus the scraps of paper he would scribble ideas down onto whilst he was out walking the countryside. She was most encouraging of our work and came along to the opening performance!


I had similar feelings reading it to my class a couple of years ago. I find you are beaten over the head, somewhat, with the Christian allegory and Lewis' style hasn't dated well, I'm afraid.

Many favourites already mentioned, but as a youngster I was besotted with the Rev. Awdry's railway books: what's been done to them is almost as bad as the Disneyfication of A. A. Milne. Emil and the Detectives was one of the first books we read at school, and The Silver Sword and Heidi were influenced by the fact that they were early BBC serials, circa 1956-7: the former including Melvyn Hayes (later Gloria in It Ain't Half Hot Mum) and Fraser Hines (later Jamie in Doctor Who, and even later Joe Sugden in Emmerdale Farm). The infant Ron was apparently distraught at the end of the final episode of Heidi, begging his mother in floods of tears to make them come back - a story with which the family was regaled regularly for many years. Another book I read very early on was T. H. White's The Sword in the Stone: that was another Disneyfication that infuriated me: we had a Thurber anthology which made me laugh like a drain as did Stephen Leacock's Nonsense Novels . I wasn't very keen on the Famous Five or Secret Seven stories but there was another Blyton series - each of which had 'of Adventure' in the title as in Island of Adventure which seemed rather less twee than the others, and which I did read when ever I could find them.

I loved Greek and Norse mythology, and the early Puffin retellings (by Roger Lancelyn Green IIRC) were great favourites.

No Just Sos or Wind in the Willows chez Dough, either. Although I had the Milne poetry books, I didn't come across the stories until staying at a cousin's house aged about eight or nine. And I was a teenager before I saw the Narnia books - by which time I'd already read The Lord of the Rings.

It's odd what things remain in your mind. I still describe things as "fusty musty dusty!" Most people, having no idea who Kiki the parrot was, think it's a little odd 

I saw The Hobbit in the local children's library when I was c8, took it out and read it in a week.  I read it aloud to my sister before her bedtime, (she later told me she suffered this fraternal attention without literary appreciation.)  So I told my parents I wanted Lord of the Rings for Christmas as it was advertised on the dust cover of The Hobbit.  I read The Lord of the Rings every year until I went to secondary school, but not since.

I also asked for Christmas Cynthia Hartnett's The Wool Pack a historical children's story set in C15 Burford

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynthia_Harnett

and insisted the family visited Burford as a result.

Hmm, I've really had to think about this. Despite being something of a bookworm as a child (still am really), I can only seem to recall a few. So, in no particular order

Prince Prigio and Prince Ricardo by Andrew Laing
The 'Katy' books
The Moomins (of course!) - 'Comet in Moominland' was my favourite
The Once and Future King
At the back of the North Wind
Cider with Rosie
A Tale of Two Cities
The Secret Garden
The Malory Towers books
The Secret Seven were preferred to The Famous Five

Am I allowed The Happy Prince, even though it's a short story?

Posts by Ron and PW reminded me that I was a big fan of the Greek and Norse legends.

I can also remember a book that I kept getting out of the library. It was about a wee crab called Angus who somehow got lost and ended up being displayed in a tank in a fishmongers I think it all ended happily for him though ...  I can still see that cover.

I would include The Wind in the Willows but I still harbour a very strong dislike for the ghastly Toad. That character rather tainted the whole book for me

The thing that strikes me now is that with many of the childrens books mentioned by myself and others, it was assumed that children would have at least some knowledge of Latin. Gosh, times change!