my top ten
Posted: February 1, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized 14 Comments »Seeing as I was threatened with violence if I did not reveal, I am doing so promptly as the polls closed.
1. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
2. Holes by Louis Sachar
3. Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
4. The Trolls by Polly Horvath
5. Dealing with Dragons by Patricia Wrede
6. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
7. No Flying in the House by Betty Brock
8. Anastasia Krupnik by Lois Lowry
9. Mandy by Julie Edwards
10. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Books That Were in the Running and Would Potentially Make My Top 20 or 30
Blubber or Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume
Love That Dog by Sharon Creech
Island of the Aunts or Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson
Homeless Bird by Gloria Whelan
Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary
Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
Jennifer, Hecate, MacBeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth by E.L. Konigsburg
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex
(Golden Compass) by Philip Pullman (IS my number 2 or 3 favorite book but is really considered more YA so I didn't include – may have been a mistake, as if enough include it in their list, it might have gone on)
#9 is the doppelest.
The little people garage stays here. Love That Dog would have made my top ten.
I love the book Mandy too! I swear, I still kind of thought I was the only person on the planet who has ever read it until I saw your list…..
I need to get myself a library card and investigate some of these. I can’t get over how cute the cover art is for No Flying in the House.
you reminded me of many books that I had also loved, but forgotten.
I also read #10 at 7 years old! (Though not 27 times in a row.) Plus a great deal more of Blume’s oeuvre. I still blame that unhappy accident of advanced decoding skills for years and years of misconceptions….
It was a hard call but I decided that technically it was more like poetry and went with her other one. But she was the one person I wanted to break my “only one book per author” rule for.
Do you ever get kids to read it? I rarely do. Haven’t found the right hook yet, I guess.
That is lovely – I love discovering that others had a similar secret book as a kid. It’s happened twice in real life (#10, and a YA book called As the Waltz Was Ending which blogger Istanbul’s Stranger had read as a kid, too).
I searched to find the cover art that I remembered for each one. I wonder if libraries still have that one. We have an updated and far less cute version here, sadly.
These books or other ones? Do tell.
More on misconceptions, please…
Wow. The only thing your list and mine have in common is your #1! And I haven’t read (or even heard of) many of your others. Will have to go off to the library and find some!
As though you needed to reaffirm why I love you.
And I was all, “Hey, where’s ‘As The Waltz Was Ending’,” but then you mentioned it in the comments so we’re cool.
Ender’s really into a book right now that I’m getting a big soft spot for called “I Love You, Stinky Face.” It’s a little bit like “The Runaway Bunny” but more, what, modern? With dinosaurs and stuff?
I still adore Anastasia. And anything by Lois Lowry. But it’s Anastasia I still think about. And another character called Enid in another book of hers whose title I don’t remember.
I don’t know how you ever compiled a top 10. I couldn’t do it. I can’t commit. I mean, “A Wrinkle In Time” was *so good,* but “Many Waters” was also weirdly satisfying. And I could never choose a favorite Judy Blume. The only one I didn’t like was the one she wrote for grown ups, but I sure learned a hell of a lot about sex from that one.
The ones in your top 10 I haven’t read are on my list of books to buy when I go to the States.
Many hugs for making my day.