Books you read as a kid

[Sysman]

I never managed to get into Sci Fi/Tolkein stuff. But I did read almost constantly. The usual stuff, Swallows & Amazons, Just William, Biggles. Oh and Asterix & Tintin were always popular. Early teens was James Thurber, Graham Green, George Orwell.

My eldest (12) has just read my old Gerald Durrell "Corfu" books and he finds them as good as I did decades ago.

Same here wrt Sci Fi, and it lasted - I think I was the only Science student at Uni who didn't have a bookshelf full of that.

All the list above, bar Thurber and Green. I have fond memories of Gerald Durrell too.

[Durbs]

when I was starting to read my faves were the Tim & Tobias books but no-one i've met has ever heard of them

Think they are the reason i'm a big horror and sci-fi fan now.

Tim and the Hidden People - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[wurzel]

My mother didn't like Enid Blyton because the reading age didn't progress, despite the fact that there were what I remember as cracking good stories.

Is she a teacher? We weren't permitted to bring Enid Blyton books into our reading group sessions at the primary school I went to. People often said that this was for pc reasons, i.e. Blyton's characters were too middle class etc but I believe it was for the same reason as you give.

Talking of PC, I used to read a book as a kid that would never be allowed in libraries these days. It was called Struwelpetter (or cautionary tales for children). It was a collection of nursery rhymes like the one about the boy who used to suck his thumb all the time until some freak with a giant pair of scissors leaps out from behind the curtains and lops his thumbs off. Beautifully illustrated too - claret spurting everywhere. The other one that sticks in my mind is the kid who makes fun of black people until he falls into a giant pot of ink and becomes black himself.

[vetran]

no Sprout?

Arabian nights.

Anything by Jack London (teenage)
Frank Harris