Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Books I Wish I Read as a Kid

I've always been a reader, even when I was little.  Dr. Seuss?  Check! Roald Dahl?  Covered!  Louis Sachar? Done! But I know there are books I missed out on reading as a child.  For this week's Tuesday Top Ten The Broke and The Bookish ask what are the top 10 books you wish you read when you were a kid

1. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle - Lots of people seem to have read and loved this book.  I own a copy and have since I was a child but I've never actually read it.  I think I missed my window.  It's like E.T.  I never saw the movie and I think I've missed my shot.
2. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll - I read this as an adult (fully annotated copy.  It's pretty sweet) but I never read it as a kid and I wish I had.  That was and is my favorite of the Disney animated movies and I wish I could have compared the two when I was younger.
3. The Little Prince by Antonie de Saint-Exupery - Another one I read when I was older, in a high school French class, but one I think I would have loved as a little kid. Ah well, c'est la vie.*
4. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell - Being a girl I fell strongly into the "I love horses!!!!!" stereotype when I was little and I'm surprised I never read this one. I had the movie. And I read some other horse series (Thoroughbred something or other) but never this classic.
5. Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne - Another case where I was familiar with the Winnie the Pooh TV shows (animated and live action people in fur suits, which is a bit creepy now) but I've never actually read any of the original stories.
6. A Series of Unfortunate Events series by Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler - This isn't so much I missed them when I was a kid as they were published after I was out of this range.  But they look like something  I would have loved when I was little.
7. Nancy Drew series created by Edward Stratemeyer - I had a full collection of these when I was little.  Some were my grandmother's, most were my mom's.  And that sat on the shelf in the top of my closet.  I assume they made it in the move, which means these are most likely sitting in a box in my mom's basement.

7 this week.  That's no bad.  I'm almost to 10.

What books do you wish you'd read as a child?

*I think I took a combined 6 years of French and that is roughly all I remember.  I think I deserve some sort of medal for forgetting so much.