Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | Children's books and authors........

OK, so I'm late ... but this is totally my subject, I LOVE kids' books and own a couple thousand (much to my husband's chagrin). I'll skip the ones already mentioned even though I dearly love Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and Anne of Green Gables.

Some of my favorites (going by memory and by what I can see on the bookshelves by twisting my neck around) --

Lloyd Alexander -- his Prydain Chronicles are my very favorite fantasy series of all-time. I also really like the Vesper Holly books.

Joan Aiken's Wolves Chronicles -- I cried when she died recently, mainly out of pity of no new books. This series is a bit uneven but most of the books are great. "The Stolen Lake" is still my favorite.

L.M. Boston's books about Green Knowe, a very old country house in England. Probably a little tough for most ordinary kids, but super-magical for adults.

Carol Ryrie Brink's "Baby Island". About two girls who are shipwrecked with several babies. I LOVE this book and read it dozens of times when I was a little girl. She also wrote "Caddie Woodlawn" -- all of her stuff is good, really.

Meg Cabot's "Princess Diaries" series -- I haven't read all of her stuff, but what I've read is very cute and total fun fluff. "Princess Diaries" books are way better for some reason, not sure why exactly? Don't judge by the movies.

Sylvia Cassedy's books. Usually sad but very good, typically about troubled kids. "Behind the Attic Wall" is my favorite.

Eth Clifford's books about the two girls whose names I can't remember -- Jo-Beth and Mary Rose, I think? They keep getting lost/stuck in strange places, beginning with "Help! I'm a Prisoner in the Library!" Her Harvey books are cute too.

Eoin Colfer's Artemeis Fowl books. Fantasy/science fiction/genius.

Ellen Conford's books -- her ones about high school kids are the best and very funny. My favorite -- "A Royal Pain", about a girl who finds out she's really a princess (or is she?).

Caroline B. Cooney's books are all pretty good, generally about teenagers and typical/atypical problems they face. "Don't Blame the Music" (a girl whose sister has emotional problems) and "The Pary's Over" (a girl who graduates high school but doesn't go to college) are my favorites.

Sharon Creech's books are all sad and funny and true. "Walk Two Moons" is my favorite.

Paula Danziger is a good author in general. "This Place Has No Atmosphere" is my favorite -- set in the future about a girl whose parents are amongst the first of people colonizing the moon.

Elizabeth Enright's books are all good. "Gone-Away Lake" and its sequel "Return to Gone-Away" are probably my favorite, but the books featuring the Melendy family are also excellent.

Eleanor Estes -- anything, really, but "The Hundred Dresses" remains a childhood favorite and I also love the books about the Moffats.

Anything by Anne Fine. "Flour Babies" is my favorite. Hers are contemporary books about tween kids, she's a British writer.

John Fitzgerald's "Great Brain" books. Seven of them set in Utah I think in the early 1900s, about a boy and his conniving older brother.

Carolyn Haywood's books about Betsy, Billy, etc. These are very old-fashioned and charming, but a bit young.

Diana Wynne Jones writes splendid fantasy novels -- all very clever and very funny. My personal favorite is "Howl's Moving Castle" and its sequel "Castles in the Air", but I've never read a bad book by her.

Maud Hart Lovelace's Betsy books. She takes Betsy all the way from age five to a married woman. My favorites are Betsy's high school years as well as "Betsy and the Great World". I also love "Emily of Deep Valley", which isn't a Betsy book but set in the same place.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh's books are also terrific -- most of them have to do with time travel. My favorite of hers is "Three Lives to Live".

Margaret Mahy writes books that are silly nonsense or incredible densely-plotted literary treasures -- either way hey're marvelous. "The Tricksters" and "Memory" are my favorites. Most of her books are fantasy, or have some echoes or fantasy.

Robert McCloskey's "Homer Price" books should be required reading for every American child. Total classics.

Mary Nash's "Mrs. Coverlet" books are very cute -- "While Mrs. Coverlet Was Away" is a classic, but the other two are also great as well ("Mrs. Coverlet's Detectives" and "Mrs. Coverlet's Magicians").

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's "Alice" books deal with the ups-and-downs of a typical adolescent girl. I LOVE these books even though I am no longer 13, and I still await each release. Naylor's other books are also generally good -- the Bessledorf Hotel books are cute and I really liked the York Trilogy but I can't read the spines from here to get the titles ("Footsteps in the Water", "Shadows on the Wall", something like that).

Edith Nesbit's books are all fantastic -- fantasy books written in Victorian times. "Five Children and It" was my childhood favorite but as an adult my favorite is "The Enchanted Castle". There is nothing in any modern horror movie that can top the chills that radiate through me at the Ugly-Wuglies.

Ursula Nordstrom's "The Secret Language" was also a favorite as a child. I've never read anything else by her. I believe this book is out of print -- I had a hard time finding my copy.

Mary Norton's "Borrower" books are classics and rightly so. These deal with tiny people who live in houses (if you ever read "The Littles" -- they were a rip-off of "The Borrowers) "borrowing" from the "big people".

Barbara Park's Junie B. Jones series are hilarious. Also try "Mick Harte Was Here". It's the only book I've read where I really have both laughed and cried simultaneously.

Tamora Pierce's fantasy series are very good, chock-full of strong female characters. My favorite still remains her first series starring Alanna. "The Lioness Quartet" I believe they're called.

Philip Pullman's books are all incredible. I love his recent trilogy "His Dark Materials", which is a retelling of "Paradise Lost" -- "The Golden Compass", "The Subtle Knife", "The Amber Spyglass". My favorite is the Sally Lockhart trilogy -- "The Ruby in the Smoke", "The Shadow in the North", "The Tiger in the Well". "The Tin Princess" is also a great book and is a companion book of sort to the Sally Lockhart trilogy (it features some of the characters from the trilogy).

Candice F. Ransom's Kobie books are also a priceless part of books for adolescent girls -- "Going on Twelve", "Thirteen", "Fourteen and Holding", "Fifteen at Last". There's another one she wrote later on, but I don't quite remember the title -- "Almost Ten and a Half", I believe. Her other books are also good.

Keith Robertsen's Henry Reed books are great if you like Homer Price. They are also more old-fashioned (written in the 50s or 60s I believe), but they're hilarious.

Barbara Robinson never did write that many books, but her "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" is a classic. I much prefer, however, her book "My Brother Louis Measures Worms (and other stories)". A quick read and very funny.

Louis Sachar writes some good off-beat books -- "Sideways Stories from Wayside School" still remains the best in my opinion. This is a collection of stories about kids in a very strange school. I must've read this a hundred times as a kid.

Lemony Snickett's "A Series of Very Unfortunate Events" cannot be adequately described -- read them, they are awesome.

Zilpha Keatley Snyder is also one of those who never wrote a bad book, but my favorite is "The Velvet Room" and the Stanley kids books -- "The Headless Cupid" was the first. "The Egypt Game" is also really good.

Anything Mary Stolz wrote is good.

Sydney Taylor's "All of a Kind Family" series -- five books in all -- about a Jewish family in New York City in the early 1900s. This was one of my favorites when I was a kid. (OK, so I had a lot of favorites.)

Stephanie Tolan's Skinner family books. "The Great Skinner Strike" is the first one, where their mother goes on strike -- in the household.

Vivian Vande Velde writes intriguing fantasy novels ... intriguing because her characters are not always the typical Good or Evil. My favorites -- "User Unfriendly" (about a group of kids in an interactive computer game that ends up going awry) and "A Well-Timed Enchantment".

Gertrude Chandler Warner's Boxcar Children books -- but the real ones, as in the first 19 of the series. Any books after that were ghostwritten.

Jean Webster's "Daddy Long-Legs" and its sequel "Dear Enemy" are both very good and very funny. I didn't read these until fairly recently and somehow I had always imagined "Daddy Long-Legs" as being very soppy and treacly but this is SO not the case. (Well, except maybe for the end.)

Barbara Willard's Mantlemass Chronicles are excellent -- very good and very readable historical novels. Some of them are quite exciting as well.

Catherine Woolley's Ginnie, Cathy, or Libby books. Of all of "my" authors, I think I regard Catherine Woolley with the most fondness. "A Room For Cathy" is one of my all-time favorites. Her books are very old-fashioned (she started writing in the 1940s), but they are so homey and ordinary and cozy. I LOVE THESE BOOKS. Unfortunately, they are out of print and really tough to find. Most of mine were purchased on eBay at great expense. Some libraries do still have them.

Carol Beach York writes a variety of books but mostly suspense books. "Beware of this Shop" is one of my favorites, nice and creepy with no gore or ucky bits. Her books about the Good Day Orphanage (most of them featuring Miss Know-it-All) are also good, very cute.

my Nancy Drews (the original 56) are dearly beloved, but if you can find them, the "blue tweed" versions are way better, before they got revised.

My favorite girl detective, however, was always Trixie Belden. "The Mystery of the Emeralds" was my favorite. Although not quite as independent as Nancy, Trixie was always so much more real.

Um, anyway -- yeah, I'm a book geek.

These are just the highlights, I have about 1800 more I could recommend ... !!

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jen

"It's one of the most serious things that can possibly happen to one in a battle -- to get one's head cut off." -- LC

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Just remember, you asked for it! Telling me to suggest books is like telling an alcoholic to suggest bars. And, hey, thanks for the kind words in your post. I was having kind of a bad day yesterday and you really cheered me up. In addition to all your other virtues, you're very sweet, Ruchie. I appreciate that a lot, mostly because I'm not.

Okay, here we go. I know you said in an earlier post that you don't read "racy" books, so I've tried to indicate when one of these might be a bit much for you. Some of them I read so long ago, I simply don't remember.

(Once I got this written, I realized a lot of the books I was suggesting were somewhat dark. So I marked the fun/funny ones in red.)

Books that I find healing

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott - The family most of us wish we had.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - This book is about healing: physical, emotional, and spiritual. Plus it's a really nice read. The Tasha Tudor illustrations are the best.

In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden - The story of an enclosed order of Bendictine nuns. I'm always awestruck by people who truly live their religion, day in and day out, in all things large and small.

Three great books and one great trilogy

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin - The best scifi novel I've ever read and the first scifi novel to win both the Hugo and Nebula awards. A human envoy visits a planet where the inhabitants are also human - except they are both male and female in one. Issues of sexual identity permeate the book, but I don't remember it as being sexually explicit.

Shape of Snakes by Minette Walters - A very good mystery writer has written an extraordinary novel. A seemingly average wife and mother is determined to discover what really happened to her young neighbor 20 years earlier. Un-put-down-able. After I read this, everyone on my gift list got this book.

Dooms Day Book by Connie Willis - I include this a little hesitantly because I only read it 3 months ago and it's too soon to tell if it will resonate like the others in this list. Nonetheless, it's an amazing book: mesmerizing, heart-breaking, and yet somehow hopeful. It's classified as science fiction because it involves time-travel, but as one of the reader reviews at B&N says, "if this were not pigeon-holed as 'science fiction' it would be acknowledged as one of the best novels of the later 20th century". A young woman travels back in time to do research in the Middle Ages. Things go awry and she finds herself in the right place at the wrong time - literally.

The Merlin Trilogy by Mary Stewart - This consists of The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, and The Last Enchantment. This is historical fantasy and it's one of those novelizations of past events that you read and go, "Oh, okay, this is really how it happened." In addition to being a great story, the prose is beatiful, almost crystalline. (B&N is now calling these three books "The Arthurian Saga", but this is Merlin's story.) Oh, and skip the fourth book.

Historical Novels

Autobiography of Henry VIII and Memoirs of Cleopatra both by Margaret George - Two cracking good reads. Written in the "first person", they're totally convincing. Again, historical fiction that convinces you you're reading historical truth.

Traveler by Richard Adams - The autobiography of Robert E. Lee's horse. A very good read, very touching.

The Firebrand by Marion Zimmer Bradley - The story of Kassandra (Cassandra) of Troy. Another "this is the way it was" book.

Gates of Fire by Stephen Pressfield - The Spartans' stand at the Battle of Thermopylae where 300 Spartans held hundreds of thousands of Persians for 6 days. This one is somewhat sexual and incredibly violent.

Mysteries

First, a Website: www.stopyourekillingme.com. Want to find all the books in a series? Know a character's name but can't remember the author? Just want to browse through mysteries? This is your Website.

Almost anything by Agatha Christie - The big ones are: Death on the Nile, Murder on the Orient Express, and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (a must read). Some of my personal favorites include: Murder In Retrospect, The Tuesday Club Murders (Miss Marple short stories), Cards on the Table, Murder in Mesopotamia, The Murder at the Vicarage, etc., etc., etc. Oddly enough, I don't like her Tuppence & Tommy Beresford mysteries - luckily she didn't write many of those.

Firestorm and Blind Descent both by Nevada Barr - These are part of the Anna Pigeon series. Anna is a National Parks Ranger and the various books take place in various parks. I'm usually meticulous about reading series in order, but I think these two books stand head and shoulders above the others in the series.

One For The Money by Janet Evanovich - This is the first in a series featuring Stephanie Plum, a Trenton, New Jersey, bounty hunter with big hair, a big mouth, and not one, but two hunky men in her life. It's hysterically funny, but may well be too sexy for your tastes.

Straight, Decider, Banker, Hot Money, and Reflex all by Dick Francis - Most of Francis' novels are good, but these are my favorites. I think his later ones are less readable and I did not like his Sid Halley novels. All the ones I listed and almost all of his other novels have to do with horse-racing in one form or another. Incredibly clean writing style and remarkable protagonists. I also find his books excellent on audio which is unusual for me.

The Mrs. Pollifax mysteries by Dorothy Gilman - There are a zillion of these. They start off being fun and get darker as the series goes on. It seems a lot of series do that - I wonder why? Mrs. Pollifax is an elderly widow who gets bored with life and decides to go to work for the CIA.

A Nun in the Closet and Tightrope Walker by Dorothy Gilman - It's hard to imagine two more different mysteries. A Nun in the Closet is laugh out loud funny, while Tightrope Walker is about doing the right thing and discovering yourself along the way.

The Spenser series by Robert B. Parker - The archetypal tough-guy PI. The series starts with The Godwulf Manuscript and now totals more than 30 books. This series is better read in order. Parker also writes the Jesse Stone series and the Sunny Randall series. If you like Spenser, you'll like those series, too. People in his books have sex, but there are no mechanics; you know, like, his hand goes there, her hand goes here. It's just "we went into the bedroom then later..."

The Kinsey Millhone series by Sue Grafton - The archetypal tough-gal PI. The series starts with A Is For Alibi and is now up to S Is For Silence. Very good, very highly recommended. There is sex is some of the books, but nothing I would consider particularly steamy. Well, except for that scene on the spiral staircase.

The Peter Shandy series by Charlotte MacLeod - This series starts with Rest You Merry which is sadly out of print, but definitely worth looking for. Funny and fun, I cannot recommend this series highly enough if you're just looking to enjoy your reading. Peter is a professor at an agricultural college in Balaclava County, Massachusetts. His wife, Helen, is the librarian.

The Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters - Very funny. Amelia is a Victorian archaeologist - with definite opinions on everything - working in Egypt around 1900. This series should definitely be read in order, starting with The Crocodile on the Sandbank.

The Jacqueline Kirby series by Elizabeth Peters - Jacqueline is a librarian turned romance novelist. I want to be her when I grow up. There are only four of these books which is a shame - they're fun and each one is better than the one before. The series consists of with Seventh Sinner, The Murders of Richard III, Die For Love, and Naked Once More. No, not racy at all.

Summer of the Dragon by Elizabeth Peters - A stand-alone novel that's a lot of fun. Almost all Elizabeth Peter's mysteries are enjoyable.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey - A modern detective with time on his hands tries to determine what really happened to Richard III's 2 little nephews. A wonderful read.

Odds and Ends

Incident at Badamaya by Dorothy Gilman - An odd little book about a group of people trying to get out of 1950s Burma. Mystical.

Range of Motion by Elizabeth Berg - A young woman's husband falls into a coma. She struggles to bring him out of it. A very, very , very good book.

I could go on and on and on here, but I think that's enough to start with. If you want more, just ask.

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[Research tells us fourteen out of any ten individuals likes chocolate. - Sandra Boynton]

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