Written Pyramids

As I promised in my last post, here are a list of the chapter books I loved. The problem here is that, according to my fifth grade reading journal, I read up to three books a week. So the list is long and incomplete. Still it has some of the greatest hits. Looking over this list, there are few surprises and a lot of classics. Blame that on my mom. She bought the books for me.

When I was in third grade, after having made my way through much of the ever-extending Boxcar children series (at some point in the double digits they are written by a new person under the same name) my mother decided I should read "good literature". Edward Eager was the first author to make the cut. His books, full of magic and often centering around the adventures of either a family of siblings or the adventures of those siblings' children, captivated me and I read them one after the other until I ran out. I then turned to E. Nesbit, who according to Eager's author blurb, was his favorite author. Nesbit's characters sometimes turn up in Eager's books and her books are often cited as Eager's characters' favorites. So of course, I read all of Nesbit's books, which have a slightly more grown-up feel, but children are still the heroes and they are no less whimsical. It turns out she wrote a few, including a retelling of Shakespeare plays, that I never discovered, but I read almost all of her fantasy books as well.

Of course, eventually I ran out and turned to some other books. The early readers are the ones I read before Eager and the rest are more or less from third grade up, and in no order but there is some overlap. For the sake of not scaring off my few readers, I am going to put the first part of the list here and the rest in a post just below this post.

• Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel (I had these on tape as well).
• Wind In the Willows by by Kenneth Grahame (the staple of a British childhood, which I sometimes got by association, and the subject of a now defunct wonderful Disney World ride).
• Chocolate Fever by Robert Kimmel Smith and Gioia Fiammenghi
• Freckle Juice, The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Fudge-a-mania and SuperFudge by Judy Blume (oddly enough, I never read Are You There God? It's me Margaret).
• The Wayside School books, and There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom by Louis Sachar (his later books, which I read when I was well past his targeted audience are also great. And, he makes cameo appearances as the yard teacher in Wayside School.
• Winnie the Pooh books by A.A. Milne
• The Ramona books, Socks, and Ellen Tebbit by Beverly Clearly
• Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle Books by Betty MacDonald and Hilary Knight
• Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli