Childhood Books You Miss

Encyclopedia Brown

Encyclopedia Brown was also responsible for one of the greatest Onion articles ever.

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nWAYSIDEeSCHOOL

The Phantom Tollbooth

Some good picks here. I'm going a bit unconventional. Anyone remember when you'd be in grade school and they'd have those book orders every few months? I used to get so excited when March would approach and I could order the latest installment of "Bruce Weber's Inside Baseball." From Mark Langston's dominance over left-handed batters to Andre Dawson's power surge upon being acquired by the Cubs, Bruce Weber had every base covered.

Amongst many others from my childhood.

I remember that! Up here in Canada it was every other month and I had a boatload of 80s movie adaptations for young readers. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Goonies, Ghostbusters were a couple of my favourites.

Ah sweet nostalgia.

I remember one called "Invitation to The Game" I read when I was 10 or 11. Might not have been the most original book, but it was the first sci-fi book I'd read at that young age that depicted a society where people were literally turned into second-class citizens because the jobs they're best suited for keep getting automated by robots, and most of the book was about a group of these second class citizens, living in federal housing projects (essentially ghettos) and learning to fend for themselves. Then there's a whole virtual-reality experiment that turns out to be a secret government relocation project to another planet plot thread that doubly blew my brain. Like I said, it's probably not the first book to try this kind of story, but for one aimed at kids/preteens (I always read at an advanced rate so it's hard for me to really gauge what level the book was really going for), it was pretty heavy.

I also had, and still hold, a great love for Michael Ende's "The NeverEnding Story," although I appreciate it now more for its unique structure and characterizations (as well as some really clever passages) than its relation to the still-good-in-its-own-right 1984 film.

E.L. Konigsburg ("From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Franweiler) wrote a wonderful book entitled "(George)" that deals with an extremely intelligent and alienated boy who may have a little man living inside of his head or may be experiencing psychosis. Truly unforgettable, and unfortunately out-of-print for more than 20 years.

I blame this book for encouraging me, at a very early age, to be content as an underachiever. Because, you see, one day I'll just fricking bloom and everything'll be OK.

Still have those:

http://www.scholastic.ca/clubs/

My favourite series was Alfred Hitchcock and the 3 Investigators.

Ah, so many memories. Our school book club was Troll and it was great because, while my parents might refuse to buy me toys, they would never stilt my education by refusing to buy me books. So, in addition to some of the greats already mentioned ("Sideways Stories from Wayside School"), I'll add the following:







and

There's a children's picture book I remember being a favorite of mine, but I have not been able to track it down, even with these awesome internets. It was about an old Chinese woman making dumplings, when one rolls away and into a cave. When she follows, she somehow stumbles upon a secret underground world. Demons or monsters of some sort harass her but eventually she finds her way back, and she even gets the dumpling back... I think.

If anyone knows what I'm talking about I would be grateful.

While we're all on this topic, maybe you all can help me remember the title of a book that I have the vaguest recollection of. It took place in London and the story seemed to revolve around a secret war between two groups. In the one group were elf-like creatures and the other was composed of rat-like creatures. The elf-like creatures were pickpockets and thieves and, this is key, were what happened to English children who ran away from home (i.e. street urchins, ignored long enough, eventually transformed into these creatures). The rat creatures' primary weapon, I believe, was a blow gun with which they fired poisoned rose thorns.

Please, any help would be appreciated. Otherwise, I'll be force to conclude that this was just another opium dream.

Oh, and I'll also add:

Rather than, y'know, work, I figured I'd investigate and found this:

The Funny Little Woman

This sounds like your book.

The "Aliens Ate My Homework" trilogy (Aliens Ate My Homework, I Left My Sneakers in Dimension X, and the heartbreaking epic conclusion Search For Snout)

Also, I must have read the BFG a million and a half times. I've always had a fondness for anything by Roald Dahl.

Ditto for Wayside School, which was my first exposure to the sort of absurd humor that I would later fall in love with.

And Encyclopedia Brown, for saving Charlie's tooth collection all those times. I swear to Christ, Bugs Meany must have stolen Charlie's tooth collection on a weekly basis, and I can't for the life of me figure out why.

I definitely second that emotion and add:

Excellent pick. I even remember my favorite line: "DAMN YOU GRAKKAR!"

Thanks, that is it. Wow, blast from the past.

The Great Brain was like Western, ninteenth century, smarter version of Ferris Bueller. I loved those books so much--dude was my hero.

Also, does anyone remember the Coven Tree series of novels by Bill Brittain? Small town in New England that had fucked up stuff happening all the time, magic and curses and folklore beasties? There was one, "Dr. Dredd's Wagon of Wonders" that was pretty awesome.

This knocked me into Dreamland many a night:

I loved the hell out of this book. Read it all the time and wished I had a monster's ring all to my own. I always thought it was cool that each time he used it he turned into a more powerful, more grotesque creature.

I also had a fondness for the "My Teacher is an Alien" series--especially the finale, "My Teacher Flunked the Planet", where the Galactic Council (I think led by a giant eyeball) decides nothing productive or useful will ever come of Earth and decides to blink it out of existence. The ending was especially trippy, as our trio of youngsters plea for the Earth's survival and then get melded into one person for reasons that escape me (that's right, two boys and a girl get genetically spliced into one person with three vocies in its head). Can't remember exactly what the fuck was going on with that, but I remember loving it.

Exactly. Oh, how I schemed and attempted to emulate him. I'll be purchasing these for my (prospective) kids some day.

Holy hell! I do remember these, specifically "The Wish Giver". Wasn't there something about a sideshow strongman that could only be defeated by breaking his contact with the ground?

Wonderful book. If only the film was half as intelligent as it...

Hey now. Don't be dissing Secret of NIMH--it's not as good as the book, but it's still a great movie.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is also a favorite. Great illustrations.

And the first 2 poem books by Shel Silverstein. Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends. Amazing stuff.

Speaking of amazing Silverstein, The Giving Tree. I always felt there was some kind of social metaphor that the Giving Tree represented, but I could never quite put my finger on it.

Also speaking of Silverstein, wasn't there a fuss a while back because he made a book about sex illustrated in the same manner as his earlier kid's stuff, and parents too dumb to look at what they're buying gave it to their offspring? I've been curious to see this book, but have never come across it.

I was way too into R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike at too early an age, I think. Before that it was all Nancy Drew. When I wasn't reading novels I was reading everything (preferably with pictures) in the library on hauntings, aliens and UFOs, and cryptozoology. But I do remember loving Encyclopedia Brown, Wayside School is Falling Down, and any of those Eyewitness books that were about animals.

Having kids gives me an excuse to reread Mouse On The Motorcycle, A Wrinkle In Time, Peanuts, and Calvin & Hobbes. Okay, I would have reread those last two anyway.

Woah... The Mouse and the Motorcycle...

This thread is flashback inducing.

The strongman was in "Dr. Dredd's Wagon of Wonders;" he was one of the minions of D. Dredd.

I was a big fan of historical-centered fiction as a kid/young adult, mainly because the topics they'd cover could be really messed up and they were able to get away with it. I remember this one book, I forget what it's called, but it was about this young boy in the ninteenth century training to be an physcian or undertaker. The doctor turned out to be this brilliant guy, and there was this whole science vs. faith thing when people in the town started dying unexpectedly and the townsfolk blamed it on vampires.

There was another one, I think it was called "Out of the Forest," which was basically a "girl on the run" story that M. Night Shymalyan later ripped off for "The Village." It was much better than The Village, though, in that you learned that the people were part of a historical reenactment thirty or so pages in, and the rest was about the girl in the modern world.

I tended not to be a big fan of the books we had to read for school, though--I remember suffering through that Lois Lowry book about the Nazis and the two girls who are BFFs (Remember the Night?) and don't even get me started on that Civil War classic "Across Five Aprils."

Also, does anyone remember an anthology of Southern/African-American centered ghost stories called "The Dark Thirty?" I think that book was one of the few books I read that really scared the crap out of me as a kid. The stories each took place during a historical period and dealt mainly with African-American subjects--there was one set in slavery, one about railroad men, one set in the seventies, all the way up to the modern day. My two favorites, though, were the middle stories. The first one, set in the South in the 1940s, involved a Klansman who lynched an innocent black man, only to find his crimes appearing in picture form on his windows, getting clearer and clearer and unable to be washed out. The second was set during the bus boycott, and involved a lady and a baby who froze to death one winter's night when the white bus driver refused to let them get on without fare...only to find the ghosts return the next winter.

It was dark, great stuff.

It's about feminisim and the vicious sacrifices that are forced upon women by an uncaring, selfish patriarchy who will take and take and take and aren't satisfied until they've destroyed something beautiful.

I don't specifically miss these, but I did read these as a kid.

The Five Chinese Brothers. Tikki-Tikki Tembo, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, Beverly Cleary books (Henry Huggins, The Mouse On The Motorcycle). The Tripods Triology, Tom Swift: Young Inventor, Island Of The Blue Dolphins, Where The Red Fern Grows, Mr. Popper's Penguins, Sounder, The Black Stallion Books, The Black Pearl, Call It Courage, Big Red (as well as other boy and dog books by Jim Khelgaard), Flat Stanley, In The Night Kitchen, Stone Soup, Mike Mulligan And His Steam Shovel, Ferdinand, The Snowy Day, The House On East 88th Street, Lyle, Lyle Crocodile, Harry The Dirty Dog

Does anybody remember a book with two brothers, one a go-getter and one a lazy good-for-nothing who take a balloon to the land of the one eyed people? The go-getter wants to capture a one-eye and take him back so he can charge people to gawk? I had this as a kid and it's been bugging me as to the title lately.

And I'll tell you what, I haunt the 2nd hand shops and used book stores attempting to re-collect those Choose-Your-Own -Adventure books.

Rikki Tikki Tavi was one bad-ass anthromorphized feline motherfucker, let me tell you.

If you can you should be picking up the Fantagraphics re-releases of the complete run of the strip. They're absolutely gorgeous.

I hate 'The Giver' so much. I hate it as much as Devin hates A Prayer for Owen Meany.

Also, it said on wikipedia that mongooses are part of the feline family when I looked it up because I was pretty sure RTT wasn't a "bad-ass anthropormorphized rodent motherfucker." I guess they lied.

I remember another scene with the aliens showing the kids a refugee camp. Man, that was kinda fucked up. Here's a picture of the first book.

And someone mentioned Wrinkle in Time. Wasn't that book filled with Christian mythology? The nostalgia do be a flowing!

This one was just goddamn insane.

Patrick, that didn't end with Search for Snout, there was a fourth book called Aliens Stole my Body

What better way to be introduced to the stylings of Gahan Wilson?

I still remember the entire name from Tikki-Tikki-Tembo, and I haven't even thought about it since third grade. That's why I love this thread. (...no-sah rembo chatti-chatti bouche no-sah pembo.)