Old Children's Book Poll

[rachelmanija]

Here are some old children's books I have acquired. Please vote for which I should read next (or which I should avoid.) If you've read any of them, what did you think?

Poll #26528 Old Children's Book Poll

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 129

View Respondents

Which books should I read next?

View Answers

Understood Betsy, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. A girl is sent to rural Vermont and experiences country life.
32 (24.8%)

Building Blocks, by Cynthia Voigt. A boy time-travels and meets his father as a boy.
22 (17.1%)

Juniper, by Monica Furlong. A princess studies with her wise-woman aunt.
50 (38.8%)

Mossflower, by Brian Jacques. Martin the Warrior vs en evil cat queen.
24 (18.6%)

Castaways in Lilliput, by Henry Winterfield. Three shipwrecked kids land in Lilliput.
17 (13.2%)

Midsummer, by Katherine Adams. Two New York kids are sent to Sweden & experience Swedish life.
20 (15.5%)

Orphan Island, by Laurel Snyder. Kids live alone on an island.
23 (17.8%)

Mariel of Redwall, by Brian Jacques. Finally a heroine.
25 (19.4%)

The Fairy Caravan, by Beatrix Potter. A miniature animal traveling circus.
19 (14.7%)

A Room Made of Windows, by Eleanor Cameron. Teenage Julia wants to be a writer.
18 (14.0%)

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, by Judith Kerr. Anna and her family are refugees in multiple countries.
30 (23.3%)

Hyddenworld, by William Horwood. Two kids find a civilization of tiny people and magic.
23 (17.8%)

Assignment in Alaska (Kathy Martin), by Josephine James. A stewardess has an Alaska adventure.
9 (7.0%)

Talargain, by Joyce Gard. Northumberland selkie fantasy.
45 (34.9%)

Comments

[luzula]

I read those Brian Jacques books when I was a kid--my most vivid memory is how delicious and vividly described the food at their feasts were.

[rachelmanija]

That is a huge plus!

[ursula]

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit has a hilarious sequence in which Anna and her brother try to write essays in French. I think about it often.

[rmc28]

I entirely picked my two because I want to hear what New York kids made of Sweden, and because selkie stories.

I read When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit in English for school, around age 12. My memory matches that description and also that I didn't enjoy it much.

[likeadeuce]

I pressed submit before I fully processed 'Northumberland Selkie fantasy' so add a vote for that one.

I also picked 'When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit' because a well meaning adult gave that to me at age 8 or so and I remember nothing about it except that I was frustrated because I expected Pink Rabbit to be a major part of the story and it was not.

[rachelmanija]

I think you can hit "clear answers" and vote again.

[sovay]

Juniper, by Monica Furlong. A princess studies with her wise-woman aunt.

A prequel to Furlong's earlier novel Wise Child: I am sure both would come flooding back to me if I picked them up, but right now what I remember most are the gorgeous covers by Leo and Diane Dillon and a lot of herbalism. I enjoyed both, but there's something in one of them that really upset me in elementary school, and I can't remember which one or what it is.

Mossflower, by Brian Jacques. Martin the Warrior vs en evil cat queen.

Not my favorite of the original Redwall trilogy because Mattimeo is stark staring bonkers and better for it, but I strongly preferred it to Redwall and liked many of the characters; I remember it having less of a collect-the-coupons plot than many books in this series and some genuine deep-time weirdness. Jacques completely retconned the notion of Redwall being anywhere in our world and I was fine with it.

Mariel of Redwall, by Brian Jacques. Finally a heroine.

I adored this one when it came out. There were pirates and the heroine hit things with a hawser with a knot in it, which honestly seems like a viable weapon if you are a mouse and what you are hitting is mostly seagulls. The plot may be stupid. I believe at one point there is a battle with a lobster. I just liked the pirates and the hitting things.

A Room Made of Windows, by Eleanor Cameron. Teenage Julia wants to be a writer.

I read at least three of the Julia Redfern books all around the same time and have trouble distinguishing them by title; unlike the Mushroom Planet books, I never owned any or really re-read them; I have nonetheless positive feelings at seeing this one mentioned.

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, by Judith Kerr. Anna and her family are refugees in multiple countries.

Fictionalized from the author's own experiences as a child, actually good, deserves its place on the curriculum (I was not assigned it, I just picked it up off a shelf in third grade and read it through a class), I don't believe I ever read the sequels, a film was made within the last couple of years and I just don't see how that worked. I discovered as an adult that Kerr wrote it as a kind of riposte to The Sound of Music—one of her children came out of the movie declaring, "Now we know what it was like when Mummy was a little girl," which Kerr could not let stand—and while this makes perfect sense to me, I also find it hilarious.

Talargain, by Joyce Gard. Northumberland selkie fantasy.

Never heard of it and curious.

[osprey_archer]

"Finally a heroine" made me cackle with delight.

I read Understood Betsy and Juniper as a child and loved them both for their descriptions of country life. Understood Betsy is more comfort reading; Juniper has magic.

I haven't read Talargain but I (like everyone else, apparently!) am intrigued by Northumberland selkie fantasy.

[oracne]

ZOMG I LOVED THE FAIRY CARAVAN. That's how I learned what peppercorns are.

[davidgillon]

Talargain had me at 'Northumberland' - guess where I was born, the 'selkie fantasy' is just a bonus.

I don't recall hearing any selkie stories about the Northumberland coast, but it's definitely somewhere I can imagine them.

[philomytha]

Mossflower was always my favourite of the Redwall books, and When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit is good - I remember doing a double take when I realised that was the same Judith Kerr of The Tiger Who Came to Tea aka my son’s favourite book aged two. But right now it’s the tiny civilisation that catches my eye out of the list, I love tiny people stories.

[rachelmanija]

I love tiny people stories so much that I have an entire tag for them.

https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/tag/genre:+tiny+people

[princessofgeeks]

I've only read Understood Betsy off this list but I loved it as a child.

[dorothean]

I am pretty sure you will like Juniper, as well as its companion Wise Child which someone already mentioned. They are both very strong on cozy and less cozy details of domestic labor and of an elder woman teaching and mentoring a younger one how to live. I read them both as a teenager and loved them and still do.

[qian]

I absolutely loved When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit as a child and reread recently; I think it stands up. It's kind of cosy despite being about a child refugee fleeing the Nazis.

[em_h]

Despite being old, I don't think I've read a single one of those. The title of A Room Made of Windows is vaguely familiar, but if I ever read it, I retained nothing at all about it.

I haven't read When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, but I really liked Judith Kerr's Mog books (for a much younger readership, of course).

[copperfyre]

I had never realised that Judith Kerr wrote the Mog books and When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit! I adored the Mog books as a child, and my parents and I still quote them to this day, and When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit made a profound impression on older child me. But I never put together that that was the same Judith Kerr, wow!

[snacky]

I loved both Understood Betsy and When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, and I like when you read books I loved. A whole new perspective!

[sheliak]

I decided to vote based on my childhood reading habits, which meant mostly (but not entirely) voting for the stuff that looked like fantasy.

I don't remember The Fairy Caravan at all, and I thought I'd read all of Beatrix Potter's books!

[sholio]

Understood Betsy is great! I loved it when I was a kid, and reread it relatively recently since it's on Project Gutenberg. I was expecting way more "city bad, country good" and "this is not how disease works" (the premise is basically: sick little girl is sent to live with relatives who have a farm, assigned farm chores, perks up with Actual Work To Do) but actually it's very sweet, far more realistic than I was expecting about the logistics of her home life, and has loads of details about turn-of-the-century farm life and being a kid in (presumably) rural New England that I think you'll really enjoy.

[rachelmanija]

Ohh, that sounds great!

[pameladean]

Just a note: I love A Room Made of Windows, a profoundly formative book for me, but it's the third in a series of four and is full of spoilers for the earlier books. I only recently, within the past two or three years, tracked down and read the other books. The books grow up with Julia; she's about six in the first one. Windows is much more mature.

Cameron does a good job of creating resonance within the confines of the one book, but some things would have rung much louder if I'd read the earlier ones. It's hard to say what the best course is. But it's an amazing book.

P.

[rachelmanija]

Oh, how odd! How do you order these?

https://www.goodreads.com/series/62565-julia-redfern

[starlady]

There are seven good Redwall books and you have two of them in this list! I think Mariel is one of my two single favorites but I haven't reread them in many years.

[rachelmanija]

Which are the other five?

[queenbookwench]

I have read Understood Betsy and A Room Made of Windows and am deeply fond of both. I never actually read Juniper, I don’t think, but I liked Wise Child a lot. I’ve read other Laurel Snyder books that I really enjoyed, but I know nothing about Orphan Island. Talargain and Hyddenworld both just _sound_ really cool.

[mildred_of_midgard]

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit needs a better title, because I too was disappointed at the failure of the pink rabbit to get more than a passing mention. But as a book, it's one of my all-time favorites. It reminds me of the Little House books: the family is going through stressful times, but the book is about how everything is all right as long as the family's together, and day-to-day challenges of adapting to life as refugees have a downright cozy vibe. (Less food than the Little House books, though. What it *really* reminds me of is Letters from Rifka, which is also one of my favorites.)

I read the Pink Rabbit sequels as an adult and was disappointed. I remember them being more about the stress and family dysfunction. You can see the parents sheltering the kids from the Holocaust in the first book; in subsequent books, it's more about the kids, now grown up, having to deal with their parents' psychological issues while trying to live their own lives. Not nearly as much fun for me. YMMV.

[carbonel]

Your comments about the Pink Rabbit sequels match my thoughts. I read all of them at once (obtained them as an omnibus) and the later books where the characters weren't in as much danger nevertheless felt more grim.

[lemonsharks]

Pretty much the only thing keeping me from reading redwall is cat villification. (Reasonable given the prey animal pov characters, and yet.)

[intothespin]

I picked Talargain because I've never even heard of it, and I'm curious.

[lirazel]

I voted for the two Redwall books, because I did enjoy those books very much as a kid, and also for Juniper. I just read Wise Blood, to which Juniper is a sequel, and I loved it. So I'm going to read Juniper as well as soon as I can get my hands on it.

Since your blog is a wonderful place to talk about children's fiction: have you or anyone else reading this ever read the Gone-Away Lake books? I LOVED those as a kid but I realized I don't know of anyone else who's read them.

[osprey_archer]

I read the first Gone-Away Lake book just a year or two ago and I loved it! (AND it was illustrated by the same husband-wife illustration team that illustrated the Borrowers books in the US, which illustrations I poured over as a child, so seeing that style again was such a nostalgic moment even though I'd never seen those particular illustrations before.) Haven't read the sequel yet, though.

[carbonel]

Castaways in Lilliput is okay, but I'd recommend Detectives in Togas, also by Henry Winterfeld, first. That one doesn't have any fantastical elements, but it's a mystery set in ancient (Imperial?) Rome, with schoolboys as the main characters. I read it in grade school, and was very fond of it.

There are two sequels, but I don't think I've read those. He also wrote Star Girl, which I know I read but remember almost nothing about. I think it was science fiction with very little science.

They were all written in German, and translated, and IIRC it occasionally shows.

Also, for what it's worth, The Court of the Stone Children was my favorite of the non-Mushroom Planet books by Eleanor Cameron. I never quite warmed up to the Julia Redfern books.

[minnaway]

One of my general rules is to always vote for/read about selkies.

I'm trying to figure out if I've read the Adams book about Sweden when I was a kid, or just something similar. Very hazy memories.