Here are five books I loved when I was younger. I remember my fifth-grade teacher, Miss Black, reading The House with a Clock in its Walls to our class, and I fell in love with the story. For some reason, though, the title of the book drifted out of my memory after a few years; and although I often thought back to the story with fondness, I almost gave up hope of ever rediscovering the great book Miss Black had shared—this was all in the pre-internet days, please note, so it wasn’t so simple to look things up. Anyway, about twenty years after I was a fifth-grader, I chanced upon a reference to the book while reading a magazine, and I realized I had been led back to one of my favorite childhood books. If you haven’t read The House with a Clock in its Walls, you might like to track it down–and if you’d like to read more about my thoughts on the book, please go here. The others on the list here as just as worthy and enjoyable, in my opinion.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
The Phantom Tollbooth – Norton Juster
The House with a Clock in its Walls – John Bellairs
James and the Giant Peach – Roald Dahl
Here are some children’s books/series I came to love when I was an adult:
Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
Anne of Green Gables – Lucy Maud Montgomery
Swallows and Amazons (the entire series) – Arthur Ransome
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – Mark Twain
The Thief Lord – Cornelia Funk
And here is a list I created on the Shepherd site regarding “The best books about kids suddenly caught up in mysterious circumstances.” It was a lot of fun to put this list together.