What are your "children's literature" gaps?

[Chris in VA]

Fess up--what children's literature have you never read that everybody has read? ;)  Secondly,

 

what did you miss hearing or reading as a child that you encountered for the first time when you had your own child/ren?

 

I didn't read Secret Garden until I had dd, for example.

[Guest]

Oh, there really are many. I attended a tiny, Christian school until sixth grade, so I think I missed some that others would read. I had to read some books that I never did understand at the time; "The Hiding Place," for one.

 

I never read The Wind in the Willows, The Hobbit, Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, Pollyanna, Alice in Wonderland or A Wrinkle in Time. I never read Are You There, God, It's Me, Margaret? Or Judy Bloom's Forever.

 

I remember in school, I had to read Lassie, Come Home. I loved animals SO much and I bawled through half the book! The book was also difficult because it is full of Scottish dialect and I was too young to understand it.

 

The only thing I wish I had had as a child is Math-U-See! I didn't really understand math much at all until I started teaching my kids with MUS! I have often said, "I wish somebody had taught me math this way!"

[Desert Strawberry]

I read voraciously and loved kiddie lit all the way through adulthood.

I didn't read a lot of "boy stories". No pirates or horses, few dogs, not many adventures on the high seas. Much to my detriment, because I am raising four boys. Sagg asked me last week if there were any books about boys. Uh, yeah...I'm sure there are...blink, blink, blink.

[Kathryn]

I'm sure there are a lot but what stands out to me are books like Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, Pollyanna, etc.

[SadieMarie]

I read fiction voraciously too and my dd only wants to read nonfiction. All she cares about right now is science. It is KILLING me. I did get her to try some historical fiction though. It made me feel a little better. And her father is a poet for goodness sake! She is some sort of throw back. I blame Dh's engineer father.

[marbel]

I don't know how I missed the Chronicles of Narnia as a kid.  Never encountered them till I read them to my own.  Same with the Swallows and Amazons books, but they are not as well known as Narnia anyway, so that isn't really surprising.

 

I still have not read, nor have I had my kids read, pet death books like Where the Red Fern Grows or Old Yeller.  I understand the point of reading books in which pets die, but I can't read them.  Closest we ever got was Rascal.

[Tmhearn]

I basically read none of the classics in children's lit until I started homeschooling my dd and reading here. So far I've homeschooled through the 4th grade, so that is the extent of my knowledge of History and Children's Literature. :-)

[Dory]

No Wind in the Willows, The Trumpet of the Swan, Heidi, Treasure Island, Pollyanna, Alice in Wonderland, A Wrinkle in Time, none of the fairy tales, Green Eggs and Ham (my mom hated Suess), Just So Stories, Arabian Nights, Black Ships Before Troy, and many, many, many more that I can't list.

 

I read voraciously as a kid, but I skipped a lot of good books because we didn't have them on the shelf and didn't visit the library much. I found that I jumped ahead into much older books probably earlier then I should have. My mom also didn't teach any mythology or have books with much for magic in them. I read the Narnia books in little chunks by hiding away when we would visit my aunt down the road. They were on her shelf and if I was quick I could finish a few chapters while my mom and her did their thing. I was sure the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books were evil and not to be touched. My mom is now a little aghast when she looks at my book shelves because I have LOTS of books she would never touch. Actually, I have books that get both my parents and my in laws upset just seeing them.

[Ravin]

I've never read a dead dog book. Apparently it's a middle school literature right of passage I was spared by private school. Like this stuff:

http://aliceatwonderland.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/childrens-classic-literature-dead-dog-edition/

[Farrar]

I don't know that I have many.  I've been a children's book nut for years - way before I had kids.  However, there have been several great discoveries of books since I had my own kids.  I had never even heard of Moomintrolls before I had kids.  Can you believe that!  And I had never read The Saturdays, which is now astounding to me.  How could I have missed them as a kid?

 

The one thing that I've not done is read all the Little House books...  but that's because I didn't like them as a kid, so I didn't finish them.  I did read the kids Farmer Boy though.  And it was fine, I guess, but I'm not diving in with the rest of them.  Oh, and I've not read much Thornton Burgess.  But again, I've read some - it's just not my cup of tea.

[sewingmama]

The Narnia Books. I still haven't read them to my kids either. I have seen the movie but didn't like it much. Maybe that is why I am hesitating.

 

I've pretty much read every other kids classic. Well except Winnie the pooh and wind in the willows. Just couldn't get into them.

[73349]

I never read the Narnia books or The Hobbit.

[Onceuponatime]

I thought I'd read just about every western children's classic there is, even all the sad animal ones. Apparently, I've missed some things. Last week I realized I've never read any Enid Blyton and  I don't know what moomintrolls are.

 

 

[FO4UR]

I only read a smattering of good books as a child, The Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables, Little House on the Prairie. 

Most of the children's classics that I have read have been read to my children. 

 

 

 

 

[Cinder]

I read a lot as a kid but hadn't read any Little House, Narnia, Tokien, The Secret Garden, Little Women, or EB White. Besides Beverly Cleary I'm wondering what I actually did read back then.

[KungFuPanda]

"Boy stuff" like Treasure Island didn't interest me until it had a boy. Also, I hadn't read ANY Narnia books until I read them to my children.

[Heatherwith4]

Mine are too numerous to list. It's weird, too, because I always had a book in hand growing up. I think I just moved on to grown up books fairly early. :O

 

I'm catching up on the children's books quite nicely now, though. :)

[Amber in SJ]

I was an adult before reading Moomintrolls, but I was a college kid with no kids.  Go figure.  The ones I love now that I missed as a child are the Swallows and Amazons series.  

 

Amber in SJ

[LostSurprise]

Enid Blyton

Swallows and Amazons

 

I didn't even hear of those until after that 100 books meme on Facebook. 

I didn't hear about Anne of Green Gables until the movies came out when I was in high school. I think I read some of them in college. *shrug*

 

I'm not sure where I heard of Moomintroll. Here, maybe? I bought some of those for ds3 a few years ago and he's flying through them. Oh, and Tintin. Dh picked up the entire series right before the movie came out. 

 

Amero-centric childhood, I guess. That's what life was like before the Internet, dear children. If it wasn't at the local library and Scholastic didn't sell it, we didn't know about it. 

[PeacefulChaos]

I didn't read The Secret Garden, Black Beauty, The Jungle Book, or Swiss Family Robinson til I had kids.  There are probably a few more in there that I'm not thinking of...

 

I haven't read any of the Little House books.  Nor do I plan to.  I bought a bunch of them last year (really cheap, thank goodness) and tried reading one and nearly died of boredom (slight exaggeration is possible).  If the kids want to read them, whatever - but I won't require it.

 

 

[Crimson Wife]

I never heard of the Moomintrolls until this thread. Now you all have me curious!

 

I read a TON as a kid and my mom was big into having me read classic children's lit so I did read most of the famous ones. Some that I didn't until I was an adult:

 

Girl of the Limberlost

The Yearling

The Winged Watchman

The Bronze Bow

anything by Rosemary Sutcliff

 

ETA: The Betsy-Tacy books, though I only read a few of these.

[Guest]

I basically read none of the classics in children's lit until I started homeschooling my dd and reading here. So far I've homeschooled through the 4th grade, so that is the extent of my knowledge of History and Children's Literature. :-)

 

Yup, same here. It is strange to me, as someone mentioned above, because I was always reading and people have always considered me a reader. My mom read us a ton of picture books, but they aren't the classics that I read now to my kids. I grew up with a love of reading, and yet I feel so illiterate! I also went to a private Christian school and I know a lot of my first reading books were the Abeka readers, which may be why I am so opposed to that style of reading (leveled readers) and we push reading real books here. Growing up, I mostly read The Babysitter's Club, any horse fiction (I think the only "classic" books I read were King of the Wind and Misty of Chincoteague) and then some Christian fiction. Don't even get me started on high school literature. Oy! Definitely trying to push better and classic literature on my kids.

[Slache]

I read almost nothing as a kid. My school didn't teach phonics and I was in special ed where we didn't read actual books until I was in 3rd grade when my grandfather bought me hooked on phonics and I was put in normal classes. I was one of only 3 white kids at my school and my Language Arts class was taught in Spanish so I didn't bother reading. As an adult I've collected books like Honey for A Child's Heart and I want to get Reading Roadmaps because I'm sure I would do a terrible job choosing literature on my own. I drool over AO and Sonlight.

[shukriyya]

There's not much I missed out on as I read voraciously as a child and my parents, both writers, made sure all the classics were available. Summers when I wasn't outside running around were spent at the library. Like a few others though Moomins found me as an adult with a young child. The one glaring miss is Tolkien. As a tween and then teen I struggled through 'The Hobbit' after several mis-attempts and stopped there. I just couldn't find my way into the realm he created. And even now surrounded by a family of LOTR lovers I'm not there. I'm familiar with a lot of the scenes and characters but I still have no desire to pick up the books and read them.

[*Lulu*]

Moomins....I've never even heard of that series....hmmm.

 

I still haven't read Amazons and Swallows, The Bronze Bow, or several of the Lang Fairy Tale books.

 

As an adult I finally read the Oz books, Edith Nesbit's works, the Wind and the Willows, and the Fantastic Mr. Fox with my children.

 

As a child I read every series and classic available through our library.

[Chelli]

I read a TON as a kid, but 99% of it was garbage (Sweet Valley High, Babysitter's Club, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, etc.). The only classics I read were Anne of Green Gables series, Little House on the Prairie series, Narnia series, and in 6th grade I read Uncle Tom's Cabin because I was fascinated with the Civil War. That's it. No Charlotte's Web,Secret Garden, Little Princess, Winnie the Pooh, Black Beauty, Pippi Longstocking, etc.

 

I'm more strict about our read aloud time than the kids because I love reading the classics as much or more than they do. It made me realize how much amazing children's lit is out there. I wish my mom had been a little more involved in my reading choices and steered me toward the good stuff. That's part of the reason I give my kids assigned reading lists for school. They also tend to gravitate toward the more twaddlish books in their spare time so I assign the good stuff for school.