Book Report

This post combines three of my great loves: books, lists, and nostalgia.  Last week I ordered a number of children's books to be donated to Maine schools in memory of my aunt, who would have turned 60 this month.  Ruth was an elementary school teacher and the book drive is a lovely way to honor her.  My parents, grandparents, and The Dude all let me order for them because this small project was right up my alley.  Thinking about my favorite children's books reminded me of one of the great thrills of elementary school-- ordering from the Scholastic book club.  My parents were pretty awesome about letting me pick books.  I should thanks them for that.  I usually chose a Babysitters Club book, as I was obsessed with that series for several years.  In junior high I moved on to R. L. Stine and Christopher Pike books.

As much as I treasured my monthly selections from Scholastic, none of my very favorite books were purchased through their catalogs.  In the approximate order that I read them, here are my all time favorites.

Anne of Green Gables series, Lucy Maud Montgomery
I read these books when I was little and then cranked through the series again during a high school summer vacation.  Anne Shirley is such a great heroine for little girls.  She is smart, honest, creative, and a good friend.  I prefer the early books in the series because Anne's fabulous personality seems to fade as the series progresses and she ages.  By the final book, some of her children are old enough to fight in World War I.  The two Anne movies that used to play on PBS when I was little were a delight and reinforced my desire to someday visit Prince Edward Island.

Charlotte's Web, E. B. White
This is such a sweet book about friendship.  The first time I read it and got to the part where (spoiler alert) Charlotte died, I was devastated.  Just destroyed.  (Side note: my overwrought reactions to the death of beloved book characters will be a reoccurring theme in this post.  Did I mention how heartsick I was when Anne Shirley's adoptive father Matthew died?  Oh boy.)  In a hypothetical world where I had kids and had to explain to them why they were vegetarians, I'd reference Wilbur in a second.

Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Paterson
Speaking of crying.  Holy smokes.  The end of this book hit me really hard.  I felt so very depressed for poor Jess who had lost his best friend.  

The Outsiders, S. E. Hinton
Whenever I read and enjoyed a book that wasn't super girly, I made The Dude read it right after me so we could discuss.  The Outsiders was one of those books.  I thought it was amazing.  Hinton was a teenager when she wrote this book and although there are some ridiculous elements (brothers named Sodapop and Ponyboy?!) it totally spoke to me when I was in junior high school.  Lots of drama with the Curtis brothers struggling to remain together after the death of their parents, the greaser versus Soc battles that resulted in multiple deaths, and some killer Robert Frost poetry.  "Stay gold, Ponyboy."

The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCullough
This was a book that I started reading after my mum and I rented the mini-series from the library.  My mum had read the book and seen the mini-series years before and then she shared the experience with me when I was probably in junior high. Meggie, a young gal who lives in the Australian Outback, falls in love with her priest.  Very taboo, and thus totally thrilling to me.

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
We read this in my sophomore English class and I loved it.  I've read it a couple times since then and I always enjoy Scout's narration and the colorful characters in Maycomb.  I would like to have a fraction of Atticus Finch's goodness.

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
I love Jane Austen and this is my favorite of her books.

The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I have a Le Petit Prince poster framed in my living room.  So yeah, I really do like this book.  I first read it in my high school French class.  Since then I've stuck to the English translation, but it is still lovely.

The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
After I graduated from college, I convinced my dad to read a number of my favorite books.  This was one of them and I have to admit that I don't blame him for not enjoying it.  As a teenager, I appreciated Holden Caulfield's disdain for everything.  People are phonies, am I right?  But yeah, reading it as an adult, he is more of a whiny d-bag than a sensitive outsider.

A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
This book started me on a serious John Irving kick in college.  None of his other novels reached the heights of Owen Meany for me though.  I've read it several times and it still makes me laugh out loud and cry.  Owen is such an original character.  The narrator John is a bit of a blank, and when I reread the book, I skip over the parts where he talks about his present-day life.  I'm looking for the all-caps dialog from the hilarious, brilliant, and tragic Owen.  Love him.

Harry Potter series, J. K. Rowling
The best part about the Harry Potter series was reading it at the same time as various friends and family members.  My family vacations managed to coincide with the release of the final few books so that several of us in the house were racing through the books at the same time.  The series is very comforting to me.  And the Weasley family, like all gingers (Anne Shirley included), is super awesome.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
This is a short and sweet book.  It consists of a series of letters written between friends in post-World War II England.  I picked it up several years ago to read on vacation and had no idea that I would like it so much.