Shelfies: Children’s Literature

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Today we conclude our tour of the Unruly Library with the little bookcase from my childhood nursery.

My mom must’ve known she had a little reader on the way, because she made sure there was a bookcase by my bed from the very beginning. (And she read aloud to me in the womb, which we both have always believed contributed enormously to how I turned out.)

Because it feels right, my children’s books—the ones that have survived year after year of librarian-like weeding cycles—are shelved in my childhood bookcase.

Here’s a list of the authors who dominate my childhood bookshelves, listed in the order in which I read them…

  • Beverly Cleary
  • Lois Lowry
  • Louise Fitzhugh
  • Madeleine L’Engle
  • Gordon Korman
  • Paula Danziger
  • Jean Webster

And then we have a handful of mass market paperbacks from my high school years, when I read everything by Richard Bach and Catherine Marshall.

But my favorite book on the shelf is the most re-read book of my entire life: The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. I finally bought a hardcover, because my paperback literally fell apart.

This bookcase just makes me happy.

What are the most-loved books of your childhood?

2 thoughts on “Shelfies: Children’s Literature”

  1. bybeebooks

    I adored Harriet the Spy. I inhaled all the Beverly Cleary books, and did so again when the Spawn was young. I read Jean Webster’s Daddy-Long-Legs. I had my grandmother’s copy, which was a hardcover tie-in to the 1935 (?) movie starring Janet Gaynor as Judy Abbott and Warner Baxter as the title character.

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