Children's books?

Oh gosh, I had to laugh when I saw this week's Image hosted by Photobucket.com. I have LOADS of children's books! Here goes....

"With J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince making its sensational debut last weekend I started thinking about children's books. There have been a lot of wonderful ones over the years, The Cat in the Hat, Where the Wild Things Are, Bambi, the Mother Westwind stories, the Chronicles of Narnia, the Chronicles of Prydain, Nancy Drew, and on and on."

1. As an adult, do you own children's books?
Oh YES!! I have all the Harry Potters of course, and the Narnia books, and Winnie the Pooh and some Beatrix Potter, but I also have a host of Girl's Own schoolgirl type stories from the early to mid 20th century. I guess I have over 200 children's books in total, plus a couple of reference books on the Girl's Own stories.

I rediscovered these a few years ago and started collecting. I also discovered there are loads of us out there - adults who still read the books they read when they were younger and who collect them. In fact, some of these books are now worth thousands!

Anyway, I now have - most of the Chalet School series by Elinor M Brent-Dyer; almost all the Abbey books by Elsie Oxenham, and a few others by her not in that series; a host of Nancy Drews (sadly the heavily edited paperbacks and not originals); the complete Lone Pine series by Malcolm Saville; most of Clare Mallory's books; and a load of books by other authors of that period, including a fantastic annual from 1927 with articles in it like 'What to do with sealing wax'.

By the way, if you want to know more about this period and these authors, go here.

2. If you do, do you still read them even when there are no children around?
Um yes! No children round here except for me!

3. What were your favorites as a child? Now?
Definitely Malcolm Saville's Lone Pine series and Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising sequence. I still read them and still love them. Along with Harry Potter and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials sequence I'd say they were still my favourites.

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