More of the Top 5...

[tahnan]

From marfta: Top Five Books I Read Under the Age of 10. This is a hard one, because I'm not good at remembering things from before I was 30.

5. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - my favorite of the Narnia books when I was younger.

4. The Ordinary Jack series - which I hope is "under the age of 10", but who knows, at this point. But I did love those books.

3. A Wrinkle in Time - This one I know I read before I was 10, and it positively must be on this list.

2. The Trumpet of the Swan, E.B. White - I can only assume this would hold up, but Lord knows I loved it as a child.

1. The Westing Game - I must have read this before I was 10, mustn't I? I feel like I was born knowing it, it's been so long.

Comments

[saphir23.livejournal.com]

I gave The Westing Game as gift to a 10-year-old this Christmas.

It surprises me the number of people I've found who've read Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little but haven't heard of The Trumpet of the Swan. Watercress always brings the book to my mind.

[42itous.livejournal.com]

Once when I was playing Balderdash, the word tarn came up. I knew the meaning (a deep mountain lake), and furthermore knew exactly where I know it from: the scene in which Prince Caspian and the children find a deep body of water that turns everything it touches to gold -- a spear, and the toe of Peter's shoe.
Oddly, though, I reread that chapter and found that it doesn't mention the word tarn at all. So my mind must've made the connection later, when I did encounter the word and my memory mapped it onto a tarn that I knew well -- the one in Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Trumpet of the Swan was my favorite E B White. We had an autographed copy (as well as an everyday one), because my stepgrandfather was once a neighbor of White's (in Blue Hill, ME).

[lunchboy.livejournal.com]

My favorite read-under-10 book was "The Phantom Tollbooth". "The Westing Game" and "A Wrinkle in Time" would be right up there, though.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

"Phantom Tollbooth" definitely deserves to be on the list. If only I had found it before I was 10! But I know I read it at 13 (it was just after I moved back to Atlanta).

[cazique.livejournal.com]

ditto. I read it at, oh, 25 or so, when my then-girlfriend (now wife) gave it to me.