So the Top Ten topic this week from The Broke and The Bookish is all about finding your inner child, or more specifically, the books you'd wish you'd introduced to your inner child when it was more of an outer child (:
Once again, it's a great topic but surprisingly hard. I haven't read a lot of children's books since back in the day when I was a child so my pool on which to draw is kind of shallow. Thus, my list is a mix of the children's books I missed as a child and have since read as an adult, and books that have come out more recently that I know I would have loved to discover early in my love affair with the written word.
1. Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling - Okay so this is an obvious choice and I have a feeling it will be on a lot of lists. My ninth grade English teacher turned me on to Harry Potter when only the first two books were published, so I was still quite young when I started the series, but I would have loved to have had such a rich source of enjoyment in my early reading years.
2. Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer - My best friend gave me the first book in this series for my birthday a few years ago with the urgent instruction to READ IT NOW! I did, and I loved it. I mean, how could you not love following the exploits of a twelve-year-old criminal mastermind?
3. Holes by Louis Sachar - I read this one my freshman year of college in one of those situations I try to avoid - after I saw the movie. This would have been a great companion in those times I was unfairly grounded to my room as a kid. (In the years before I was unfairly grounded to the living room...)
4. The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley - I read a lot of McKinley's fairytale re-imaginings as a kid (and totally recommend them), but I somehow missed this book and the two others in the trilogy. It's a great fantasy read and has a strong female character that would have been good for me to try to identify with as a kid.
5. True Grit by Charles Portis - This was another of those situations where I read the book post-movie, but the dialogue of the movie was so great I ran out and got the book right after and it is just as delicious if not more so. It also has a strong female character that would have been good for me to get to know.
6. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman - This was quirky and hilarious as an adult and I can only imagine my enjoyment would have grown exponentially if I had read it when I could have put myself in the shoes of Nobody Owens.
7. Junie B. Jones by Barbara Park - My mom swears these books were inspired by me and my sisters and when we discovered them by happy accident when I was in high school I couldn't help thinking she might be right... It's probably good that they came along later in life though, because we would have gotten some SWEET ideas for mischief in our early years from this series.
8. Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney - A hilarious series captures pre-adolescence in all it's awkward glory. A refreshing read as an adult and I would have used it as a survival guide had I been able to read it as a kid.
9. Confessions of Georgia Nicolson by Louise Rennison - Similar to the Wimpy Kid, Georgia Nicolson experiences all of the cringe-worthy moments we fear as young girls, yet she somehow surmounts them and even triumphs at times. That is something I as a young girl would have been relieved to know.
10. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst - Oh how I would have loved this book at bedtime! I sometimes read it now because it's just that good. Seriously.
