Favorite books as a child

[Heather Hettick]

My favorite books my Mom used to read was Black Beauty and the Winnie the
Pooh books.  She also read us lots of Dr. Seuss and  the basic little Golden
books.  We had a whole collection of Disney books on records with books you
follow along with too.

When I first started reading, I read all the Flip books and Beatrix Potter
books - I liked animal stories.  The only non animal story I really remember
is one about a red steamshovel that I liked a lot when I was small.  I liked
Judy Bloom books too and the Ramona the Brat stories.  I went through a
stage of trying to read classics and I really enjoyed most of the Mark Twain
books.  I never really got into the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys books which were
quite popular with kids my age but read a few when visiting people who had
them just for something to do. (My husband actually liked them as his
favorite books as a kid, but he's the sort of person who prefers to read car
magazines and auto parts catalogs for entertainment now.)

As I got older, I read mainly horse books.  The Walter Farley Black Stallion
books and books by Margarite Henry.  Then I branched off into dog books like
the Big Red books, Jack London, Farley Mowat and other animal stories.
Charlotte's Web, Mrs. Frisbee and the rats of NIMH and Wind in the Willows
are favorites that I still own.  I read Watership Down for an English class
and liked it so much that I read more stuff by Richard Adams and the Plague
Dogs was one I liked even more.

When I was 13, my family moved to Sicily with the US Navy, and I met my best
friend, Betsy.  She introduced me to the Narnia books, Susan Cooper books as
well as some really great nonfiction books by Gerald Durrell and I read all
the James Herriot books that the tiny base library had. We also read lots of
comic books, mainly the DC superhero ones.

In later High School, I started reading a lot of Isaac Asimov and Agatha
Christie and still enjoy mysteries quite a bit but not most Sci Fi - Dick
Francis and P.D. James are my favorite mystery authors now.  I also read
just about every book that Ayn Rand wrote before I graduated high school.

My daughter just turned 3 and my favorite book to read to her right now is
Stellaluna.  She's quite fond of Madeline and Winnie the Pooh.  The Sara
Boynton books are pretty fun to read to small kids and I could memorize most
of them after a couple reads with all the rhyming - and so could she.  She
likes Dr Seuss quite a bit too.

Heather Hettick