My favorite childhood favorite is Barbie Goes to a Party by Jean Bethell, illustrated by Claudine Nankivel. The story details how Barbie spends an afternoon consulting her mother and girlfriends, and how her mother and she advise Barbie’s friend Midge, about what to wear to a party. In the end, everyone wears the same outfit, as per Barbie’s suggestion. So they are all the best dressed at the party!
This book is all about friendship, family, wisdom, ingenuity, and a happily-ever-after ending, much like the romance novels I represent now. Looking back at my early taste in books, the fact I used to read this story to my girls when they were little, and how it still makes me smile, it’s no wonder I enjoy being a literary agent so much. And that I gravitate to stories with happy endings.
Today, if you are throwing a party, I think you should invite me. I still might ask my mother what to wear. I will always ask my husband, although, unlike Barbie’s mother, he will never bake cupcakes during the decision-making process. Today’s book might be titled, Tamela Goes to the ACFW Banquet. I might spend a few moments thinking about what to wear. Some things never change.
Your turn:
What is your favorite childhood book?
Are the characters in your favorite book like you at all?
Proposals: Comparing Your Writing to Icons
How sweet! I’ll have to read this book for myself!
I loved Nancy Drew. My mom read me The Secret of the Red Barn, and then I read the rest for myself. I do remember really liking one or two with her guy friend (Ned?). Perhaps an early indication of my future love for romance. 🙂
Fun blog. Thanks Tamela!
Sounds like a great story!
My favorites were HARRY THE DIRTY DOG and GO, DOG GO. I’m not sure what that says about me. Haha! But I love dogs and books with dogs. (But I’m not a fan when the dog dies.) Thanks for the fun post!
I loved the Oz books by L. Frank Baum although I read so much that I could probably name a dozen other authors. But these books, which I never owned, were highly coveted by me both for the text and the wonderful illustrative covers by john R. Neill. http://www.art.com/gallery/id–a35046/john-r-neill-posters.htm. In fact, I desired them so highly, that I fantasized stealing money from my mother’s purse in order to buy them and only knew that fantasy to be unreal by the fact that I never did possess them.
What a fun image to see when your blog opened! I still have the dress on the cover of the book, and my Midge with her red hair and cheeks dotted with freckles wore it to dances with Allen while Barbie went with Ken.
My favorite books (before I read “Pride and Prejudice”) were my 15 or so volumes from the “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” series where Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin fought and conquered evil, often in the form of the henchmen of THRUSH. My favorite was #6 The Vampire Affair. I read each several times and even took a train case (remember those?) of them with me on our long family camping trips. I had a crush on the Russian Illya played by David McCallum on the TV show. Maybe that’s why I wanted to study Russian a dozen years later. I’m fairly certain it wasn’t because we read excerpts from “The Brothers Karamazov” in senior English.
My childhood favourite (and the first book I read cover to cover) is “HMS Ulysses”, by Alistair Maclean. Read it when I was six or seven.
The character with whom my own character resonated was the First Lieutenant, a somewhat haughty and flippant young Englishman whose soul was tempered by the fraught voyage through the U-boat-haunted wastes of the Murmansk run.
I’d invite you to a party anytime…but be aware that my parties involve footprints on the ceiling, horses raced in the hallway, and a game of Ballroom Rugby; this before the piano is set alight and dropped from a window.
And then drinks are served.
I got the Orson Welle’s The Invisible Man off the shelf in a bookmobile when I was young. I’m not sure I understood all of it, but I’ve had a love of sci-fi ever since.
Haha Tamela, I think I played dress up in a dress like that on the cover.
Mine was Cinderella, the Disney version. And a lot of what I loved were the dresses.
I am a happily ever after kind of gal.
I can’t remember the title, but it was a story about a crane. No, not the elegant bird crane, but a huge, red, machine used for digging holes…
It’s a really great story.
To this day I can’t look at machines without wondering about their personalities…
Karianne, that was the one I was thinking of. I think. It was Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. I LOVED that book as a girl. 🙂
When I was a very young girl, I loved the Frog and Toad books. I had issues with my eyes, so once I was cleared to read, I was thrilled!! As I moved into chapter books, Trixie Belden and her mysteries were ones I loved as well. There were so many books I lost myself in back in the day. 🙂
I loved a book about a puppy named Skeddadle. I also liked the Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka stories.
I love this post – if only because it takes me back to my childhood sweet spot (books) for a moment. My favorites were the Little House on the Prairie series. While I was a tomboy like Laura growing up, I am a such a city girl at heart. Jane Eyre became my next favorite. Makes some sense too.
Write me into that next book about the ACfW banquet. I’ll join you and Barbie thinking about what to wear… only I’ll be asking my teenage daughter.
This is such a fun post! I loved Frog and Toad, too, but I read them with my kids because they didn’t come out until I was in college.
I liked Marguerite Henry’s horse stories like Misty of Chincoteague and Brighty of the Grand Canyon, but what I really loved was her Album of Horses that described every breed in great detail. I almost memorized that book. I couldn’t own a horse, but I loved learning everything I could about them.
The Sand Dune Pony by Troy Nesbit was one of my favorites that was from the ‘50s and is being published again in the 2010’s! Nesbit wrote other western mysteries that I really liked, like The Forest Fire Mystery.
My favourite, that I’ll still read today, is Anne of Green Gables. Not just because the heroine had red hair and freckles, but I love/d the poetic descriptions of Prince Edward Island, the imaginative flights of adventure that often led to disaster, and seeing a girl valued more on her intelligence and warmth than her looks. What’s not to love?! 🙂
I see above that I’m not the only fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I read all her books in my grade school library. Later, the copy of “These Happy Golden Years” was worn and about to be discarded; I was allowed to take it home – what a treasure. Then years later, as the Mom of 2 junior high sons, I heard that Little House on the Prairie was to be on TV. How thrilled I was to learn that it would be a series, not just a one-time event. I now own Seasons 1-9 (1974-1983) on DVD.
This post made me smile, Tamela. The classic Barbie and Midge were a happy part of my childhood (not to mention lots and lots of books!). 🙂 My very favorite childhood book is still SCUFFY THE TUGBOAT. I loved reading about Scuffy’s travels and how he ended up happily back home, where he belonged. 🙂
And since you mentioned parties in your post, “WE” have reason for a party on September 6 !! (cue the birthday music) 😉
And happy birthday to you, too!!!
I loved Winnie-the-Pooh and the Honey Tree. We had a record that we played that read the book to us, and it included songs I still remember today. I have all Pooh stuffed characters in my office to remind me about the importance of,developing unique, flawed, and memorable characters. I think I’m most like Pooh…it’s time for a little smackeral…
The book that has stayed with me was Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes. It was the first book I read all by myself. (I was late learning to read.) Also, I’d lived in Lexington, MA, and all the Revolutionary War stuff connected. It triggered a lifelong love of books, history and historical fiction.
Enid Blyton’s Magic Faraway Tree series. Now I know I can actually go to those wonderful places – that’s why I write.
Hi, I saw your profile on Linked In, and that you present books to the Christian market. Just stopped by to say hi. My favorite childhood book was To Kill A Mockingbird, but before that it was spread across a set of illustrated science books, and before that it was a A Fly Went By. My love of stories began with my mom reading to me at bedtime.
My favorite childhood book was Janette Oke’s Love Come’s Softly at age eight, then her Canadian West Saga at ten years old, by age twelve, I became a Lori Wick fan and no one could find me without a Christian historical romance book under my nose during free time.
As for books written for children, the funny ones were my favorites. I still have Go, Dog. Go! and Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman somewhere in storage, and still intact–mostly. To quote Austen’s Elizabeth Bennett, “I dearly love a laugh.”
Another favorite was The Three Little Kittens. Seeing the naughty kittens make repairs for their mistakes and receive forgiveness and praise from their mother warmed my heart, since I wasn’t always a “good little kitten” myself at that age. 🙂