domestic dilettante, humorless feminist shrew

Maura’s birthday is on November first, and–obviously–we’re gearing up for it. We’ve accumulated most of her presents over the last month or two, a Barbie here, a DVD there, Bendaroos (which she’s wanted desperately for years, literally) at the wholesale club. The only thing left was books.

The nearest bookstore is a Borders a mile or two away, and while I always think that I love bookshops, I actually find them pretty stressful. Things are poorly organized, there’s no way to check reviews (well, except on my phone, but that’s tedious), and bookstores are full of people, which I always find distracting. Amazon or other online stores are definitely my preferred shopping locations.

I knew that I had a $50 Amazon giftcard coming soon from MyPoints, so I put off buying books, planning to use that for them. It showed up over the weekend, so this evening I sat down and figured out what I was getting.

I lost probably three hours of my life to the children’s books on Amazon. When I sat down, I was a little overwhelmed and having a hard time coming up with titles that Maura would like. She’s reading to herself now, but she’s also really into having me read to her at night, usually from chapter books that we’ll portion out over a few nights. So I did what anyone in my situation would do: turned to ask.MetaFilter. Searching for best children’s books got me a bunch of threads to use as jumping-off points, and then it was all downhill.

We ended up with Ramona the Pest, Ramona the Brave, Junie B., First Grader, Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Harriet the Spy, The Bad Beginning, The Field Guide, All-of-a-Kind Family, Ella Enchanted, and Monsters vs. Aliens: Team Monster. Most of them I remember fondly from when I was little–probably a year or two older than Maura. Sort of a mixed bag, and I’m sure that at least some of them will be boring to her right now, but I think that over the next year or two she’ll grow into all of them. Some people buy their kids clothes to grow into–I buy mine books.

When I was a kid, I read everything. I mean everything–I pretty much worked my way through the children’s department of the library. Even then, I loved genre fiction: Nancy Drew, the Famous Five, Encyclopedia Brown, the Bobbsey Twins, the Boxcar Children. I was also surprisingly keen on historical fiction of any stripe, and devoured the Betsy-Tacy books, Little Women, Primrose Day, Carolyn Haywood’s Betsy series, The Railway Children,The Five Little Peppers, Anne of Green Gables, All-of-a-Kind Family and the Melendys. I loved Bridge to Terebethia, and Matilda, and Noel Streatfield’s Shoes books.

I’m hoping that eventually I can acquire all my favorite books from my childhood, both so that I can reread them and so that Maura can read them. Somewhere, I have a giant list of books that I love, or at least remember loving, and I think that we’re just going to buy a few more every time there’s a bit of extra money lying around.

Like I said, I have a whole list, but I’m sure that I’m forgetting stuff. What did you guys read when you were little? Have you found that any of it doesn’t stand up to rereads now that you’re an adult? I’ve been lucky and haven’t found any–yet–that don’t hold up, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.