RTW: Forever Young

Road Trip Wednesday is a blog carnival, where YA Highway’s contributors and readers post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody’s take on the topic.

This week, Road Trip Wednesday the prompt was: What books were you obsessed with as a kid?

This is such a hard question. If I were to answer this honestly, my post would go on forever and probably start looking like an Amazon page. So I’ll stick to three—one for each stage of being a kid. (I’m discounting tween and teen books here because its my blog. Neener neener.)

 When I was too little to read, my mom used to take my sister and me to the library every day to pick out a new book. Somehow, we always ended up with Strega Nona, too. Along with Stone Soup (which I also love), this is the book my mother read to us over and over and over again.

I’ve read Where the Sidewalk Ends (and Silverstein’s others) cover to cover so many times I should have them all memorized (I don’t). I think what I loved most as a kid was the humor (a girl says she’ll die if she doesn’t get a pony … and then she dies? I was ROTFL before anyone spoke in acronyms. Now when I read them I’m amazed at Shel Silverstein’s skill.

Feeling nostalgic? Here, have a poem:

Bear In There by Shel Silverstein
There's a Polar Bear
In our Frigidaire—
He likes it 'cause it's cold in there.
With his seat in the meat
And his face in the fish
And his big hairy paws
In the buttery dish,
He's nibbling the noodles,
He's munching the rice,
He's slurping the soda,
He's licking the ice.
And he lets out a roar
If you open the door.
And it gives me a scare
To know he's in there—
That Polary Bear
In our Fridgitydaire.

I first read Number the Stars in fifth grade and I’m pretty sure I’ll never get the image of Annemarie pressing her star of David necklace into her palm—to hide it from Nazi soldiers—so hard that it left a mark. It was the first time I’d read a book about the Holocaust, and I remember understanding that time period better after reading this book than listening to boring lectures.

And now I’m feeling nostalgic, wishing I hadn’t left my childhood books at my parents’ house. Because I plan on reading these again and again…

What were your favorite books as a kid?

p.s. There are three days left to enter the Mega Giveaway (I’m giving away a copy of Across the Universe, but you can enter to win a Kindle, too.) Go here for more info.