My Favorite Children's books

With a whole month of children's books happening, you only get to see a small dose of the ones that we love.  So, I thought I'd give you a list of some of my most favorite children's books.

Did you really expect me to start out with anything other than my favorite children's book of all time?  Bridge to Terabithia is a great book.  It has a quirky girl named Leslie (who's just the right amount of odd) but the story is told from her best friend's point of view, Jess.  It's fun, heartwarming, and, while sad, still totally worth a read.

High fantasy books by C.S. Lewis.  They're fun, heartwarming, and adventurous books.  We get to see a huge world that Lewis created.  And while the Pevensies are only in about three or four of the books, we still love all of the characters dearly.

You don't have a list without Phillip Pullman's classic fantasy series.  Written as an antithesis to Chronicles of Narnia (Chronicles has very overt religious themes, while Pullman's book opposes organized religion), it's a wonderful, adventurous story that will make you fall in love with Will and Lyra.

This book basically takes every fairy tale you've ever known and turns it on its head.  The stinky cheese man is afraid everyone wants to eat him... but really they're all trying to get away.  Chicken Little has the table of contents falling on his head and the red hen is complaining about the fact that she doesn't have anyone to help her make bread... oh, and that she doesn't have a story.

This was the first Holocaust fiction that I ever read.  It's really a great book about friendship during a hard time in history, a time most of us can't even imagine.  It's intense and endearing and exciting and, unlike a LOT of Holocaust books, has a relatively happy ending.

Who can resist the charms of Wilbur the Pig, Charlotte the Spider and even Templeton the Rat.  You're rooting for Wilbur through the whole thing, and fall in love with their friendship.  I REALLY recommend this book for kids, because it has some awesome vocabulary in it.  Even better, E.B. White manages to define the words without making it really obnoxiously obvious or making the kid feel like they're being talked down to.

An sweet, but sad, coming of age story.  It's good for older kids, mainly because the main character is right on the cusp of childhood/teenagehood.  She's twelve, that really odd age when you're not really a kid anymore, but you haven't quite graduated into being a teen.  She's dealing with her mother leaving and her father moving her away from her home.  Great (and heartbreaking) read.

One of the few Children's books by Nail Gaiman, and it's fabulous, as things from Gaiman usually are.  It's a book about a different dimension (that's almost exactly like our own), and people have buttons for eyes and just kind of a scary (but in an awesome way) book.

Honorable Mention:
The Secret Garden - A book I love, but more because I grew up with it than for it's literary value.
Harriet The Spy - An awesome book, but I've already talked about this one.
A Series of Unfortunate Events - Not one of my particular favorites, but not because they're bad books; I just getting annoyed by Lemony Snicket's writing.

What's your favorite children's book?