K-12 Reading Poll

[author_by_night]

Okay. I'm going to attempt a cut yet again.

This poll is on what books you read between preschool and grade twelve - if you're unfamiliar with the American School system, that's age three through age seventeen/eighteen.

I didn't include grade level. Well, they are in order with some grade level/age in mind, but truthfully, everyone reads books at a different rate, and everyone's version of "grade level" differs. I know people who thought I was very mature for reading Baby-Sitter's club at eight years old; I know others who stopped reading them at seven years old. Same with Harry Potter - I've seen reading lists with Harry Potter for third graders and lists with Harry Potter for sixth graders.

I got some of these books out of memory, and some from lists. I tried to keep it as not-exclusively-American as possible, but some of these books are not too specific with their location (such as The Giver), and others, I have no idea what they are about, let alone where they come from. Plus, I used to live in Europe, and I read a lot of these American books.

Please do share other books you've read - my aim is to see what books kids read, and when. I was well read when I was younger, yet I never once touched most of the books I see on the book lists. (I keep seeing books that I've never heard of, and don't know if I don't remember them, or if they were never read to me, or if they were published when I'd outgrown that level).

ETA: You can pick a book you read then, or one you've read recently.

Okay, pray the cut works.


[Poll #772446]

Comments

[zoepaleologa.livejournal.com]

I'm fifty-one years old, and therefore many of the "school" readers are way later than me.

Here's what I read voraciously in the fifties, early sixties. First off, I taught myself to read at age three, by dint of my mother's reading to me endlessly.

Winnie-the-Pooh/The House at Pooh Corner
Fairy Tales (all sorts, Andersen, traditional and the complete Grimms - of which I had read everyone by the time I was seven. Some were damn scary).
Greek/Trojan and Norse Mythology (bowdlerised for the kiddies)
Paddington Bear
Mary Plain - another series of books about a smartarsed talking bear. I adored her.
Santa Clause in Summer, by Compton McKenzie (of Whisky Galore fame, it's his only children's book)
101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith

When I was nine, I graduated to grown up stuff, mostly sci-fi (esp. John Wyndham) and at 11 I started reading Orwell. I was a precocious little show off. Plus the telly was crap in the sixties, AND we had no internet...

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

Santa Clause in the summer... was that his "diary"? It sounds vaguely familiar.

[zoepaleologa.livejournal.com]

No not his diary, and it would have helped if I'd spelled it correctly, as "Santa Claus in Summer". It's a children's novel. McKenzie took all the traditional nursery rhymes, one or two folk tales, put them in a jar, shook them up and the book is the result.

It centres on the village of Banbury Cross (where all nursery rhymes seem to exist) and where the children have become excessively well behaved. The story is a plot by Puck and Santa Claus to restore the status quo of mischievous children. There's a lot more plot to it, than that - Midsummer Night's Dream is in there, too. Sadly I do not have it, and it's out of print, too.

Hands down my all-time favourite children's book.