The Children’s Books We Still Love as Adults

Whether you’re starting a book club for your grade schooler, looking for bedtime stories that you can enjoy, too, or are just in need of a little cheap escapism, there are few sweeter thrills than revisiting your favorite books from childhood. To help get you started on your way-back reading list, we asked some of our writers for their recommendations:
Lauren Passell recommends Peppermints in the Parlor:
“Peppermints In The Parlor tells the story of Emily, an orphaned girl who goes to live with her Aunt and Uncle Twice in their beautiful San Francisco mansion. But when she gets there, Aunt Twice is a slave in her own home, Uncle Twice is missing, and there’s this lady in charge named Mrs. Meeching, who is just pure evil. The book targets fourth graders, but I don’t care how old you are: this whole premise is totally creepy, and everyone will want to know why it’s forbidden to touch the peppermints in the parlor. (I’m not trying to sound mysterious–I haven’t read the book in twenty years, and I actually don’t remember. Someone please read up and remind me.)”
Nicole Hill recommends John R. Erickson’s Hank the Cowdog series:
“The first chapter of the first adventure has a murder in the first paragraph. Not even George R.R. Martin is audacious enough to begin a book with a chapter titled ‘Bloody Murder.’ Of course, Mr. Martin was never the surly four-legged Head of Ranch Security, with only his keen intellect, wry sense of irony, and simpleton sidekick Drover standing between this Texas Panhandle ranch and utter chaos. Hank the Cowdog, a self-unaware canine Clint Eastwood, was my companion throughout childhood, and I’m happy to report that nostalgia for John R. Erickson’s series (61 and counting!) is not misplaced. The books are still just as funny—maybe even funnier now that I’m old enough to understand that spotted bird dog Plato didn’t get his name because ‘his eyes look like plates sometimes, empty plates.’ But hey, Hank’s a lawman, not a philosopher. “
Joel Cunningham recommends Lois Lowry’s Anastasia series:
“Popular wisdom holds that boys won’t read books about girls, a stereotype I have been breaking in earnest since the mid-1980s, when my favorite Judy Blume book was not Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing but Starring Sally J. Friedman as Herself. But there was perhaps no more incongruous series on my shelves than Lois Lowry’s Anastasia books. Because why wouldn’t a ten-year-old boy want to read about the trials and travails of an emotionally precocious preteen girl dealing with puberty, dating, and her annoying little brother? Obviously I would read these books, and not the spinoffs starring Sam himself (an obvious bid to cash in on Fudge-a-mania!, if you ask me). I’d love to revisit these books and try to figure out if they reveal the secret of why, today, I’d rather go out for brunch with my wife’s friends than go to a sports bar with mine. I can at least say with certainty that they are the cause of my desire to own a home with a tower bedroom.”
Melissa Albert recommends Bruce Coville’s Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher:
While on the run from schoolyard bullies, Jeremy Thatcher pulls off the trick I never could manage, no matter how many times I wished for it as a kid: he stumbles on a real, live magic shop, the kind that’s no longer there the second time you look. Jeremy ends up in possession of what looks like a smooth marble, but is, in fact, a dragon’s egg. In order to make it hatch, he has to recite this poem: ‘Full moon’s light to wake the egg/Full moon’s light to hatch it/Midsummer Night will crack the world/But St. John’s Day will patch it.’ How cool is that? After the dragon is born, she and Jeremy develop a powerful emotional link, that eventually blossoms into a telepathic bond. Long before paranormal romance became a seller’s market, and magic-loving kids had a thousand choices when it came time to visit the bookmobile, Coville was turning out gems like this one, in which enchantment and the existence of mythical creatures is seamlessly woven into a story about a shy kid finding his place in the world.”
Rebecca Jane Stokes recommends Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Egypt Game:
“I was obsessed with The Egypt Game, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. I happened upon it in the midst of my mom’s first foray into summer-schooling us at home (I know, it was truly thrilling). To trick us into education, she spent a month teaching me and my siblings all about ancient Egypt. While initially skeptical, I became passionate the moment she mentioned that cats were perceived to be royalty. The Egypt Game details the coming together of a diverse group of California kids who begin to act out, in the backyard of a local antique shop, their own take on Egyptian mythology and ritual. As a kid, this was what engaged me. As an adult, I was mesmerized by the disparate, lost, hurting group of young loners Keatley Snyder created, and how finding each other and this game gave them the emotional infrastructure to exist in a challenging—at times cruel—world. While I was aware that the secondary plot was about a man doing something bad to kids, I don’t think I understood that he was assaulting and actually murdering anyone. I knew that there was danger, but I thought the real stakes were only whether or not they would get to continue escaping to this make-believe land. Reading it as an adult and knowing just how life-or-death the story actually is makes it that much more compelling.”
Josh Sorokach recommends R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series:
“‘Reader, beware, you’re in for a scare.’ The legacy of Goosebumps is quite unique: here’s a series that arguably redefined the children’s horror fiction genre, but its popularity had little to do with content and everything to do with perception. Goosebumps dominated the early- to mid-90s middle school book fair scene. The series eschewed traditional library law, because everyone judged these books by their covers. How could you not? With titles like Say Cheese and Die, Let’s Get Invisible, Piano Lessons Can Be Murder, and The Blob That Ate Everyone, Goosebumps was coolness personified. It helped elevate the culture of reading for kids from required to recreational. Reading a Goosebumps book was fun, but owning a Goosebumps book was mandatory.”
Bo Larkin DOES NOT recommend Bernard Wiseman’s My Goo Goo:
“This book depicts a boy’s terrifying ordeal with his beloved toy robot, Goo Goo, which turns evil and eventually bites him. Goo Goo then gets robo-lobotomized, and everything goes back to normal. The illustrations become progressively darker, as the previously lovable Goo Goo slowly becomes an evil nightmare. Who in their right mind would read this to children?”