MeMe of Three

This MeMe is making the rounds of the blogsphere and it is also making the rounds of the Betsy-Tacy listserv. Which makes perfect sense since it’s a list of women who read and love the Betsy Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace. Those of us on the list are compulsive readers who will read the ads while riding the subway, the back of the cereal box or a tattered magazine in the doctors office so it’s not surprising we are also passionate about children’s literature.

I don’t like to resort to MeMe’s - include to many in your blog and it starts to read like you’ve joined the Stratemeyer Syndicate, but I’ve got a cold and I’m feeling brain dead. This one is short and rather fun.

What are your three favorite children's series?
1. The Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace.
2. The Shoe Series by Noel Streatfeidl.
3. The Beany Malone / Katie Rose and Stacy series by Lenora Mattingly Weber

What are your three favorite non-series children's books?
1. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
2. Miss Happiness and Miss Flower by Rumer Godden
3. An Old Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott

What are your three favorite children's book characters?
1. Ramona from the Henry Huggins / Ramona books by Beverly Cleary. She still makes me laugh
2. Emily Webster from Emily of Deep Valley by Maud Hart Lovelace. I was so like Emily when I was in High School
3. Jane Ellison in the Jane / F-H series by Anne Emery. Unlike many teenage heroines, Jane wasn’t perfect, in fact she fumbled and bumbled as much as I did as a teenager. It was nice to know I wasn’t alone.

Commentary:
This list is from the books I read growing up as child and still read and reread. I’ve found few contemporary children’s novelists whom I adore with the same passion, though I have many, many favorite picture books that I use over and over again in my lessons.

And of course I had to leave out many, many books – the Melendy Family series by Elizabeth Enright, Hitty Her First 100 Years, the books by Rosamund Du Jardin, the old, non PC Bobbsey Twins, the original Mary Poppins & Winnie the Pooh books (not the Disney versions), many other books by Rumer Godden and Frances Hodgson Burnett, Black Beauty, the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, the Moffat books by Eleanor Estes…the list goes on and on and on.

I’m not going to pass this MeMe on to anyone in particular. If it sends you down memory lane, then take it and run with it!