Friday Fives: A Blast from My Past

Aaaaand here I am again! I warned y'all. You just can't stop this train once it's starting rolling down the tracks. Unless I get tired or distracted by "Ooooh! Yummy!"

Now, what are my five favorite books from childhood bookshelves' past? Hmmm...to the time machine!

1) The Little White Horse
It's such a sweet story about love, and the animals are simply adorable! I read it many times, because the world was crafted so well. It's the classic fairy tale in my opinion.

2) Jane of Lantern Hill
I've never read any of Montgomery's other books, such as the more famous, Anne of Green Gables collection, but for some reason, I can still read this book to this day and love it just as much as the first time I read it. Jane's world on P.E. Island is perfectly delightful, and the problems she faces are very modern and adult. She's a plucky little character, but not in an annoying way like Anne always was to me whenever I tried to read her stories.

3) The Swiss Family Robinson
When I was about twelve, I bought a green, cloth-bound, hardcover, Children's Classic edition. It had gold letters and a built-in ribbon bookmark. At the time, it was the prettiest book I had ever purchased. The letters are faded now, the ribbon is frayed at the end, and the cloth-binding is starting to wear thin on the spine and edges of the cover, but all of that was done because I loved that book. I took it with me on every family trip or vacation, and I read it at least once a month for years. I keep it on a special bookshelf these days with the other books in this list.

4) The Black Stallion's Filly
I was obsessed with horses as a kid/preteen, and I devoured ever horse/pony series I could get my hands on.

Pony Pals, Saddle Club, The Black Stallion, King of the Wind (awesome book!), Misty of Chincoteague, My Friend Flicka, Green Grass of Wyoming, Thunderhead, and a plethora of older books that I found at garage and yard sales (A Horse of Her Own, Silver, Old Bones: The Wonder Horse, Midnight: Champion Bucking Horse, A Horse Called Mystery), National Velvet, the Heartland series, The Phantom Stallion series, and just about anything else with horse, stallion, mare, foal, filly, or colt in the name.

I was horse crazy, and that craze was fueled by the fact that I had a constant stream of horses while growing up. But after all of the growing up and book relocating that I've done, I've still managed to keep The Black Stallion's Filly and a handful of those first horse books that I used to feed my obsession. I'll probably never get rid of them.

5) The Book of Three

It's a romp of a tale, and whenever I start to feel nostalgic for my my younger days, I pick it up and give it a read. It doesn't take me very long, but I always feel refreshed afterwards. Lloyd just has a way with characters that delights the child within me.




I can't believe I made it through a whole list without mentioning Harry Potter, but I think that by now, y'all can pretty much assume with 100 percent certainty that I freaking adore Harry Potter and always will, until eternity, amen. So, really, I could have made this entire list just Harry Potter books, but I wanted to give some of my other favorites a chance to shine and be noticed. They don't get outside much. I think they'd appreciate anything y'all could say to make them maintain their self-confidence in the shadow of the Boy-Who-Lived-Then-Died-Then-Lived-Again.