Walter Farley also wrote a nice biography of Man O'War (well, I remember it as nice - I haven't read it in years.)

People! has no one mentioned the Oz books? I loved those books, even when they (finally) let me into the adult section of the public library, I'd go back and read them.

I loved the Oz books. Though they're very uneven from book to book. Still, my favorite was the Patchwork Girl which I think Kara would adore. I also really liked Baum's books on the Sea Fairies and Sky Island (which was super creepy).

I can't believe I forgot the Oz books. I thought they were all wonderful, but I think the Patchwork Girl was my favorite, too.

And remember Ozma - she's something of a role model! (she even gets a tiara)

They're not creepy or scary at all, but I adored the All-of-a-Kind Family books at that age. A Jewish family on the Lower East Side before WWI. Absolutely wonderful books.

Oh, Marguerite Henry, is there a girl who hasn't devoured those books?

Yes.

(Is she one of these horsey writers? I never had a horsey phase. Went straight to dragons instead.)

And yes, the Oz books! God, I loved the artwork. And Glinda is So Much Cooler in the books than in the movie - I hated movie!Glinda (although Wicked has redeemed her for me). Still, book!Glinda is cool and dignified and beautiful and elegant and powerful and has loads of gorgeous girly minions. She's sort of awesome.

They're not creepy or scary at all, but I adored the All-of-a-Kind Family books at that age. A Jewish family on the Lower East Side before WWI. Absolutely wonderful books.

I loved these. There were five sisters, and then a little brother in the later books. (For some reason, there are two scenes from these that I remember vividly -- the first is when the girls are getting kind of lazy about dusting the house, so their mother hides a bunch of pennies in the little hard-to-dusk crevices, so they'll only find them if they do really thorough dusting. Then later on, she changes the number of pennies she hides, so that they know they have to dust everything, and not just stop once they've found the standard number of pennies. The other scene is when the girls are going to the library, and the youngest one lost the book she was supposed to return, and she's scared to tell the "library lady" about it.)

They also kept their Passover dishes in a barrel, which seemed to me a much more interesting place than a cardboard box, which was where my family kept Passover dishes.

Hil, I know those exact scenes! The pennies one fascinated me.

The whole thing was interesting to me, because I grew up Presbyterian in the NJ suburbs in the 1970s.

Those sound lovely.

This afternoon, I went to the library and checked out a few from the list--randomly because I wasn't planning to go to the library. I came home with the Spiderwick Chronicles, The Care and Feeding of Pixies, a tie-in book; Little House; and Pippi Longstocking. She's read the tie-in and the first Spiderwick and is well into Pippi. There are more books for her at our library than there were for me when I was her age. I'm guessing it's a good thing.