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.

I can't wait to start reading the Little House books aloud to Sara. And A Little Princess.

I still remember the dusty smell of the bedside lamp (burlap shade, and I think the wood was cedar) as mom read the Little House books to me. Chapter a night. At some point, I took over the reading, silently, and I have no idea what became of that lamp.

When I didn't understand a farming practice described (what's a scythe? Or a thresher?) Mom always stopped to explain from her childhood knowledge.

She's read the tie-in and the first Spiderwick and is well into Pippi.

Wow, she reads quick!

I obssessed over those books for years, trying to remember the title or the author or something.

Deena, do you need the titles? If I had an extra set I'd send them to you!

So many of these books were familiar friends while I was growing up. I'm thinking I need to dig up some copies of these (as well as some of the others mentioned).

I need to re-read all the Shoes books. I loved them so.

I can't wait to start reading the Little House books aloud to Sara.

When my niece was born, one of the first things I thought of was, "Great, a girl! I can give her the Little House set when she gets old enough!" And when I mentioned it to my sister, she just said her usual "You're such a dork!" I gave her the set for the Christmas she was seven years old, a little later than when I got mine from my godmother (the only present I distinctly remember opening from my childhood).