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What are your most favourite children’s books?
That’s what I want to know today. What stories take you back to the halcyon days of your childhood and transport you to a time when you had not a care in the world?
I always knew that my children’s nursery would be full of books. In our old house the room that we thought would eventually become the nursery had the books in there already all it needed was the baby. But as it turned out our babies were brought home to this house and how happy I am now that I see the nursery is finally taking shape.
If you are an expectant mum or a new mum then don’t worry about whether or not you have the nursery ready for your little one’s arrival home from the hospital. I think it’s more important to get your room ready for them as they’ll probably be in with you for a few weeks/months/years. This is great as it gives you time to play with and plan the nursery until your heart is content.
Robert the Husband and I only got this shelf up on Monday. But since then I have had more fun decorating it than just about any shelf I have ever decorated before. And believe me, I’ve decorated a lot of shelves.
While pottering about I realised that I was paving the way for my children’s early reading experiences. They’ll be three, four or five before they truly grasp the drama of Peter Rabbit’s adventures with Mr. McGregor. But that’s OK, I can wait.
You’ll think I’m strange but this picture of Peter really reminds me of my son Ned! Ned has a little blue jacket like that and is always very straight. Ned sleeps in a straight line and sits up in his rocker in a straight line. My daughter Anaïs is very different and thrashes about a lot more. In fact yesterday during her afternoon nap she ended up at the other end of the cot without her blanket OR TROUSERS! This is not surprising to me at all as she was constantly moving about in the womb, whereas Ned was more still.
But that is why this little picture of Ned…sorry, Peter Rabbit, reminds me of Ned.
Got there eventually.
Noddy is also a huge favourite of mine and I’ve often gone on about Enid Blyton and how much I adore her stories, particularly The Famous Five. Noddy reminds me of my Nana and I can hear her voice as I remember diving in to her bed in the morning with my sister and she would read us a story to start the day with. My Nana’s house always smelt of toast and I can’t smell toast nowadays without being transported back.
It’s so important to me as a first time parent to give my children good memories as they grow and one of the best ways I know to do this is through books and my love of them.
Eventually they’ll move on to The Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter but until then they’re all mine and shall be fed on a diet of Beatrix Potter. Woo Ha Ha Ha!
I’ve had a wonderful time decorating with some of the most charming fabrics I’ve seen in a very long while. The babies are loving colours and shapes at the moment and all I have to do is lift the sewing hoops down from the wall and entertain them for hours with cowboys, lions and Matryoshka dolls. I have the most wonderful fabric emporium right on my doorstep – The Eternal Maker – is my local. Doesn’t get better than that and they are all lovely and so helpful!
Guys, I can’t tell you how quickly time is flying by.
Each and every day they get more hair, grow out of more clothes and make new sounds. As I pick Ned up to carry him upstairs to bed in the evening he rests as light as a feather in my arms and puts his sweet smelling head in to my neck. I know he won’t be doing that forever and will probably be a touch embarrassed if he ever reads this.
He’ll be a lanky teenager one day and want his own room and his own books. So before I give him back to the world (I refer to Ned as I’ll tell you right now the world is NEVER having my daughter. Oh no, Sirreee, she’s staying put) I’ll make this little room a haven of safety.
A room where they can enjoy being children, as we all know that it can sometimes be a little tough being an adult and I don’t want them to have to face all that until they have to.
I also want this room to be a room of dreams. Look at Mickey & Minnie up there. I remember seeing them on the television in an advert for Disney World when I was little and desperately wishing I could go and visit them. I got there eventually and one of the quotes I live by when it comes to dreams of my own is a quote from Walt Disney -
“If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remember that this whole thing was started with a dream and a mouse.”
Robert and I have a dream of one day taking our twins to Disney. Seeing their faces as they enter the world of Mickey and his friends. Robert and I went last year and I think I had more fun than some of the kids there…..
See? I was in my element. We’d had such sadness in our lives before we left for this holiday and had just lost our second baby. But when Robert took me to Disney for my birthday last August, I’m telling ya, healing came through the ability to be a child again. Even if it was just for one day. Look at the poor little chap to the left of the picture. I think I was taking his turn on the truck. Sorry, little one.
One of the greatest days of my life.
I met Minnie.
But until the day comes when we all pack our bags and head off as a family to Disney, I at least know that my babies have a room they can call their own and a place that I can read to them.
They also have Peter Rabbit and his little blue coat to look over them as they play. And what more could they wish for!
OK, I’m dying to hear, as it may give me heaps of ideas……WHAT ARE YOUR MOST FAVOURITE CHILDREN’S STORIES? With the Autumn fast approaching I can think of nothing I’d rather do than some literary research by the fire………
I love you and thank you for reading my post today.
Love,
Cherry xoxoxoxoxox
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The Nursery Shelf « Cherry Menlove…
The nursery looks gorgeous – makes me very broody (my babies are 10yrs and 12yrs!!)
My favourite books of childhood were The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton and the Teddy Robinson stories by Joan G. Robinson (funnily enough I had forgotton about Teddy Robinson until you asked!!)
I also loved the Jinny series of pony stories by Patricia Leitch – I never did get a chestnut Arab mare but I do have three geldings and a Shetland pony!!
Sarah x
Hello, what a lovely house you have! I have three children and although my eldest is now at school all three have always enjoyed the enthusiasm in my voice as I read Oscar Wilde’s children’s books to them.
When I was 5 my sister gave me a Paddington Bear and three books. I didn’t like to read much at that age but those books and that bear launched me head first into reading. I still have my Paddington Bear and the books, a little tatty around the edges but well loved.
Where the Wild Things Are is my favorite children’s book ever. I also loved reading Fox In Socks to my little ones.
The Phantom Tollbooth is wonderful, and The Never Ending Story. I almost cried when I reached the last page of The Never Ending Story, because I could never again have the experience of reading it for the first time. Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson, Charlotte’s Web, Little Women, the Little House books, Mr Popper’s Penguins–there are so many!
Cherry, Both Disney World and Disneyland are incredible and you really must take the twins there when they are old enough to appreciate it! We have a tradition in our family to go every five years to Disney World with the family. We have been to Disneyland 3 times (no kids). I have 4 sons (oldest 26, twins 20, youngest 15).
I highly recommend “Goodnight Moon” and “The Runaway Bunny” as books to read to young children. Also near halloween “The Vanishing Pumpkin”, & “The Ghost Eye Tree”. An all time favorite of all my children is “Barn Dance”, (and anything else by Bill Martin Jr.) it has a poetic cadence much like a called barn dance and very enjoyable to read and hear read.
P.S. Love your nursery!
Oh, I LOVE children’s books!
And I grew up on lots of Little Golden Books. Scuffy the Tugboat, the Tawny Scrawny Lion, the Shy Little Kitten, Tootle the Train. . . all of those. One of my favorite Golden Books was Prayers for Children by Eloise Wilkin. I read it over and over again, and can still see the little girl with the wind and daisies in her hair, the fat little teapot for her to pour. . . beautiful book. I think I may have to buy my own copy. . . 
Some of the ones that I remember fondly from were The Slant Book, The Hole Book and the Rocket Book by Peter Newell. My dad passed those on to us from his own childhood. I bought Peter Newell’s Topsy Turvys book for my boys recently and they loved it. I love the Velveteen Rabbit, Beatrix Potter and Winnie the Pooh. Such beautiful language. My son LOVED Peter Rabbit.
Other authors my boys liked were Sandra Boynton, Eric Carle and Dr. Seuss (of course). Yertle the Turtle and Fox in Socks were two of my faves.
Hi Cherry,
Love your website and reading about the babies. They are just gorgeous!! Brings me back to when I had my first…18 years ago!! All those wonderful times spent reading all her[and my!] favourites…Peter Rabbit, Winnie the Pooh, Milly Molly Mandy, The Velveteen Rabbit, to name but a few. I have to hand her back to the world to do her final year in school and head off to uni next year but I have been blessed with five other little bunnies who followed after their sister, Now we are re-reading all our old favourites, along with some new ones as well. So, bring on all those cosy autumn evenings snuggled up by the fire, I think I hear Benjamin Bunny calling, or is it Horrid Henry!xx
And I have to add, I also loved Hans Christian Andersen. His tales so sad, but so beautifully moving. I loved them all. xx
Cherry, I adored Enid Blyton the most and still do. I really get very weepy even thinking about The Famous Five, all the storybooks and the boarding school books My five year old daughter loves them as well and they are the books she returns to the most. Enid opened a doorway into a world of magic for me where rabbits really did hold tea parties in trees, purses held a never-ending supply of money and the baddies got their just desserts. How I wish real life was like an Enid Blyton book. Funnily enough, I wasn’t a big fan of Noddy but have come to love him more through my daughter. With me it will always be Enid. She knew how to spin a tale that helped my young imagination to thrive. I honestly believe her value as a writer has been devalued and that so many writers cite her as an important influence because she was so skilled in the craft of simply telling a riveting story. And I loved the recent Enid movie even if it wasn’t totally accurate. Happy Reading. To me, that’s been one of the biggest joys of motherhood is discovering all my old books and finding new treasures. Lauren Child has been a new friend who I have come to also love. Your nursery looks lovely. xx
Gorgeous, gorgeous nursery, Cherry! I always love reading you but this piece struck such a chord. There are poems and stories to this day which I could never quite finish when reading aloud to my five daughters or even now to my two grandsons for I hear my beloved Mother’s beautifully expressive voice – and the words just catch in my throat. I miss her so. She loved all the arts, but literature was her passion and she passed that love on very early to me. I would hide under the bedcovers late at night with a torch just so that I might read “just another chapter”! I, too, loved Beatrix Potter and Enid Blyton and not a few of my daughters would most certainly recommend Martha B. Rabbit – the illustrations, as mentioned earlier, are magical. Just as you think of Ned when looking at that picture of Peter Rabbit, a certain picture of Tom Kitten will forever remind me of my darling Catherine, for no matter how teensy and beautiful she was – there was always something so adorably ‘bumbly’ and greedy about her – just like Tom! I had my own Famous Five club which seemed to involve creating lists of supplies we might need, and storing chocolate bars in case we needed energy on an adventure. I have a horrible notion that I used to eat them when everyone else had forgotten all about them…I graduated to beautifully illustrated tomes of classic children’s poetry, the Katy books – and Little Women also, Black Beauty (horse mad!), Ballet Shoes and Swallows and Amazons were just some I loved, along with the genius of Tove Jansson’s Moomintroll books and, later the divine Catweazle and J. P. Martin’s brilliant Uncle series (do look them up – they are hilarious!) – but the one I come back to most often and love to read aloud is Wind in the Willows – the chapter named ‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’ is exquisitely soulful and has been known to make big, strong, ever-so-serious men cry! x
Absolutely without a doubt my favorite stories were the Beatrix Potter ones.
I still adore them. I read them to my own children all the time, too. The sad thing is, nowadays, it seems as though kids here in the US don’t appreciate them so much. I think it’s because they are overexposed to all the fast paced stuff on TV and all the video games their parents let them play. I despair. Please limit severely what you let the twins watch on TV!
Hi Cherry,
I have been reading your blog for almost two years and I love it! Congratulations on the arrival of your precious twins. They are so gorgeous and reading your posts brings me back to when I had my first baby…18 years ago!! I revelled in so many of the things you plan to do with your bunnies and I wish I could have that special time with her again as I have had to ‘hand her back’ to the world as she studies for her final year in school and prepares to enter the world of university. She loves reading and has so many of her favourite childhood books stored away. She [and I!] adored Peter Rabbit and all his friends,along with Milly Molly Mandy ,[ which was one of my own childhood favourites] and many other well thumbed pages. I have been so blessed, because after my lovely daughter, came five other little bunnies to fill our home with love and laughter. I am re-reading The Famous Five, Dr. Seuss, Winnie The Pooh and many others. Obviously there are some new favourites now, like Charlie and Lola and Horrid Henry!!
Being a mother is such a special blessing and reading is a wonderful way to share those priceless, cosy moments, snuggled up by the fire listening to a well-loved tale. So bring on all those autumn evenings and mugs of hot chocolate;I think I hear Peter Rabbit calling [or is it Horrid Henry!!].
Lots of love, Daphne.
Daphne, how lovely of you to comment after reading for such a long time. Thank you for your stories. Snuggling up by the fire is something I am MOST looking forward to. Love, Cherry