What did you read when you were young?

Oops, I hit the return too soon. It is Sunday morning and I was browsing Library Thing while waiting for the morning paper. Your group seemed very interesting and started me thinking about what I read as a child. My favorites were historical novels and adventure. Anything about the American Civil War or Revolutionary War. There was a series written by Joseph A Altsheler on the Civil War that I really loved. He also wrote about the settlement of Kentucky and the French and Indian Wars. There were written in the early 1900, in fact my father read some of them when he was a boy. So, what did you read when you were young?

I spent my summers in Idaho with some wheat farmers. They had a large Book-of-the-Month club collection which I perused. Lots of historical fiction, many European monarchy stories were wonderful food for my young imagination. Also, I read Gone With The Wind on the train going to the Idaho ranch. I would also read late into the night there so in order to get me out of bed the farmers gave me a orphaned calf to feed. Said calf would bawl and bawl which would wake me. Ah, responsibilities!

I remember reading Black Beauty during these years and many additional animal books. I am still totally a sucker for animal books.

I remember a period when books like Smokey, the Cow Horse and My Friend Flicka were favorites. A couple of years later, when I was visiting my maternal grandparents in the summer before high school, I brought books down from their attic and read everything I could find including plays by Shakespeare and Of Human Bondage. I was also checking out every book they had by Nevil Shute from our public library at about this same time.

WOW!! Joseph A. Altshelter & his hero, Henry Ware. The Dark & Bloody land novels with trail-blazers Henry & his friend fighting the Shawnee as they explored the Ohio River valley. Captured by the Shawnee & escaped, over & over again, were there 7,8 books in the series? I lived in Cleveland then & when I ran out of books at our local CPL Branch, I hopped a streetcar to another branch until I read the whole series.
Then there was the young Henry Ware, in the CSA cavalry fighting the yankee invaders of Kentucky. Every now & then he would feel the image of an older Henry Ware, come to guide him in his battles.
I've read that Mr. Altshelter was a German who was fascinated by Native Americans. His works - & he also wrote about the western Sioux & Blackfeet were either first written in German & translated into English or it might have been the other way around. There were several German authors in that genre (written before WW1, they were already out-dated when we read them) All I can remember is Herr Schultz who wrote Lone Wolf's Mistake and many other books about the Plains natives and Rudolph May whose books were a favorite of the young Adolph Hitler. When I worked for the cleveland public library they were still popular with young boys.

I have never met anyone who read these books (except my father). My girlfriends were all reading Nancy Drew and the Five Little Peppers. None of that for me, I loved stories about Indian fighting and settling the West. Growing up in Canton, OH, south of Cleveland, I first found Altshelter's books on the bookmobile then had to get them from the Mail Library.
Alshelter was born in Kentucky of German decent and began to write his books because there was little available for children on American history. He also wrote adult novels.

Have you read Allan Eckert's Frontiersman series? They are about the exploration, wars & settling of the Ohio valley. The Frontiersman books were from the white man's POV. Later he wrote another series about the same things that happened only he wrote it from the POV of the Native American. Tho they are classified as non-fiction, they read like fiction. Very good stories & he lets you really know the characters. I
I was always interested in the early settling of our country. I devoured the Laura Ingalls Wilder books & any other book that took place in the past.

Your comment about Laura Ingalls Wilder reminded me of Caddie Woodlawn which was read to me and my classmates in the 6th grade. I am fascinated with how well I remember the story of the sheep eating the buttons off a dress worn by a "city slicker" come to visit. Over 50 years ago I heard that book read aloud.

Imagine my surprise while reading Allan Eckert and finding my family name attached to some of the really bad guys. Of course I was aware of them, my grandfather went through my West Virginia History books and tore out the pages that referenced David and Jacob Greathouse, but to see them in an historical fiction book was kind of creepy, especially when you read what they did.

As a child I think I started with The Bobbsey Twins and moved through Nancy Drew, Robert Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Edgar Rice Burroughs, some Fitzgerald, some R. L. Stevenson, some Dickens, one of my favorites, Howard Pease who wrote a lot of juvenile sea stories, I read The Wake of the Red Witch, Something of Value by Robert Ruark, Catch-22, several Mitchener, Little Me, I had a subscription to American Heritage Magazine and read several of the American Heritage published histories. My Funk & Wagnall's Encyclopedia was one of my favorite reads. Lots of poetry, particularly Longfellow, James Whitcomb Riley, Rudyard Kipling, and Robert W. Service.

Of course this is just a smattering of what I read in pre-teen and teen years.

I'm too lazy to verify all the touchstones so reader beware.

Speaking of reading Encyclopedias, we had a set of Britannica Juniors my parents bought when I was about 8. I used to just pick a volume and read what ever seemed interesting. We also had a set of 1918 Britannica. We, my sister and brother, also read them at random. I loved Allan Eckert, an Ohio author, and his stories on the settling of the Ohio country. Another book I loved was Drums Along the Mohawk by Walter D. Edmonds the story of the Revolutionary War in the Mohawk Valley of New York. I reread it last year and was a bit shocked by the non PC language. The movie with Henry Fonda was great also.
Others that come to mind are Ester Forbes's Johnny Tremain, Conrad Richter's Light in the Forest and one of few girls I admired in those day Zane Grey's Betty Zane the girl who ran from the fort surrounded by Indians to bring powder her father had buried in their cabin.
I love this thread it brings back such fond memories of books read and now I will have to reread.
One last note on PC language. I was reading the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie when my 10 year old grandson saw it he said "Grandma shouldn't that be Native American". I replied that Mr. Alexie was a Native American and so he could call himself whatever he wanted.

Sspeaking of Light in the Forest Conrad Richter's trilogy, TheTrees The Fields & The Town are all good works on the early settlement of Ohio. There was a book about Tecumseh The Loon Feather that I read several times.

We had a set of the old style Book of Knowledge encyclopedia that contained poetry and stories in every volume. That was my intro to Dickens with A Christmas Carol and to a lot of other fiction, folktales, etc.

When I was really young, I read a book called Space Cat by Ruthven Todd (it isn't coming up correctly in touchstones, but I went to Amazon and my book is still in print) over and over (we had a limited school library!) Also Millions of Cats. (I liked cats). When I was a bit older, I read Jubilee Trail and A Lantern in Her Hand, about women pioneers.

Glad to see you back Theresa. I thought we'd lost you.

I'm still about; just wildly busy these days! :-)

well, just what is "young?" How about 5 to 6 years old? The Bobbsey Twins, and Victor Appleton's Tom Swift series. (I'd still buy them to own and read today)(; Tarzan and horatio alger jr.