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| Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace, a favorite book of my childhood. |
When I was growing up I never imagined that I would be
a writer. But I always loved to read. I recently discovered a list I made in
third grade of all the books I read that year—47 of them! I actually made the list twice—first in the
order that I read them, neatly printed, and then in alphabetical order by title,
carefully written in cursive.
Most of the books on my list are fiction and a
ll of them were checked out from the Minneapolis
Public Library. (Although our family had a few Golden Books, and I occasionally
got a book as a gift, we rarely bought books.) Most of the books on my list now
seem terribly old-fashioned, but a few are classics, like Make Way for
Ducklings and To Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street.
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| The cover of my booklet where I made my lists is a finger painting. |
In my booklet I also recorded a list of the magazines I had read—mostly
Jack and Jill, but also a few issues of Child Life and Highlights. And in the same little
booklet with my lists I copied a poem by Annie Fellows Johnston called "Book
Houses", which likens a book to a door to someone’s house. The third stanza
reads:
And when I find a house that’s dull,
I do not often stay,
But when I find one full of friends
I’m apt to spend the day.
I recall many a day spent happily reading. Here’s my third grade list. How many of these titles to you remember reading as a child?
Books
I have Read (Third Grade)
1. Betsy and the Boys by Carolyn Haywood
2. Two is a Team, Heim
3. The Cocoa Dancer
4. The Great Quillow
5. Tag-a-long Tooloo
6. Joan Wanted
a Kitty
7. Make Way for Ducklings
8. Henner’s Lydia
9. A Pony for Linda—Anderson
10. Sonny the Bunny
11. Cow Concert
12. Little
Stone House
13. Wishing
Well
14. Pogo’s
House—Jo and Ernest Norling
15. Joey and Patches
16. Cowboy
Tommy-Sanford Tousy
17. How the
Indians Lived – Dearborn
18. Little Pear
– Eleanor Frances Lattimore
19. Two and Two
are Four – Carolyn Haywood
20 Kintu
21. Randy and
the Queen – Margaret s. Johnson
22. Dog that Came
True
23. Double
Birthday Present – Mabel Leigh Hunt
24. Don’t Count
Your Chicks
25.
Jack-o-Lantern for Judy Jo
26. Holiday Roundup
27. Snipp,
Snapp, Snurr and the Buttered Bread – Mag Lindman
28. Scratchy by
John Parke
29. Coconut the Wonder Tree
30. Book of
Jokes and Funny Things – Frances N. Chrystie
31. Dr. Trotter
and his Big Gold Watch – Helen Earle Gilbert
32. A Kitten’s
Tale – Audrey Chalmers
33. Blueberries
for Sal – Robert McCloskey
34. Through
Golden Windows
35. Our Little Friends of Norway
36. Little Lost
Sioux – Martha Raabe
37. Nils – Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire
38. United
States and Youth – Eleanor Roosevelt
39. Black Beauty – Anna Sewell
40. And to
Think that I saw it on Mulberry Street – Dr. Seuss
41. Betsy-Tacy
42. Hide and Go
Seek
43. The Most Wonderful Doll
44. The Young
Aunts
45. North on
the Great River – by Margaret G. O’Farrell
46. Penny Goes
to Camp – Carolyn Haywood
47. Boy of the
Desert – Eunice Tietjens
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