Favorite book as a child

I just saw where they are making my favorite children's book, "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs," into an animated movie. I LOVED this book as a kid.



So I ask, SJland, what was your favorite book as a child? If this thread's been done, I apologize.

 

I loved that book. For me, it's probably this:

 

Can't remember the title, but it was about a guy who was the cook in a firehouse. All he wanted to be was a fireman (like me when I was 6 ... or now, for that matter; I still get excited when the firetruck rolls down the street), but the other firemen wouldn't let him. He finally gets his chance at the end when one of the other firemen hurts himself sliding down the pole. He has to drive the truck and helps put out the fire, and does a bang-up job, thus earning acceptance and praise.
I must have checked that thing out of the library a dozen times. There's a good lesson in there about seizing your opportunity and being prepared. But, really, I think it was the cool drawings of the firetrucks that kept me coming back for more.

Any of the Encyclopedia Brown books (or his bastard, nerdier cousin Einstein Anderson) were perennial favorites, too.

 

I had a series of books that I dug. Frog and Toad -- which, now that I think of it, was two confirmed bachelor-types puttering around their houses doing stuff and having tea.
Wait a minute... OMG.
Frog and Toad were gay. I never suspected.

 

I should add, by way of postscript, that "Snoopy, Come Home" is the saddest fucking story ever.

Killick, would that be "The Wind in the Willows?"

 

No. 2 for me:


No. 3:

 

The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster.

 

Another one of my faves:

 

Yeah, I think it is. I'm pretty sure I remember reading it.

 

Harold and the Purple Crayon.