Tuan Jim

Roald Dahl
Tintin
Hardy Boys
Three Investigators
C.S. Lewis
There's another series with a whole lot of "Adventure titles" (ie. Safari Adventure, Volcano Adventure, Gorilla Adventure, etc) that were really really great back then -- the two sons go around capturing rare animals for their Dad's company -- sells to circuses/zoos -- probably not the most politically correct now ;p

Tuan Jim

Groucho

I had the same experience! It frightened me that so many could be taken in by such an obvious hoax.

B.A.

I Read the Hardy Boys a lot when I was younger, along with books by Matt Christopher...I also remember Shell Silverstien (?) being around the house along with Roald Dahl...I moved on to Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum in junior high because my dad wanted me to stick with one book for more than a couple of days and I still am hooked on espionage novels.

shaggycat

When I was little I had all of Stephen Cosgrove's "Serendipity" books. I remember them as being my favorites. Each story was done in such a way as to have some lesson by the end (like sharing, cleaning up, etc.) and the characters were never the same from book to book. I had about 20 in all. Then I moved onto the Little House on the Prairie series, the Secret Seven series, Judy Blume, and CS Lewis.

fallow

CS Lewis and Madeline L'Engle, which surprises me that no one else has seemed to mention.

duy37

Boxcar children
encyclopedia brown
ronald dahl
beverly clearly
these sports books by this one author i forgot he wrote sport stories

hotaru_san

L. Frank Baum (Wizard of Oz and the rest of the series), Judy Blume, Narnia, Baby-Sitters Club (I don't know why, I didn't like baby-sitting ), and a lot of stuff I can't think of right now
I read a lot when I was little-- I even remember reading while waiting in lines at Disney World.

Alvis

My holy trinity, wow! I also got into some adult level SF early on, boy did I learn a few things!

Seeker

Winnie the Pooh by Milne
Oz series by Baum

I loved the classics kids stories

Seeker

yeah - wrinkle in time was awesome.

Kal-El

Hardy Boys.

Seeker

Treasure Island
Swiss Family Robinson
Gulliver's Travels

lots of stuff like that.

NavinJohnson

I still have them too. I also have the Venus series, the Pellucidar series, some other misc. Burroughs titles (Cave Girl, Moon Maid, I Am A Barbarian, etc.). I read Arthur C. Clarke & Isaac Asimov back in school too. I think I read more of Asimov's non-fiction than his fiction though. Cosmos was (at least to me) a big deal back then. Thinking farther back, I'd say Dr. Suess' books are the most memorable (especially Green Eggs and Ham!).

vdadlani219

Berenstein Bears all the way.

thephantom

Whew, glad I'm not the only one. I'd still like to see a live action version of Chronicles, maybe as a mini series. Disney's The Black Cauldron was too condensed and not nearly dark enough. I've still got my Mad Sceintist's Club books.

Colt Severs

Steven King and H.P Lovecraft. Explains a lot!

Quake1028

Hardy Boys
Choose your own Adventure
Encyclopedia Brown
Einstein Anderson
The Chronicles of Narnia

And many, many more. I was quite a bookworm when I was a kid. Still am

thecrazydude

WHen i was young, my parents bought a set of called "The Happy McCalastors (sp). They were a family that went on vacations and solved crimes. I thought that they were pretty good and enjoyed reading them. I also read "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" about 20 times during grade school.

Hokeyboy

That was "The Happy Holisters" and I loved that series. I had a near complete collection of all the novels and they're long since rotting in a field somewhere. But they were harmless fun, that's for sure.

Also wanted to bring up all the Shel Silverstein poetry collections. Where The Sidewalk Ends was pretty much required Gen-X reading.

Nick Danger

Everything I could get my hands on. I read a book a day.

tonyc3742

Of those listed in the poll, mostly
Hardy Boys. Don't still have them, tried to get my son into them, was not successful.
I also liked
Encyclopedia Brown
Cam Jansen
The Phantom Tollbooth (still have this and reread it every couple years)
I did get into Stephen King in junior high
The Great Brain series
There were some big hardback Alfred Hitchcock-branded collections I read through multiple times
I collected a bunch of Dark Forces books and still have those (tween/teen horror/supernatural)
A one-shot called 'The Big Joke Game' i read probably half a dozen times.

And lots more I don't remember

Mike86

Goosebumps- these books were pretty big when I was a kid. I read quite a few of them, and it was probably the main series I read regularly as a kid. I had (still have actually) around forty books from the series. I maybe didn’t read them all but I read a lot of them.

The Boxcar Children- I had a few of these as well. Pretty sure I read through them, but I was never hugely into them.

The Hardy Boys- again no read a handful of them probably, but I wasn’t a huge fan.

I also read books by Beverly Cleary. Specifically I remember liking The Mouse and the Motorcycle. Pretty sure I read the follow-up, Runaway Ralph too. Also read some of the Ramona books (at least Beezus and Ramona).

I read more than just those, but those are some that stick out.

Nick Danger

From the poll, I read every Hardy Boys book between the ages of 9 and 11. There were a little over fifty of them. By the time I finished I had lost interest, but I read the last few ones because I was a completist.

tommyp007

My favorite book series was The Three Investigators. I always dreamed of having adventures, solving mysteries with my buddies like they did. I also got into Stephen King in my early teens. And lots of reference and trivia books, like Guinness Book of World Records, The Book of Lists, etc.

brainee

I wasn't into reading any of those series growing up. Like a few of you it sounds like, I started getting into "adult" books pretty early (around 12 years old) and Stephen King was a favorite. The first King book I read I think was either Night Shift or Salem's Lot. Before that I also know I read Tolkien (Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit). I liked sci-fi/horror/fantasy anthologies. My parents were enrolled in a Science Fiction book club ... one of those deals where there's a monthly batch of books, and a "Book of the Month" that would automatically come unless you specifically asked for it not to be sent. I don't get rid of books, and still have a lot of what I read as a pre-teen. Classics by Asimov, Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Bloch, Heinlein, Campbell, Sturgeon ... going back to pulp-era by people like Burroughs, Howard, Lovecraft, Edmond Hamilton. We had a subscription to Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction too.

Someone here mention Hitchcock book collections ... was it something like this?

That was one that I read and love as a kid but wasn't able to hold onto. But I tracked it down years later as an adult.