Children's book meme

Concerned about the extra-long silence on this blog, Laura over at Rehearsal Times Over has gone and tagged me for another meme, this time to name seven favourite children's books. It's an interesting question - my favourites when I was a child, or those I love best now? Or the ones Kei and Dan enjoy most, which would be a completely different list?

For the time being, here's an integrated list with a few of each of our top favourites, old and new.

1. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl

Or indeed anything else by Roald Dahl. One of the unexpected joys of having children has been the chance to catch up on books and films I missed out on as a child myself. I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when I was about nine and loved it, and both boys are fascinated by it too. But now we're discovering a whole world of other Roald Dahl titles - I've just finished reading James and the Giant Peach as our latest bedtime story, and it's been great to read both Matilda and The BFG for the first time.

2. The Snail and the Whale, by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler

Dan loves this rhyming story of a sea snail with a yearning for travel, who hitches a lift on the tail of a humpback whale and ends up saving its life. And I have to admit I get a kick out of reading save-the-whale stories to my kids in whale-eating Japan. (Kentaro sees nothing wrong with whaling - it's one of our major points of contention, and I'm resigned to the fact it'll never be resolved.)

3. The Indian in the Cupboard, by Lynn Reid Banks

Laura lent me this, and I can't thank her enough. I'd read The L-Shaped Room, a grown-up novel by the same author, and enjoyed it, but I wasn't prepared for either how strongly her children's writing would grasp Kei's imagination or the sheer excellence of her prose. Other books I read straight afterwards, even ones that had been old favourites, seemed dull and lumpish by comparison.

4. The Horrid Henry series, by Francesca Simon

Horrid Henry books are what Kei currently reads for himself, when he's not immersed in a Dragonball manga borrowed from his calligraphy classroom. Henry loves violent toys, junk food, and gory computer games; he loathes school, vegetables, and his oh-so-well-behaved little brother, Perfect Peter. He's every mother's nightmare, and every seven-year-old boy's secret idea of how he'd actually like to behave...

5. Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, by Richard Scarry

This is another of Dan's favourites. It and other Richard Scarry titles are nice because they work on lots of different levels - you can read them like a story, play I-Spy (to find the little yellow beetle Goldbug), or spend ages looking at all the different illustrations on each page.

6. No, David! by David Shannon

This is well loved in Japanese translation too. Not that there's much to translate - almost every page shows David doing somthing naughty, with variations on the caption "No, David!" But its ending of "Yes, David, I love you" is really reassuring for the boys if they've just spent most of the evening being told "No" for themselves...

7. Charlotte's Web, by E.B. White

One of the best children's stories EVER. Enough said!

I'm not going to tag anyone myself, as I've been out of blogging circulation for so long I have no idea who's already done this one and who hasn't. But please add your own favourites in the comments if you like.