Illustration by Dora O’Neill & Charlie Blodnieks

This list is composed of books, which broached a sense of childhood nostalgia within the members of our staff. I wanted to discuss this topic in this week’s blog post because a few weeks ago, I was thinking about The Perks of Being a Wallflower—a poignant coming of age story that meant a lot to me in high school. This moment then brought on a sense of curiosity as to what types of books other members of the staff associated with their adolescence and childhood.

A Bad Case of Stripes
The Mysterious Benedict Society, poems by Shel Silverstein, Goodnight Moon, The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Bridge to Terabithia, Where the Red Fern Grows, Ella Enchanted, The Golden Compass

Goodnight Moon, Love You Forever, The Giving Tree, Junie B Jones Series, Geronimo Stilton Series, Madeline
The House on Mango Street, anything by Roald Dahl or Lois Lowry
Magic Treehouse, the Molly Moon series, Harry Potter, Hunger Games
The Westing Game, Harry Potter, Harriet the Spy, Goosebumps
Fantasy books of all kinds really take me back, whether they are chapter books I read in elementary school or YA novels about dragons or quests. The Magic Treehouse, Secrets of Droon, The Golden Compass, Eragon. Roald Dahl’s entire canon. Harry Potter always invokes in me a deep, visceral sense of nostalgia that will most definitely stay with me for the rest of my life. I also feel so much nostalgia for the books whose titles I don’t remember, that I read and loved and then put down and never saw again. Those were the books that completely immersed and sustained me for a few hours, and back then that was all I needed from a reading experience.