#not a chapter book so I didn't include it but the Milly-Molly-Mandy stories will forever have a hold over my heart

[bubblesandpages]

17, 19, and 3? 👀🍵

3. what is your favorite genre?

Fantasssssy my beloved <3

17. top 5 children’s books?

GLAD YOU ASKED and is also an evil question limiting me to five :p

For the sake of my heart I'm limiting this to children's chapter books because this list would be impossible if we were to include picture books. Nostalgia will also have a significant say as I've read more than a few excellent children's books in my adult life that, good as they are, don't quite manage the same level of blind adoration as some of these earlier ones do, even if they match them in every other regard.

The Wind in the Willows: immediately disregarding rule two, I didn't actually like this book as a kid, though the fact we had an abridged copy growing up might have had something to do with that. This book is made up entirely of charm, and perfectly nails it's atmosphere. The fact that this isn't a cottagecore classic is beyond ridiculous >:(

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane: this is probably the closest you can get to fictional book that made me the person I am. There is something so poignant and deeply, deeply touching about this book and how it depicts loss and tragedy, and the hope and perseverance that makes life worth living.

Lara and the Gray Mare: I know I never shut up about her, but she means so much to me. This series more than any other showed me how much I care about women in history being women in history. Yes, it's has a Mulan spin to it, but it takes so much of its time honoring and respecting the roles women had in society, giving their actions weight and importance, and allowing them to achieve self-actualization through the myriad of ways they contributed to society. I adore it, and thinking about it makes me ticked off with how narrowly feminism set's the parameters for female success at times in favor of more mescaline achievements.

Dragonskin Slippers: this was quite possibly my introduction to tongue-in-cheek fantasy parody while being unabashedly girly! There's adorable, thoughtful, and terrifying dragons who love summer fruits and collect dogs, and stained glass windows, an abundance of embroidery, evil princesses, non-evil counts, decidedly practical heroines, and absurd aunts who've read too many fairytales! This book is pure comfort and joy to me <3

The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie: this comes the closest out of any book I've read to capturing the pure dreamlike vagueness of fairytales. May Gibbs often gets compared to Beatrix Potter, but I'd say that Potter has a more grounded realism to her work, while Gibbs feels like an unfinished sentence. Events in her stories happen, and you get the sense they work especially on an emotional level, but events will take place with little clarification or explanation—hence the fairytale quality.

19. most disliked popular books?

(Kids and preteens look away; this isn't intended for you) Keeper of the Lost Cities is bad actually, I'm going to need all the adults to relearn what a good children's book is. Go read a Newbery or ten, because this isn't it.

Murderbot Diaries is really, really not my cup of tea. Pardon me for not finding an android reenacting me as my worst self somehow relatable or comforting to read about. Nobody in this first novella gets any good solid characterization,other than Murderbot and the captain, there's a bajillion people on this crew yet all I know about them is which other person in the team they'd like to sleep with, which, for a self-professed skipper of sex scenes seems like the least likely thing for our protagonist to zero in on, or perhaps there's a larger point here about how coupling is all that human's think about. Anyway, don't like it.