I know this is intended as a joke, but Stephen Fry really set me right about Grammar Nazism and I like to pay this thoughtbomb forward as much as possible:

I think *she* missed something.

Waiting for Obama to walk to the Hill.

This is for you, Jon.

He gives my brain a lady boner.

Is she still single. Seriously, can someone give her my number. I'm willing to relocate.

Published in 1943
My mom recommended this book to me when I was 8, but I didn't really read it until ~3 years later. Then for the next decade I read it every couple of years until I outgrew it. It's just a great story of a family told through the eyes of their young daughter in the early 1900s.

I loved this book! And funny enough, it sat next to the book that was the second book to really push me to read, The Midwife's Apprentice.

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman, 1995

Not exactly a children's book, but...

• Catherine, Called Birdy

Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising Sequence

Published in 1993, and written by Lois Lowry, The Giver was my favorite book for a long time as a kid. The thing that stands out to me the most about this quick and satisfying read, is that it doesn't pander to the lowest common denominator of teens and kids. It's actually fairly complex for a kids book, and it really…

Why: I was a super bookish child thanks to my father thinking the best toys for kids were ones we had to read, this sort of backfired when his grand plan for me to be a baseball player lost out to a love of books. Anyway, I was pretty advanced when it came to what I wanted to read at a young age, yeah I liked…

and

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, published in 1997.

NO I AM NOT CRYING.

Wonderful! Sweet and heartfelt and just wonderful. But especially so because it's in Salt Lake (freaking) City, Utah which is not the bastion of equal marriage.