In this list, we will be exploring books that you might have read from your childhood and have since forgotten about.

1. Little Critter Books by Mercer Mayer 

Little Critter was a series of books that revolved around some sort of porcupine-like animal with an affinity for overalls. There are well over a hundred books in the series, with them all being about Little Critter’s adventures. One of the ones that I remember vividly is titled “What a Bad Dream,” which is a story about Little Critter having a nightmare where he turns into a scary creature and thinks he can do whatever he wants. It ends with him feeling immense loneliness and he wakes up distraught. Needless to say, I myself was always distraught reading this book.

2. If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff 

This book was part of a whole series that revolved around the “if you give a [insert animal here] a [insert food here]” trope. There was definitely a pattern throughout the books with them beginning and ending with the animal requesting an item to go with their food. They were overall very cute, and good books to read when first starting out.

3. A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon 

I remember having this book read to me as a kid in school. I was immediately terrified after. The book was about a kid that loved lima beans. However, she didn’t want to be ostracized for her affection of the legume, and decided to halt all lima-bean-consuming. The next day, she woke up with stripes over her body, and underwent all sorts of transformations. Do you know how she got cured? By eating lima beans. Moral of the story: don’t let kids bully you for liking lima beans.

4. Amelia Bedelia Books by Peggy Parish and Herman Parish 

The Amelia Bedelia series was about a houskeeper that worked for a wealthy family. While she was very talented at baking, she lacked the capacity for understanding figurative language, and thus, the plot of each story would often revolve around her misunderstanding of phrases. For example, when asked to “put the lights out,” Amelia would literally put the light bulbs outside.

5. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. And John Archambault 

This whole book was a masterpiece from start to finish. Learning letters had never been as fun as it was with Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. The story was about lowercase letters (who were supposed to be children, with uppercase letters representing adults) climbing up a palm tree, only to fall from it, and acquire various injuries. Even after falling from a tree, the letter “a” apparently did not learn its lesson, and proceeded to climb the tree once more.

6. Rainbow Magic Books by Daisy Meadows

For me, these books were a staple every time I went to the library. A library trip wasn’t a library trip without checking out at least five of the Rainbow Magic books. Each book was centered around best friends Rachel and Kirsty (it took me the longest time to figure out that her name was Kirsty and not Kristy), who joined forces with fairies to destroy Jack Frost and goblin henchmen. Every book had a different fairy featured with the themes of them ranging from gem fairies, all the way to weather fairies. I loved these books, but I remember how distraught I was when I discovered that Daisy Meadows is not a real person, and is instead a group of ghostwriters; sorry if I ruined anyone’s childhood. Looking ahead to the future, some of the planned books include a bubble tea fairy and a vlogger fairy.

7. Animorphs by Katherine Applegate

For some reason, I went through a phase in elementary school where I was obsessed with these books. The creepy covers that depicted humans gradually morphing into their animal forms apparently didn’t faze me. I can’t remember much about the plot, but I know it involved aliens wanting to take over the world. Much like the Rainbow Magic books, some of the Animorphs books were written by ghost writers.

8. Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester

Tacky the Penguin, was, of course, about a penguin named Tacky. He was named that due to his outlandish sense of style. He is the oddball, and is surrounded by all his “perfect” friends. However, despite his awful fashion, Tacky was able to protect his flock from penguin hunters. It just goes to show that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.