What makes me happy

Have been enjoying reading the blog The Happiness Project

and in an article about enjoying childrens lit the blogger quotes C.S.Lewis

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of child­hood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childish­ness and the desire to be very grown up.

This made me smile, (as so much of what this great man said often does)

I have been reading a few childrens novels lately, one with my son and one because I enjoy being immersed in something I know will make me feel good!

Alex and I have been reading Jackie French's Fair Dinkum History books. The current one "Crims and Convicts" is proving to be really interesting but terribly sad as well! It is written in a humourous way, the illustrations are full of vomit, farts and poo (10 yr old heaven) but even Alex was shocked at hearing about the conditions the poor prisoners had to tolerate! This is also tying in nicely with his school work which is Australian history, each child in Alex's class has been given a new identity as a convict. Alex is a blacksmith who stole something...which he cant remember! ;)
Anyway a good book and next in the series is Squatters and Rotters

Im also revisiting a book I picked up for a dollar at the local second hand shop years ago, "The Children of The New Forest" by Captain Marryat. Its set in the 1600s during the English civil war and is basically about 4 children who are left homeless and parentless but learn to fend for themselves thanks to a nice woodsman.. so many of the good childrens books are sans parents who either die or desert them ;) Probably why I loves the Famous Five too..

I also get caught up in the beautiful descriptions of the countryside in and around the New Forest and with the four children.

What childrens books do you like to revisit?