5. Clifford the Big Red Dog (1963)
I'm not sure how I started to like Clifford, but they sold copies of the books at the grocery store my mom shopped at when we were little, and I was always on the look out for titles I didn't have. I had a collection of them and loved to read about the trouble Clifford kept getting into, even though he tried so hard to be a good dog. In the one I remember most he saw a kitten playing with a spool of thread and wanted to play, too - so he took a spool of telephone wire some men were installing and batted it all around the park. 6-year-old me thought this was hilarious!
4. If You Give A Mouse a Cookie (1986)
Apparently this book was first printed the year I was born, but I didn't know about it until a friend of my mother's gave a copy of it to us for Christmas one year. We were hooked! The mouse was cute but needy - every time you gave him something, he wanted something else to go with it. If you gave him a cookie, he needed milk. If you gave him a nice little bed, he needed a glass of water. It was never ending. There are a couple of great spin-offs by the same author, including If You Give a Moose a Muffin and If You Give a Pig a Pancake
3. And to think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (1937)
My sister and I had a collection of Dr. Seuss books growing up, and this was one of our favorites. It's about a little boy who walked home from school along Mulberry Street and would imagine all these fantastical things to tell his father he saw. We loved all of the crazy things that the kid came up with, like traveling trapeze artists and an elephant parade. I still love the fact that both the Mansfield and Mount Vernon public libraries are on Mulberry Street. (Fun fact: this was Dr. Seuss' first published children's book!)
2. The Baby-Sitter's Club (1986)
I read every single copy the library had in this series. From #1, when they start the club, to the extended Super Specials to the spin-off series California Diaries featuring one of the girls who moved to the west coast. There was a TV show in the 90s (which I watched every episode of) and one Christmas my mom bought my sister and I official Baby-Sitter's Club dolls. I couldn't decide if I was more like Mary Anne or Claudia, but it didn't matter, because all of the girls were awesome. I used some of their babysitting tricks when I later became a babysitter myself!
1. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (1978)
My third-grade class took monthly field trips to the local library to have story time. The librarian read this book to us once, and I was absolutely enthralled. I couldn't find the book for a long time, but it was so engrained in my brain that when I babysat as a teenager I would tell the kids the story before bedtime. Can you imagine a town where all the food comes from the sky? Where you check the weather to see the menu? So imaginative! I was a bit skeptical when they came out with a movie version, but even though it doesn't exactly follow the story, it's still wonderful and hilarious. I finally bought a copy in college and keep it on my bookshelf with the rest of my classics.
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