Blog Tour: Pies & Prejudice - Heather Vogel Frederick - Guest Post & Giveaway

Today, I would like to welcome Heather Vogel Frederick, author of The Mother-Daughter Book Club series, to Lost for Words. Today's tour stop consists of a guest post and a giveaway. You can follow the Teen Book Scene blog tour here, or you can visit Heather's website here for more information. 

What were your top 10 favourite books in grade school or high school?

Asking an author to come up with a “Top Ten” list of their favorite books is a tough assignment. Asking an author who writes for young readers to name their top ten favorites from elementary school is sheer torture. Are you kidding me? Only 10? How on earth can I possibly be expected to narrow it down to that paltry number?

A quick glance at the bookshelf beside the chair where I’m sitting reveals any number of dog-eared volumes that I’ve carried with me from childhood – Mr. Popper’s Penguins, Anne of Green Gables, A Wrinkle in Time – surely they deserve a place on the list, don’t they? But if I include them, will that leave room for Mr. Mysterious & Company, or The Forgotten Door, or James and the Giant Peach? What about Swallows and Amazons and Harriet the Spy? I can’t leave them out!

Do you understand my dilemma? Do you sympathize? I mean, really, when I think of the hours I spent alone in my room in the suburbs of Boston, roaming Manhattan’s Lower East Side and the Metropolitan Museum of Art with All-of-a-Kind Family and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler – it would be heartless of me not to include them, wouldn’t it? And no list would ever be complete without Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, or Island of the Blue Dolphins, or Little House in the Big Woods.

This is way too hard.

(Please pretend you didn’t notice that I cheated just now, OK? Personally, I think it was very clever of me to find a way to wedge in more than my allotted number.)

But if I really, really have to, I guess I can narrow the list down to ten. Here they are, in no particular order – well, except for Charlotte’s Web, which will have first place in my heart forever and always. These are books that I read and re-read and lived with and loved to death when I was growing up – and I still have the tattered copies to prove it.

Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White

Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

Half Magic by Edward Eager

The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken

The Borrowers by Mary Norton

The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

The Silver Crown by Robert C. O’Brien

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

(In case you’re wondering about the authors of the other books I managed to sneak in – here’s that list, too: Mr. Popper’s Penguins/Richard and Florence Atwater; Anne of Green Gables/L. M. Montgomery; A Wrinkle in Time/Madeleine L’Engle; Mr. Mysterious & Company/Sid Fleischman; The Forgotten Door/ Alexander Key; James and the Giant Peach/Roald Dahl; Swallows and Amazons/Arthur Ransome; Harriet the Spy/Louise Fitzhugh; All-of-a-Kind Family/Sydney Taylor; From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler/E. L. Konigsburg; Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle/Betty MacDonald; Island of the Blue Dolphins/Scott O’Dell; Little House in the Big Woods/Laura Ingalls Wilder.)

Thank you for that amazing book list, Heather! I knew I was putting you on the spot by asking for just 10 books, so I'm glad you found a way to tweak the system and add some more to the post! Quite a few of these titles bring back memories, though some I haven't heard of--I'll have to check those ones out! :) 

Giveaway

I have one hardback copy of Pies & Prejudice to give away to one lucky winner, courtesy of Heather Vogel Frederick. 

Contest is US only though, sorry to those of you who are international! :(

Ends October 29, 2010.
Contest has ENDED. Thank you to those who participated!

Just fill out THIS FORM to enter.