Blog Challenge Day 16: Favorite Children's Story

I had a hard time thinking of my favorite children's story - I was (and still am) a complete bookworm, and there are so many good stories.  I'm still working on my answer for this, so in the meantime I'm going to share my least favorite children's story.

My least favorite children's story is a series of stories about a naughty little monkey named George.  I do not like the Curious George books.  Every story about George follows a simple formula - the Man in the Yellow Hat tells George not to do something, then leaves George unattended, giving him the opportunity to do exactly what he was told not to do.  A series of zany events follow, creating chaos and then, somehow, the chaos turns helpful, and George is praised and rewarded for breaking the rules.  These stories send the wrong message to kids - it's okay to not listen as long as everything works out in the end.  I understand that the books are about a monkey who is learning how the world works, but the stories fail to teach George (and the young children hearing the stories) that actions have consequences.

Edited @ 10:45 pm on 9/17:

My favorite children's story is Harriet the Spy.  When I read the book, I wanted to be just like Harriet (minus the whole losing her friends and having the whole school turn on her because of gossiping).  I think Harriet was very clever and passionate about writing, even if she went about it the wrong way.  In the end, she learns a valuable lesson about gossip and how it can ruin relationships, and she learns to use her spy skills in a way that benefits others rather than hurting them.  Overall, I think it's a very entertaining story.

A very close second place goes to the entire Babysitters Club series.  I loooooved that series - I had every book, loved the movie, I watched the tv series, and may have even had a board game (or am I just imagining that?).  I even had a dream fairly recently about living in Stoneybrook [nerd alert!].  The stories were entertaining and the characters were relatable.  It was a great series, and I'm tempted to re-read it as an adult.

I did not include Harry Potter as my favorite children's story because the later books got really dark, and I kind of don't consider it to be a children's story (even though I know that's what it began as).  The Harry Potter series is my all-time favorite story.