L is for Little.

It's the A to Z Challenge, where every day I share my favourite book or book series that starts with the day's letter.

And today is a doozy. Not only is it a tie, but I can also say I've seen every TV/movie adaptation of the winners and one runner-up, and as many as possible of the second runner-up. We're talking many, many hours of my life spent with these stories, y'all. They are part of my entire being.

Little House on the Prarie, series, Laura Ingalls Wilder

The first book I ever read and I've never outgrown it! I had to reread this series a lot as I was growing up to "get it" as Laura hit different stages of her life-- her wedding, for instance, was not that interesting to 8-year-old me, but 15-year-old me saw things very differently.





And

Little Women, series, Louisa May Alcott

So, true story (I've probably shared this before): I tried to check out Little Women from the school library when I was not really ready to read it, but this wasn't my first Alcott book and I thought I was ready for the really long one. I was not, of course, and the librarian correctly refused to let me check it out. So I went and grabbed the next book off the shelf, Little Men, which is much shorter (and incidentally has a MUCH easier plot-- it was not a bad one for me to read first), and the librarian frowned and said, "I'd rather you read Little Women than read this!" Which kind of scared me off and I think I ended up with The Boxcar Children or something that day. But years later when I finally read the entire Little Women series, I realised that librarian had never read any of them, or at least had a poor memory, as there was nothing even a little bit scandalous in Little Men.

What's your favourite book that starts with 'L'?

Runners up: L books are even worse than H books! Holy library card, Batman. A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett (when my grandfather watched the 1995 adaptation of this book with me, he cried more than I did); Les Misérables, Victor Hugo.