We have a beagle named Shila because of that book. My wife and I were thinking about getting another cocker spaniel, but the girls heard the book on tape while we were traveling one summer - and just had to have a beagle. However ours is Shila because we have a female and my girls (then 5 and 6) thought Shila sounded more like a girls name.

Old Mother West Wind by Thorton W Burgess.
Mr Burgess, Peter Cottontail, Johnny Chuck, Bobby Racoon, Prickly Porky, Blacky the Crow, et al, were friends of mine. They lived 3 miles away. :)

I loved every book I ever read when I was a kid, but when I was real small, my favorite was Mother, Mother, I Feel Sick! Send for the Doctor Quick, Quick, Quick!
It was supposed to be done as a shadow play (backlit actors behind a sheet, so all you could see was their silhouettes - sp?) It was about a little boy who has a bellyache, and the doctor removes things like lamps, birds, bicycles, etc. from his stomach. I was completely amazed, since at age 4, I assumed the kid had actually eaten these things. My mom read it to me 1,484,403,489 nights in a row.

After that, I got into Curious George, and most of the Babar books. There was another one I'm wracking my brain to remember the title of....It had a steam engine named Mike. Mike couldn't dig as fast as the new diesel versions, so he was going to be replaced. Then he rescued someone (like the site foreman), and everyone thought he was da shit.

Then Star Wars came out, and I never read anything but Star Wars related crap for the rest of my preteen life.

Then it was porn.

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. See the link in my post to quzah.

Update: The Haverford Township public library now has an area that attempts to be attractive to teenagers. In addition to tradiionally-shelved "young adult" reading there's a whole wall of faced-out books, mostly graphic novels and manga, which I think is very cool. But mixed in with these are some mass market paperback, including the Heinlein offerings "The Door Into Summer," "Citizen of the Galaxy," and "Time Enough for Love." I'm thinking of starting a pool on how long it takes some parent to complain about that last one!!

Last of the Mohicans. really any of that series of books.

I was a huge Enid Blyton fan as a kid ( Famous five, Folk of the Faraway tree etc) but I think the series that totally got me more than any other was the Narnia series.....I used to lie there at night wishing I could crawl through the wardrobe into a snowy woodland and meet Mr Tumnus the faun and Aslan the lion

Time enough for love, what an awesome book.

then again, i really like The Chronicles of Narnia, too. I really like to read a series of books about the same characters.