‘Charlotte’s Web’ Tops List : From Reagan to Midler: Favorite Childhood Books

As a child, Bette Midler adored “Alice in Wonderland.” Peter Ueberroth liked to curl up with “Mr. Popper’s Penguins.” And President Reagan said his favorite boyhood book was “Northern Trails,” an obscure book that even librarians in his childhood home of Dixon, Ill., had not heard of.

Eighty celebrities and nearly 750,000 schoolchildren named their favorite childhood books in a survey conducted last fall and released recently by Reading Is Fundamental, the 20-year-old nonprofit organization that runs reading programs serving about 2 million children nationwide.

Among the teachers, librarians, principals, parents and other volunteers who run RIF projects around the country, E. B. White’s bittersweet “Charlotte’s Web” emerged as the favorite, with Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” in second place.

2,000 Titles Named

The children named more than 2,000 titles as favorites, including many of the same ones listed by adult celebrities, including fairy tales like “Cinderella,” modern classics like “Charlotte’s Web,” and the Dr. Seuss books.

It is fair to say that Reagan was alone in singling out “Northern Trails” by William Joseph Long, a 390-page, 1905 book of nonfiction outdoor tales long out of print but still to be found in the Library of Congress.

Reagan wrote in replying to the RIF survey: “This was a book about nature, and it began my lifelong love of the outdoors. I hope that all the children you reach will find their special book. Reading is one of my greatest pleasures, and it can be the pathway to adventure and new interests.”

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Nancy Gillfillan, director of the Dixon (Ill.) Public Library, said she had never heard of “Northern Trails.” But she said in a telephone interview that Reagan had written a letter to the Dixon library six years ago in which he cited as boyhood favorites the Frank Merriwell books, Zane Grey, and a book called “The Printer of Udell’s” by Harold Bell Wright, who wrote books about life in the Ozarks.

The survey asked celebrities to name their “all-time favorite children’s book” and other books “too good to miss.”

Among the replies:

- Actor Alan Alda: “Top Horse at Crescent Ranch” by Howard Livingston Hastings and The Congressional Record.

“For some reason,” Alda said, “leather-bound copies of the goings-on in Congress lined the shelves of our living room, and I pored over them when I was 12. I had never read anything so funny. From then on, I knew I wanted to do comedy.”

- Tennis star Arthur Ashe: “Native Son” by Richard Wright.

- Columnist Erma Bombeck: “Heidi” by Johanna Spyri, “Charlotte’s Web” and “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll.

- Columnist Art Buchwald: “Catcher in the Rye” by J. D. Salinger.

- Actress Carol Burnett: “The Yearling” by Marjorie Rawlings.

- TV host Johnny Carson: “Beowulf.”

- Singer Jimmy Dean: “Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain.

- Heart surgeon Michael DeBakey: “Tom Sawyer.”

- Muppeteer Jim Henson: “Winnie the Pooh” by A. A. Milne.

- Singer Billy Joel: “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” by Twain.

- New York City Mayor Edward I. Koch: “Black Beauty” by Anna Sewell.

- Singer Yoko Ono Lennon: “Black Beauty.”

- Columnist Ann Landers: “Charlotte’s Web.”

- Yale University President Benno C. Schmidt: “The Boy’s King Arthur” by Sidney Lanier.

- Secretary of State George P. Shultz: “When We Were Very Young” by A. A. Milne.

- Magazine publisher Gloria Steinem: “Little Women.”

- Model Cheryl Tiegs: “The Jungle Book” by Rudyard Kipling.

- Columnist Abigail Van Buren: The Bobbsey Twins series by Laura L. Hope.

- Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger: “Doctor Dolittle” by Hugh Lofting.

- Dallas Cowboy quarterback Danny White: “Last of the Breed” by Louis L’Amour.

- Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young: “Ivanhoe” by Sir Walter Scott.