What were your favorite books when you were a youngster? Your really really favorites, the ones you will never forget? What I'm talking about are books you read yourself, or chapter books that were read to you, rather than small children's picture books, though of course many of those are now among the books I adore and give as gifts. I'd love to hear from people of different ages on this question - as I think that might make a big difference.
It's hard for me to pare the list down to a reasonable number, as I was a voracious reader from the moment I cracked the code. The first book I remember loving was The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I read it over and over, mesmerized by the strangeness of India, then by the romantic mystery of the English moors, the walled garden, the group of misfit children deeply involved in a secret project.
Another book I loved was Roller Skates, by Ruth Sawyer. I don't know if this book still captivates girls, but it certainly did me. It's the story, apparently autobiographical, of a ten-year-old's life in New York City during the year her parents go abroad and leave her with a guardian. She travels all over the city on her skates, making friends and having adventures. I haven't read this book in years, but it's still in the bookcase we keep full of kids' books, for the grandchildren, nieces and nephews who come to visit.
A lifelong fascination with anything miniature may have begun with Mary Norton’s Borrowers series, all of them. I wanted there to be an unending number of these books, adventures of the tiny people continuing in every possible environment. Something of the same magic was in P.L. Travers Mary Poppins series, all of which I loved – I wanted to be Mary Poppins, to have those magical abilities totranscend this humdrum world the way she could. P.L. Travers was a student of mythology and religions; she used to be the editor of Parabola in the days when I subscribed to that magazine. There is more than one doctoral thesis in the Mary Poppins books, though I don’t know if any have actually been written.
Mary Poppins could talk to the animals and birds, and it was a power I so longed to have. The talking animals of The Wind in the Willows enchanted me for years. They still enchant me. I can read that book over and over, pick it up and start at any place it opens. It is full of wonder and wisdom and poetry, much of my love of nature began with the animals and their environments in that book.
Even before I lost my heart to Little Women, Louisa May Alcott's eternal story of a family of four girls and their beloved Marmee, I had fallen in love with the All of a Kind Family, by Sydney Taylor. One reason is that it was a family of five little girls, and I myself was the oldest of a family of five little girls – and one brother. Taylor’s is a Jewish immigrant family on the Lower East Side of New York, and much of my early learning about Judaism, and fascination with it, came from these books. The first book has several sequels, all of which I loved.
I have been unable to interest any of the current children in my life in a book which I adored, Hitty, Her First Hundred Years, by Rachel Field, and I’m not sure why. It does seem rather dense on first glance, and the language is not contemporary – but, oh, the story! A hundred years of history and adventure in this autobiography of a wooden doll. There is a new edition, reworked by two very fine children’s authors and illustrators, Rosemary Wells and Susan Jeffers. But I still treasure my copy of the original, and think maybe I need to read it again soon.
There are many more children’s books that I’ve discovered as an adult – I’m a great fan of kids’ books – but this is a short list of some I experienced as a real child, on real summer days when I used to take a book up into the branches of a tree and spend as long there as I could, lost in dreams, stories, adventures, discovering worlds within worlds, learning the power and wonder of words.
8 comments:
It was the Little House books that made me a reader, then Wind in the Willows. I read Little Women when I was eight and things haven't been the same since then.
For me it was the Little House books, over and over...I made my pilgrimage to De Smet, SD, five years ago, so I could finally see where Laura lived. I know those books helped shape who I am...
Also, 'Little Women', Noel Streatfield's Shoe books, and 'Heidi'...those were my first loves.
OH I had manyyy. I would have to say one of my very favorites was Charlotte's Web. Just the Best!
Laura Ingalls Wilder, all the Little Women books, the Little Colonel books, Heidi, The Secret Garden, Nancy Drew, Charlotte's Web, To KIll a Mockingbird, which I read for the first of many, many times at the age of 10.
One of my most favorite children's books I actually read as a child was "The Court of the Stone Children" by Elenore Cameron. It had ghosts, history, and odd characters which I loved. I liked many of her other books too. I read "The Secret Garden" but it was so long ago I don't member much. I also read a book called "Mandy" (I don't remember the author) about an orphan and I cried everytime I read it. I read many classics and fell in love with "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "The Three Musketeers". I also developed a fascination with anything by Edgar Allen Poe and read the teen detective characters: Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, and Donna Parker. I go back and read many of them today.
I remember my first two loves were Roald Dahl books (I got hooked with Matilda) and Shel Silverstein. As I got a little older, I started into some classics that I still love: Little Women, Watership Down, The Secret Garden... I also had a book called "The Heart of a Bear" that had fantastic illustrations in it. I don't think I ever read it, but I remember spending so much time browsing through the pages. It was one of my favorites.
http://journals.aol.com/ericalynn2583/Shutterbabe
I love this graphic. Where did you find it? As to my own first love in the reading category, I'd have to say Anne of Green Gables, and other Lucy Maud Montgomery books. I was fascinated by the lush world she created and Anne's temperament. Before that, all I read, because they were all that were available to me in my school, were Biographies of the Saints (mostly gory martyr stories). I didn't love them -- I just read them because they were THERE, and my mother was not someone who took us to the public library much. Although I enjoyed reading about Anne, I'd have to say that Little Women was the most important book for me as a youngster. Those March girls were absolutely real to me.
As a kid, I read everything. I particularly liked a series for boys that focused on the life of Chip Hilton -- the boy played every sport and generally managed by grit and talent to edge out the opposition. The series must have been written in the late forties and was already dated by the time I discovered the books in my local library (or on the Bookmobile that visited our street in the summer).
Like I say, I read everything -- even Little Women (though it left me completely stumped why anyone would write such stuff).
But my favorite children's books are those I used to read for my own children. I wanted them to learn to love books as I do, and it was a good way to settle everyone down at the end of the day -- not to mention that it gave my wife a break and gave me some special time with the kids each day.
A Fly Went By, PJ Funnybunny, Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes, and The Cat in the Hat were all favorites in my house.
As the kids got older the books changed and gradually the bedtime stories came to an end.
I hope they remember, and do the same for their children some day.
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