I read voraciously in childhood, and I read as much as I could and indiscriminately. However, some books were wonderful enough that I returned to them again and again through the years.
Books I read over and over as a child:
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
The Secret Garden, by Francis Hodgson Burnett
Milne's (*not* Disney's) Winnie the Pooh
a wonderful 'fairy tale' by Phyllis McGinley called The Plain Princess
C.S. Lewis' Narnia books
A Wrinkle in Time and Meet the Austins, both by Madeline L'Engle
The Arabian Nights
Lang's fairy tales
Swiss Family Robinson
I really connected with my books and the characters in them. The characters were my friends, my family, or my enemies, depending on the book. At other times, I identified so strongly with the characters that I became the characters.
In discussion of books that really became a part of me, I have to include Ramona, although I would rather not. I read it in kindergarten and first grade (several times, I loved it so), and I really connected with that little girl.
She had a doll named 'Chevrolet,' so I named my doll Chevrolet (and wouldn't believe my mother when she told me it was just a car). Ramona dyed her doll's hair green. I shaved my doll's head (expected it to grow back again). She 'ditched' Kindergarten. One day in the middle of a very bad day in first grade, I thought to myself, "I don't have to put up with this," and at lunch time, I marched off to the babysitter's rather than return to the classroom. Unfortunately, I didn't know where the sitter lived, because it was my first day with a new sitter, but that's another story altogether, a sad story of a mean sitter and a lost and miserable child, albeit still a pigheaded child. To this day I look back upon my 6 y.o. self and think that really, there is no justification for the silliness of that first grade classroom, and nobody should have had to put up with it.
Those of you who know our First Year Girl will not be surprised to know that I have been afraid to introduce her to Ramona. She keeps us busy enough as it is. Perhaps it would have been wiser for Granny Tea not to have introduced me to Ramona, as well, or perhaps Ramona gave me courage, and it is the FYG whose mother is unwise.
As a wee little tot, the First Year Boy would choose one favorite book for a month or two at a time. He wanted that book read morning, noon, and night. AFter a few weeks, he'd move on to a new book. For a while his favorite was Little Babaji (a newer version of Little Black Sambo). We read it so much that we all memorized the entire text and kept him entertained on a four hour car trip by reciting it in unison. Thirty bazillion times.
Equuschick reads Anne of Green Gables every year in the fall. Pipsqueak seems to be reading through the Prydain Chronicles more than once. I still have to read the Narnia books through every three years or so. What are some children's books that you read repeatedly?
Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising sequence; Douglas Hill's (I think) Last Legionary series.
ReplyDeleteTo this day I still tend to look for those in libraries and used bookstores.
Prydain is on that list, too, but I found it in a used bookstore and don't look for it any more. :) I'm counting the days until Joseph is old enough for me to read it to him.
The Headmistress asked: What are some children's books that you read repeatedly?
ReplyDeleteThis is a very hard question to answer in a way that means much; because I'm not sure if the books I read repeatedly were re-read because I liked them so much or just because they were available. But I'll try: Winnie the Pooh (although I listened to it on a record more than I read the book–having Jimmy Stewart read you your Pooh stories is not such a bad thing); Charlotte Zolotow's Big Sister and Little Sister (I was a big sister with a little sister); all our Parents Magazine Press books; Heidi; Peter Rabbit; The Story of Live Dolls; A Child's Garden of Verses; a book called Stars for Cristy; a horse story that’s impossible to find now called Pamela and the Blue Mare; a really good British anthology called the Lilac Story Book for Girls (that’s not the Lang fairy tale book); Rumer Godden’s The Fairy Doll; Alcott’s Jack and Jill; all the Anne books; books of fairy tales; all the Melendy family books; the Sue Barton nurse books; the Beany Malone teenage series plus some other lesser series books that shall remain nameless; and Catherine Marshall’s Christy. We never heard of the Narnia books until later on.
The Apprentice says that she has read The Four-Story Mistake several times.
I can still recall so fondly reading every horse book printed (or so it seems). However, the books most prominent in my memory are Misty of Chincoteague, Sea Star, Stormy Misty's Foal, the Black Stallion books by Walter Farley, and the Little House books. My mom never read to me but I have changed that with my children...we have read these books together...and they are undoubtedly my children's favorite's!
ReplyDeleteI spent such a short time reading true children's literature, that I think the only things I re-read were Are You There God, It's Me Margaret and Charlotte's Web. I read all of Louisa May Alcott several times (I do not think of her as a children's author) and Edgar Allan Poe, frequently, though.
ReplyDeleteI did not discover true children's lit until college. Now, the books I look forward to sharing with my son are A Day No Pigs Would Die (Peck), A Light in the Forest (Richter), A Door in the Wall (De Angeli?), the Madeline L'Engle books and probably Encyclopedia Brown, to name a few.
There are only a few, relatively speaking, that I had access to. I grew up in a small town with no public library. We did not have access to a school library till we were in 5th grade and then only during the school year. Add to that that our family had very little *disposable* income. . . But I owned a few of those cheaply made Whitman books. Those were sold at the grocery store back then and my parents rarely turned down my request for a new book. So I read Alcott's Little Women (abridged sadly) many, many times and Eight Cousins many, many times. Also, I loved one about a dog called Beautiful Joe. It wore out. I was thrilled to find it FINALLY at a sale a couple of years ago. Alcott's An Old-Fashioned Girl and Sidney's Five Little Peppers and How they Grew and Midway were much, much loved!
ReplyDeleteI have discovered and read much children's lit with my two--and what fun that has been!
What fun I've had today pondering your question!
A Little Princess, and Heidi. I read voraciously as a kid - plus watched TV, too, go figure - but those two stand out as my 'identity.' To this day, I think of Sara Crewe's fortitude and dignity in the face of hardship, and I can remember - as though it happened to me then and happens to me still - that moment the starving Sara held a warm biscuit up to her mouth on a freezing night. Heidi and the Alm-Uncle - she changed his heart, I could cry remembering it. I read every single Mary Poppins book, the Little House books, I remember some little book about a Witch Family, and later on, I got so wrapped up in Wuthering Heights my Dad said he'd take my book away if I didn't snap out of it!! (Warning: spoiler, for any on the planet who don't know: in my diary I wrote "My best friend died today" when Catherine died!) The bliss of books...
ReplyDeleteReread Narnia a lot, of course. I am very glad that they've gone and restored the Pauline Baynes illustrations as well as fixing the typos (I had British paperbacks and really noticed the issues with the American releases) but I am rather annoyed that they "re-ordered" them so that they're chronological; the order of publication is much more sensible as well as having mythological foundations (Exodus being a central theme of the Bible, far more important than Genesis in the shaping of our religious heritage.)
ReplyDeleteI loved the Secret Garden and the Oz books, though I haven't read the latter in years (the former is on the revolving-door list.) I encountered Lucy Maud Montgomery much later and she is on the list of children's books that I still re-read.
I also loved Stowaways in Paradise, a boy's adventure book set in Hawaii, and a book which is sadly not likely to be reprinted (because it uses the dreaded N-word, though in a fairly hilarious context: "He's *not* a n—; he's Pol-y-ne-sian!" with the requisite awe given an exotic concept that the small boys had no clue about.)
But really, in my case it's a question of opportunity. Give me the opportunity to read or re-read a children's classic and I will take you up on it, usually in an hour or less (because they are, after all, short, especially in comparison to my normal titanic fantasy.)