Not Harry Potter: What Were Your Favourite Childhood Reads?
Published July 20, 2007
Last night I was chatting with a friend about the recommended retail price of the latest Harry Potter, and how prohibitive it is for children from low-income families. I told him I felt so sad about the fact some poor children can't afford books that I intended to give mine away to one as soon as I've finished - but to whom? I racked my brains for a short while and realised who should have the book: the public library, of course!
When I was little, money for books was not only lacking in my family but unnecessary; and an important privilege I enjoyed was the brilliant free public library service in Scotland. This, coupled with an enthusiastic family network of women readers who coordinated their own and their children's fortnightly library borrowing so that everyone could swap books and enjoy the most recommended, enabled me the immense pleasure and escape of good children's fiction. To this day, I don't go anywhere without a book in my bag just in case an opportunity to read arises, and my little boy has a stash of books in the car.
Children's literature matters so much that I believe every child should be able to access it freely and without limit or reserve. If they have trouble reading, someone should read aloud to them. I owe so much, I feel, to the authors of my favourite books in terms of enjoyment, the development of my literacy and enrichment of my life and imagination that I wish I could thank them all warmly in person.
This is, of course, not possible. I don't want to think about the reason why I can't contact most of them today: I prefer to imagine that they live on in their work. I have tried my best to whittle down my favourites to a top ten, but the best I could do was twelve, and several of these are series. I've chosen from books I loved best between the ages of eight and ten.
I'd like to know what other people's top ten childhood reads are; I can certainly recommend you sit and think back for a while about the texts of your childhood. You may well find yourself transported emotionally as you remember the plots, characters and descriptions and recognise the authors' names, and may find you are tempted to buy some old favourites if and when you go to the bookshop to get The Deathly Hallows "for a child". That's o.k., if you can afford to do so: you can pass them on somehow when you've finished re-reading them, can't you?
Here is my top ten-ish (ok, twelve!) childhood reads. Just a list, not reasons: each deserves a review in its own right.
Five Dolls in a House series by Helen Clare
Famous Five series by Enid Blyton
Mrs Pepperpot by Alf Proyson
What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge
Bobby Brewster, Boy Detective series by H.E. Todd
Lizzie Dripping and the Witch by Helen Cresswell and T. Ross
Mallory Towers series by Enid Blyton
The Princess and the Goblin by Arthur Hughes and George MacDonald
"Fairy Book" Series: The Blue, Red, Green, Yellow, Pink, Grey, Violet, Crimson, Brown, Orange, Olive, and Lilac Fairy Books by Andrew Lang
Peanuts series by Charles Schultz (Yes, it's a comic strip - but it's literature in my opinion!)
The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis (not forgetting The Magician's Nephew)
Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer
High Heels is a writer, poet and blogger. She is a tutor in an arts college in the UK. She is a specialist in Literature, Art History and Film Studies. Her interests include film, art and photography, literature, philosphy, politics, fashion and style, popular culture, music, surrealism and the avant-garde. Image of High Heels by kind permission © Ben Wharton 2007.
- Not Harry Potter: What Were Your Favourite Childhood Reads?
- Published: July 20, 2007
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Books
- Filed Under: Books: Children
- Writer: High Heels
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My favourites:
The Famous Five series
The Run to Earth series by Tom McCaughren. (Foxes live and die. I cried. A lot.)
Charlotte's Web. (Spider and pig live and die. I cried. A lot.)
Abandoned! by G. D Griffiths. (Cat lives and dies. I cried. A lot.)
Survival! (I can't find the author on-line. Basically a human escapes prison and survives - see what the author did there - he lives; then dies. I cried. A lot.) I'm starting to see a theme here. Thank God for the light relief of the Famous Five.
Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer. (Girl swaps places in time with other girl. One girl dies first. I cried. A lot.)
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr. (Hitler, in a round about way, steals a girl's soft toy. I cried. A lot.)
Forever by Judy Blume. (It got to the point where it fell open at the "dirty" bits. Ralph rules! Her grandfather dies. I cried. A lot.)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I skipped all the, at the time, boring talkie talkie bits, when I first read this. My mum introduced me to this book when I was about ten. I thank her. And only the mad wife dies. (I was too young to appreciate the feminist sub-plot of this book at the time and frankly don't give a s*** now. My favourite book of all time. I must have read it twenty times over the years; I find something new to enjoy every time.)
Well there you have it. Enjoy. And if you see your daughter with a copy of Forever explain that they are not all called Ralph (easy mistake to make) and that, with the evolution of Always Ultra and, dare I say it, Tampons, she no longer has to worry about wearing a belt with hooks every time her special "friend" makes its appearance.
Reading this and thinking of your favourite childhood books is pretty difficult. There's the side of you that wishes to avoid cliches, be all literary, a brain child, contemporary and wonderful. Then of course is the side that says, how daft, 'the owl who was afraid of the dark' rocked. And that it did. As for your title, 'The Prisoner of Azkaban' actually is one of my favourites. I'm of that generation. Then again so are goosebumps, trashy lit for teens shall always have a place in my heart, especially the horror. Unless it has puppets in it. Roald Dahl also made a childhood memorable, before the films, i laughed and cried for Matilda, George, and that backwards tortoise, though mr fox i found less than fantastic. Younger still, there was Beatrix Potter, i fondly remember tales of creatures, and being tiny and a lover of nature, taking them in with awe. Alice in Wonderland was also a firm favourite, though now i realise the author must have loved possibly some kind of mushroom made meal. Glancing at my bookcase now, not many of these books actually remain, but have been replaced by favourites of my teenage years, a pretty starck progression, with little in between. I myself blame certain sexed up freud fanatical english teachers for this, hyperbole, metaphysics and a ridiculous amount of canon literature now take their place. Although, of course, there is still the mandatory stack of Potters, adjacent to a certain Geishas memories, Burgess, Sylvia, and Cambridges guide to english lit. A bit of a departure from Peter Rabbit i must say.
given enough time to go through my books I could come up with quite a humdinger of a list. Instead I shall just pull a few off the top of my head.
"I Want To Go Home!" by Gordon Korman
"The Phantom Tollbooth" by Juster
"The Westing Game" by Ellen Raskin
"The Little Prince" by Antoine De Saint Exupary (spelled wrong, sorry)
and, of course...
The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
There are a lot of others... and several young adult/kids novels which I love now, but didn't enjoy so much as a kid. But that is a nice little list, yeah?
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Ooh - what fun! Mine: Watership Down (Richard Adams), Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little (EB White), all the Oz books (L. Frank Baum), Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll), The Chronicles of Prydain series (Lloyd Alexander), the Encyclopedia Brown series (Donald J. Sobol) and A Wrinkle In Time/A Wind in the Door/A Swiftly Tilting Planet (Madeleine L'Engle).