thewhitelily | Childhood Literature Favourites Meme

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Childhood Literature Favourites Meme

Going around my friendslist at the moment: thirteen favourite books from childhood. This is particularly relevant at the moment because... well, I know what I'm going to be writing for NaNoWriMo - and it's definitely kidlit. The protagonist is a boy who runs away to join the circus and everything. :)

I've titled my list my thirteen childhood literature favourites, though, because... well, I didn't really read books that there was only one of. So some of these are authors, some of them are series, and there's a couple of single books which I loved but didn't like the series around them. I couldn't narrow it down to only one kind.

1. David Eddings: I can't count the number of times I read these books. Honestly, it would be in the hundreds. It got to the point where I could read a whole series in three days - a week for part one and two - and that was while school was in. I took one with me everywhere - they were perfect, because they fit precisely into my blazer pocket. I got in trouble for taking one on a fire drill once, and successfully managed to explain that it had been in my pocket when the bell rang - and did they want me to waste time emptying my pockets before I proceeded in an orderly fashion down to the oval, just so that I could be as bored as everyone else? The Belgariad and the Mallorean were my absolute favourites, but I didn't mind the Elenium and the Tamuli, either.

2. Gordan Korman: "I Want To Go Home!" was my favourite, but "Who is Bugs Potter?" was also good. Just... hysterically funny.

3. Trixie Beldon series: I've got almost this entire series. I was obsessed. ~~Lily? Obsessed? Surely not!~~ Actually I wrote my very first fanfiction about Trixie Beldon, before I'd ever heard of fanfiction. I'd completely forgotten about that.

4. Enid Blyton - sheer genius, even if in retrospect not necessarily that brilliant. My favourite series was The Adventurous Four - or possibly the Adventure series ("The ... of Adventure"), but of course I loved the Famous Five. Never really got into the Secret Seven, and my sister was far more of a Brer Rabbit fan than I was, but...

5. Dr. Seuss: I totally agree with what others have said - the Cat in the Hat was rubbish. But I loved The Big Brag, The Sneeches, Yertle the Turtle, What Was I Scared Of?, Horton Hears a Who, The Lorax - all the ones with a moral and a real story to set off the clever or ridiculous rhymes rather than just a huge list of words that happen to rhyme.

6. Willard Price's Adventure series: thinly disguised animal encyclopedias as two brothers go around the world capturing exotic animals for their father's company (which provides animals for zoos). Riveting from one end to the other.

7. The Berenstain Bears: Particularly The Bike Lesson! "Will I ever ride it? Or will I just keep running beside it?" I must say, the Berenstein Bears and Dr. Seuss remain lasting entries in my childhood favourites mainly because they were the books I most clearly remember enjoying with Dad. I enjoyed them both well past the point where I was also reading stacks of way thicker books.

8. Ender's Game: my very first introduction to the twist ending. No, I did not guess what was going on, and it made me very cross when Hubby said "what? it was obvious, wasn't it?" after reading it on my intentionally vague recommendation. But I adored it and read it obsessively, and the whole concept of "the enemy's gate is down" was something that twisted my gravity-bound brain into an adoring pile of goo.

9. Bottersnikes and Gumbles: the most wonderful book series ever, about two warring tribes of mythical creatures in the Australian outback - the Gumbles were peace-loving mischevious environmentally friendly beanbags with faces and hands and feet, the Bottersnikes were evil, lazy, angry beings who lived in rubbish dumps and liked to catch Gumbles and stuff them into empty soup cans so that they could pull them out and have slaves whenever they wanted. Hilarious, thrilling, and complete and utter escapism.

10. Redwall: I stopped reading after some... ten books or something, but Redwall provided me with so much fantasy world retreat in my head, it was just awesome.

11. Ancient Future: also known as Mary-sue Strikes Back, but... well, I loved it. When a butt-kicking modern woman goes back in time to marry a medieval prince and get declared a warrior goddess... aaaaah, it's all my adolescent dreams coalesced into one handy volume.

12. A series I can't remember the name/author/etc., because they were from the library and are thus lost into antiquity. It was about a set of children who loved sailing and got into adventures: the first book I read opened with one of the children running across a grassy field pretending to tack, since they were going into the wind. I could never find them when I went back to look for them, but I remember absolutely adoring them. Anyone who can identify them will earn my eternal gratitude.

13. Narnia: The Horse and his Boy was the only one I never really enjoyed. I think The Last Battle was my favourite - a scene that sticks with me even now is Jill turning aside her face so that her tears didn't wet her bowstring. Beautiful.

Noticably absent from this list is anything like the Babysitter's Club, or anything that involved shifting friendships, loyalties, betrayals, and/or girls with crushes as main plot elements. Boooring! [/actually a comment about self, not about such books] Also absent is Roald Dahl and all the horror/gross sort of kids books, who I never really got into.

Since childhood, I've discovered a whole heap of new favourite kidlit authors: Eoin Colfer, Diana Wynne Jones, Phillip Pullman, and.. um... JK Rowling, I guess. The list feels incomplete without them, but I never read them when I was a kid, so I can't really include them.

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Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome.

*glomps* Hurrah! Thank you, that's definitely the ones!

One serving of eternal gratitude coming up...

What qualifies as childhood? Would I be able to count stuff from my tweenage years, for example?

Ooh, just picked up David Eddings recently. He's amazing. I ran right through the first three books of the Belgariad, and then had to stop because I didn't have the rest. Next time I get the chance to go book!shopping, I am most def getting the rest of the Belgariad.

One of the programming projects last year for the year two programmers was something to do with making a Sneech machine (don't actually know the details because I was a year three). Oh, and ten-ish years ago my dad dressed as Thing One from Cat in the Hat, for Halloween. [/the many influences Dr. Seuss has had in my life]

I can't remember anything about the Berenstein Bears, except what they look like. But I certainly read them numerous times.

Ender's Game = yay! I recommended it to someone today.

Ha, I read one of the Babysitter's Club books. ~~Because it was about a spelling bee, and I have always had an irrational love of spelling bees. [/excuses, excuses]~~

And Roald Dahl is awesome. BFG and The Witches, ftw.

Stuff from my childhoodish years (for the most part, from middle school, because my memory sucks):
1. The How Things Work books (these I read as a kid).
2. Madeleine L'Engle (the Time Quartet).
3. William Nicholson (The Wind Singer, Slaves of the Mastery, and Firesong).
4. Lemony Snicket.
5. Eoin Colfer.
6. T.A. Barron (the Young Merlin series).
7. Diane Duane (the series that starts off with So You Want to Be a Wizard).
8. JKR (only up to GOF, though, if my childhood ended at the beginning of high school).
9. Edward [something] (Half Magic, and wasn't there a series?).
10. William Pene du Bois (The Twenty-One Balloons, zomg, that book was made of such awesome - I've read it millions of times)
11. All the girly, crushy books that Lily didn't read (Sharon Creech, a book that was pink and purple whose title/protagonist I can't remember, Mary-Kate and Ashley books,...).
12. Create Your Own Adventure books (I'd try to go through every possibility to find all the different endings~~, and see how many of them resulted in the main character's death~~).
13. Roald Dahl (...and The Witches, and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, and Danny the Champion of the World, and, oh yeah, Matilda was totally my hero, and...).

[/too lazy to post the meme in own journal]

Ah, I decided that childhood was whatever I considered it to be. Although most of those are primary school (although the bulk of the Eddings Obsession didn't come until year 9). Also, yay Eddings fan! ~~I am so ashamed that even with hundreds of reads I didn't notice the cross-series parallels you will soon be noticing until someone pointed them out to me.~~

Awesome to see your booklist, and I am soooooo jealous you get to put JKR on yours. :P

Finally: Hubby says "Woot!" to the How Things Work books (which I read out to him because I knew he'd liked them), followed coming to have a look at your list over my shoulder and: "Hey, I think I read that Babysitters Club book about the spelling bee..." *facepalms*

You're the first person in Australia I've ever met who's heard of Gordon Korman. I loved the Bruno and Boots series. I'm pretty sure I still have Go Jump in the Pool somewhere. And No Change Please!.

Did you know he has another book coming out in a couple of months? I only know the Canadian release date (He's Canadian); you can bet I'll be on amazon.ca paying the outrageous shipping fees...

Hurrah for Gordon Korman! He came to my attention because my Year 7 teacher read I Want To Go Home! to us after lunch, so I don't know how she got hold of it. Then I tried to get hold of a copy for about ten years before I thought of looking on Ebay, and paid an exhorbitant amount for a set of seven Korman books.

Not sure whether I needed to be younger reading Bruno and Boots for the first time or whether they just weren't up my alley - but Bugs Potter and No Change Please! were much more my style even though I came to them as an adult.

And no, I didn't! Thanks for letting me know - I'll have to keep an eye out for it. :)

I loved the first two Eddings series too, but I didn't read them as a kid. Likewise for Narnia; I read those once I was firmly entrenched as a fantasy reader. A Horse and his Boy was one of my favourites, though - the end of it was the only part I didn't like, because of its blatant deus ex machina.

Also: I'd completely forgotten the Willard Price Adventure books! I used to have competitions with my friends in primary school to see who could read them the fastest.

Yeah, my favourite sister who I idolised was a fantasy reader, and the Belgariad was the series she decided I was old enough to read if I was so keen when I was in year... three or something. So I adored them before I'd even read them, and then adored them some more when I realised what great taste my favourite sister had in liking something so wonderful.

Not sure if I even managed to finish A Horse and his Boy - just couldn't get into it.

And I don't think I ever timed myself with Willard Price - what was your record with speed reading?

Not very fast. The Willard Price books, or perhaps Lord of the Rings, were the books I read the fastest; it still took me a day or two for an Adventure book. I've slowed down since then - these days if I want to finish a book quickly, I'll just skip chapters.

Ah, lucky you for slowing down. I built up my speed reading when I was in early highschool, and now if I'm not concentrating on reading slowly, I read far too fast to really absorb everything and enjoy them as much as I could. It's great for the boring bits, because I'm turning three pages a minute, but then I reach the end and go... oh. I'm finished. Or in a book that's really complicated - like Neal Stephenson, who I'm reading at the moment - it's necessary to read every word, I have to keep going back and rereading when I realise I haven't been actually following for a few pages.

Even at the speed I read I find I have to keep going back to reread sentences every now and then. The problem you have, of not always absorbing everything, is why I didn't have much interest in pursuing speed reading (beyond the Adventure books, but that was competition. Competition is different). I can skim read quite effectively - not as fast as you, I imagine, but several times my regular speed, and keep the same amount of information retention (sometimes even higher, because of the concentration), but it takes a huge effort for me to maintain the focus necessary. I never use it to read fiction; only rarely for textbooks or other things I have to read in a hurry.

*grin* I didn't learn to speed read on purpose - I was going through a rather tough time after the death of my father and fiction was my escape. I read to block out the world, and the faster I read the more involved I had to be with the fantasy world and the less connected I was to real life. The better I got at reading or the better I knew the story, the faster I had to read to prevent any unpleasant thoughts intruding.

It's a useful skill to have, as you say, for nonfiction where at the very least I can find the important or complex bits of a textbook by speed reading and then spend my time understanding or memorising those bits. But yeah, it's annoying having to have it as the default position so that I have to concentrate on not doing it if I want to slow down.

Maybe your default reading speed will change once you've focused on slowing down often enough. It will probably take longer than learning it in the first place, though - it's true what they say, that you learn things more quickly when you're younger. It can be really hard sometimes to change behaviours you taught yourself as a child - when I was 11ish, I taught myself not to show any emotions. It took me ages to learn how to smile again after that.

Noticably absent from this list is anything like the Babysitter's Club, or anything that involved shifting friendships, loyalties, betrayals, and/or girls with crushes as main plot elements. Boooring!
I was one of those girls reading those books. XD

I think the the only things I still like are the Prydain books (Lloyd Alexander) and then Tolkien, but both of those were late 6th grade, so dunno if those count. Now I like a lot of kidlit authors that I didn't like <7th grade (from your list, Phillip Pullman and of course Eoin Colfer), and I can't believe that I read some of the stuff that I did. It's like... ew. Was that me?

Hehe, I never understood those girls. Gimme action/adventure any day. Although I'm sure I would have been a voracious reader of them if I'd ever realised they were kind of a manual for how these whole confusing "friendship" and "other people" things work. :P

I've never heard of the Prydain books - recommended?

And yeah, I totally understand what you mean about looking back with shame on what you read - makes it all the more important to write good kidlit, methinks. :)

XD I don't understand myself sometimes.

Oh, *yes*. Prydain is just... urgh. Prydain is better fantasy than Narnia anyday (though I wouldn't put it above mah Tolkien, of course.) The author died recently too, but he was overshadowed by Vonnegut.

Well, my concerns weren't really about villains and stuff, either. I wasn't... dreamy. I mean, I was raised for the white picket fence dream, you know? Being concerned with friends and popularity and stuff is just how that comes out when you're 9. *shrug* I just got a rough shove out of it.

Gah. I don't s'pose the sailing!book!series Swallows and Amazons, was it? Because - zomg - I *also* loved a book about these kids who went sailing, etc., and I think it was S and A.

I was so into football!books, when I was really ickle. Weird. Also loved Enid Blyton, Harry Potter, Horrowitz later on... never much into Narnia, surprisingly.

Yay! I'm pretty sure it was Swallows and Amazons - I'll have to get it out of the library sometime to make sure. *grin* Oh, and you don't get eternal gratitude, just lengthy gratitude and squeeage that you also liked it, becuase someone already found it first. :)

Football books? I didn't even know there *were* such beasts!

Strangely enough, I think I was mainly into Narnia because of the BBC mini series, which I loved, and wished was on all the time, so I'd read the books to make up for not being able to constantly watch that. Usually it was the other way around, but... *shrug*

Oh yeah, so they did. Bastard.

Oooh, I was like that for The Demon Headmaster! Did you have that at all? God, I *LOVED* that. By Gillian Cross.

I love Bottersnikes and Gumbles.

*grin* I'm so glad someone knows Bottersnikes and Gumbles! They were such awesome books. Even when I went back to read them as an adult, I kept thinking they were amazing. Unique concepts, and excellent writing around it.

Do you remember when the Gumbles cut the bottoms off all the tins, so the Bottersnikes had to squash them all into an enormous soup tureen? *sighs nostalgically for her favourite bit* I think that might have been Bottersnikes and Gumbles in Summer.

You know, I'd completely forgotten Willard Price's Adventure series. Oh wow!

I specifically remember reading Enid Blyton's "The Adventurous Four" books; they were great. Although I certainly read quite a few of the Famous Five, Secret Seven, even the Wishing Chair and Faraway Tree adventures... Where would we all be without Enid?!

Oh, and I've never read "Ender's Game" or its sequel(s?) but I have given a nod to it in my newly-finished NaNo effort! :-) Really should read 'em someday, I guess! :-)

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Childhood Literature Favourites Meme

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Bruno and Boots!

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You made me squeal with nostalgia.

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