List 5 books that played an important role in your childhood and explain why
Dan tagged me! Eons ago and I’m just getting it now because my trackback functionality basically doesn’t exist. And to everyone out there – consider yourself tagged, if you want to play along. I always LOVE to hear about people’s favorite childhood books. I love to see how we (at least people in my generation) overlap … but then it’s cool also to see the ones that span generations … and also to encounter titles I’ve never heard of, but which mean a lot to somebody else. I love it. I love Dan’s memories about his books. Very cool.
My first response to the “meme” is – only 5??
List 5 books that played an important role in your childhood and explain why
Harriet the Spy – by Louise Fitzhugh. This is probably my most favorite book ever written. Period. I love it because of the long-lasting impact it had on me – but I also just love it because it’s so damn good, and she’s such a good writer – and all of those characters literally live on in my brain. I wrote a whole post about Harriet. (And also here’s an excerpt from it)
Charlotte’s Web – by EB White. I cannot discuss this book rationally or with any distance. I read it to tatters. I think it was read to our class in 3rd grade, and from the very first sentence (which I still can recite from memory – anyone else know it?? Come on. Give it up if you know it.) And then there’s the last paragraph of the book which I cannot even think about without getting tears in my eyes. One of the best books ever written.
Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield – and part of a series of books with different heroines (Theatre Shoes, Dancing Shoes, etc.) They were all books about little girls who ended up being very good at something – ballet, tennis, etc. They were always English, and for the most part – the environment of the books was grim either pre-World War II or post-war England. (Ballet Shoes was published in 1937, a grim time indeed). And that atmosphere is in the books, although the focus is on the ballet school. It’s a dark time, hard times, penny-pinching times. This sounds so pedantic and so stupid but these books are really quite wonderful – Ballet Shoes, in particular. It was made into a Masterpiece Theatre mini-series which (holy crap) I just found on Netflix and ordered! It won an Emmy at the time and I remember loving the series – I approved of their adaptation of my favorite book, basically. Haha, I was 9 years old, saying ponderously, “Yup. That’s okay by me.”
Ballet Shoes is about three orphan girls – unrelated – Pauline, Petrova, and Posy – who were adopted – not by a married couple but by an unmarried woman who takes them in. Times are so tough, and money is so short – that it is suggested that perhaps the girls should be enrolled in the school of dramatic arts in London – get their “licenses” and start working as child actors – to make a bit of money. Posy ends up being what they would call a genius ballerina at the age of 9 years old. A Margot Fonteyn in the making. This book was not just a book to me, though. It was a guide-book. It was instructions to me, at age whatever, of how I wanted to live my life. This was going to be my life. It was a serious business. It is a craft to be studied – and there are options. Meaning: if you want to do this, you can. I was going to devote my life to my art. Just like Pauline, Petrova and Posy. I still own this book. Streatfield’s a very good writer, too. I have probably made the book sound rather silly – but it’s really about these 3 girls, and their anxieties about making money, about not being a “burden” on their adopted parent, about how to scrimp and save for audition dresses … Meanwhile, it was a whole different world being presented to me as a kid. Galoshes, “macks”, the Cromwell Road, streetcars, and organdy dresses … not to mention the entire business of Theatre. I read Maurice Maeterlinck’s The Blue Bird at age 10 because of Ballet Shoes. The girls were in a production of it. Marvelous world created. This is the best of the series. (Excerpt here)
A Wrinkle in Time – by Madeleine L’Engle L’Engle is one of my personal idols, and this book started it all. What a vision of the universe. I still can’t live that truth on a day to day basis … although dammit, I do my best. It is the goal, it is what I struggle to do. What a healing vision of what makes the whole operation tick, and how it works. The power of love. The strength of love. Evil exists, and it throws a black cloud over all of us … but never underestimate how much love really matters. It is never irrelevant or meaningless. I share many of her views on tough topics – not all of them – but many of them (when she gets overly pious, I roll my eyes – because her writing gets yawningly boring then. I kind of get into it here – with her whole “sodomy” thing – where I feel she was, frankly, WAY out of her depth, as an author – and I rarely feel that about her.) By tough topics I mean, essentially, that I can’t not believe in the goodness of people. And I won’t let anyone take that from me – and they try! You have to WORK to remain optimistic, and faith-full, and to maintain a belief in redemption. You have to hold onto that shit because it drives people lnuts and they want to take it from you. I am not cynical. I hear all the weary “oh what is the world coming to” drivel from people, or “Oh, people are so much worse now than they were back in the golden days of my youth” and I seriously find that crap spiritually grating to listen to. Or not just grating – but almost dangerous. Like I need to protect my hope, my belief in people’s goodness (thank you, Anne Frank) and that sort of weary hopeless cynicism goes against my core beliefs, and how I want to live my life. L’Engle has helped show me the way. Read her book about going back to the time of Noah (Many Waters – wonderful book). And all of those Biblical-era people come to life in that book- with the same loves and hopes and fears and biases and stubbornness as people now. It’s a beautiful vision of a continuum of humanity.
And so I always read what she has to say, because I can guarantee – even if I disagree with it – it will be better written than most anything else out there. Her religious books are actually awesome – her Genesis trilogy is something I go to time and time again – but then she wrote a book about Christian art and I found the whole thing not just tiresome but also disgusting. I was disgusted by her views. Madeleine! My idol! Yup. However I read every repulsive word. That’s a rare author.
Wrinkle in Time – her big “break” – isn’t, I don’t think, my favorite of her books. I would probably choose Ring of Endless Light as my favorite of all of her books – but Wrinkle in Time was my introduction to this marvelous thought-provoking creative author. This woman who really thinks about things, ponders them, feels them, goes there. Nothing about her is facile or easy. She is tough, and I love love love her for that. God, she’s good. I cling to her work, at times. The vision that she articulates … the grief and hope living side by side – the possibility of redemption, even here on earth – how you must never ever ever think that your love doesn’t matter … I find her stuff very very healing. I was only 10 when I read that book, but it made a lasting impression on how I see the world. (Excerpt here)
From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler – by EL Konigsburg. MAGIC. This was another one of those great books that feature kids with very little adult supervision, like Harriet. I loved that. They run away, and they camp out in the Metropolitan Museum in Manhattan (those illustrations!), hiding in the bathrooms until the janitorial staff leaves, and then they have the run of the entire place. They take baths in the fountain, and gather up the pennies dropped at the bottom, so that they have funds. Another one of those books that really challenged me as a kid. Remember the narrative voice of that book? That older woman, slyly knowing, with occasional asides to Saxonburg? The voice of this book suggested a whole other world. It did not pander to me because I was 9 years old. It figured I could handle it. And you know what? I could. Not only could I handle it – but I re-read this book recently and remembered certain passages almost word for word. (Excerpt here)
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Okay – I was young enough when I first read this book that I remember reading it out loud to my mother – or maybe to somebody else, and my mother overheard me – and Meg, at one point, says this line: “But I am afraid I don’t!” And this was my first experience of a contraction, believe it or not. Or maybe I had seen one – but had never put it together – and I pronounced it wrong. I didn’t get it. I didn’t know what “don’t” was, at least not written down – so I said “don’t” as though it were “dahnt”. I didn’t get that it was “do not” shortened. That that’s what that looked like. So I had to be very young. I remember my mother saying, “That should be ‘don’t’ – which is really two words shortened into one. It’s really saying ‘do not’.” And I completely remember this almost exhilarating shiver going over me … it seemed so cool, like a secret password to another level of language, a trick, a key to some sort of code. “Don’t” really means “do not”. Wow! And you say it “doh-nt” not “dah-nt”. Revelation. So I am thinking I had to be 7 or 8 when I read this book.
I can’t even say I read Little Women. I lived it. I read it and read it and read it … and then when I read it as a teenager of course I understood so much more, all the romantic nuances, etc. I will NEVER be reconciled to the stupid stuttering German – I always wanted her to be with Laurie – I believe we have covered this – and I know the arguments, I know that Laurie isn’t really right for Jo … but it was only later when I learned that Alcott was pressured to marry Jo, that SHE wanted Jo to be a “bachelor” – like Alcott was – but oh no no, that would not do. Jo must be domesticated! Knowing what Alcott’s true desire was, in terms of that character, makes a lot of sense to me. I can’t even count how many times I have read this book. And what’s amazing about it is that the same scenes get me … every single time. Waiting for Marmee to return when Beth is sick – and Laurie gives Jo wine to calm her down. When Beth is given the piano. (See? I have goosebumps just writing this down). When Amy falls through the ice – but more than that: when Jo sits by her sick bed afterwards, and torments herself about her terrible temper. I had a terrible temper as a child, and I still struggle with it. It’s like I get tunnel vision in those moments, the feeling of threat is so huge, the feeling of rage so enormous. Marmee’s advice to Jo in that one scene is advice I took to heart, too. When Jo bursts out crying after selling her hair and Meg, of course, Meg is the sister who would “get it”. Meg knows. Meg has her little vanities, her girlishness … and she doesn’t think Jo is silly for mourning her hair. I love love love Meg in that scene. I can’t even say what the book gave me, or why it’s important. It just LIVES, and continues to do so. (Great conversation here about Louisa May Alcott. I love talking about these shared beloved books with others who love them. It’s such a huge pleasure.)
The Diamond in the Window – by Jane Langton. What a book. It’s about a brother and sister – Eleanor and Eddy, who live in Concord Massachusetts, with their crazy uncle and weary aunt (who are also brother and sister – neither of them married). The uncle is an Emerson freak – who has kind of lost his mind, he can no longer live by himself, and he kind of believes he IS Emerson. The aunt is the responsible one, giving piano lessons, worrying about money, and not living her own life, even though she is a young woman. One day, when looking up at their house, Eleanor and Eddy notice a window shaped like a keyhole up in the roof. A window they have never seen before even though they have always lived in that house. They do a bit of exploring and discover a secret room in the attic, filled with old treasures and a toy chest and 2 small single beds – but no one will explain what it means. It is an unmentionable topic. Something unspeakable occurred in the past, apparently … and Eleanor and Eddy need to be shielded from it. Both of them start having dreams – dreams which become increasingly real (for example – Eleanor falls out of a tree in one of the dreams, and wakes up to find that she has a big bloody scratch on her arm). All of the famous characters of Concord show up in these dreams – as guideposts, clues, messages …. Emerson is there. Thoreau is a character. Louisa May Alcott comes into a dream as well. It is an extraordinary book. I loved it so much it almost made me nervous. It doesn’t talk DOWN to kids. I LEARNED stuff when reading this book. The whole transcendentalist movement is mentioned extensively in the book – because Uncle Freddy wants to bring it back – to honor his heroes of days gone by. Fantastic. (Excerpt here.)
That’s already more than 5.
So Jennifer, Hecate, MacBeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth didn’t quite make your list?… Actually I would have picked From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler if you’re only going pick one Konigsburg book, too.
I could go on and on with this list – it killed me to have to “narrow it down”!! Jennifer Hecate is INDEED on my ideal list. I love that you know that book – it’s so random!
Other books that are on my list:
Alice in Wonderland
Lion Witch and Wardrobe
All of a Kind Family (the whole series)
The Ramona series
I loved all of Eleanor Estes’ books
Gone-Away Lake
The Westing Game
I’m sure I’ll think of more!!!
It’s kind of dark here. I think I’ll turn on the “donzer” (you know, the one that gives off “lee light”).
… I LOVE Ramona the Pest
Ramona is seriously the best.
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing – want to hear something stupid? I got this book for Christmas during my 3rd grade year and was all baffled. Like, it’s about FOURTH grade and I’m only in THIRD grade, as if there were some set-in-stone rule about only being allowed to read it if you were a fourth grader that some enforcer was going to make sure I abide by.
One thing’s for sure, I never looked at turtles the same again.
And Bridge to Terabithia. I recently re-read this one after seeing the movie. So incredible.
Emily – hahahahaha yeah, there’s a HUGE barrier between third and fourth … that is so hysterical!!! WORLDS of experience between the ages of 8 and 9.
I LOVED that book too. Fudge was so awesome.
I also (of course) loved Sheila the Great – by the awesome Judy Blume.
Hmm. Five only, huh? My list may change tomorrow, but here are five books that have been important to me:
A Ring of Endless Light
Tuck Everlasting
The View from Saturday (my favorite Konigsburg)
Little Men (I love all her books, but that’s probably the one I reread the most)
The Hiding Place (I “lived” in a concentration camp for weeks each time I read that book–everything in my day, inside my head, was a part of that experience from taking quick showers so as not to be gassed to sleeping on a sliver of my bunk bed because of all the other people crowded around me)
I read The Diamond in the Window on your recommendation, and it was great. A very intense book–the danger was very real, and their plight was truly scary, but it’s still appropriate for children–I would have loved it then as I do now.
Harriet – Oh, I’m so so glad you read Diamond in the Window! It’s just not a popular book nowadays – you can barely find it – and I’m so glad you read it. The scene where they are in the seashell (in the dream) and the waves were coming in was really really frightening to me. And yes – intense.
I don’t think I read View From Saturday – wow!! I must rectify that.
Couldn’t resist. Already went and hijacked the meme. Brilliant idea. Must run home and pick up the childhood read I am in the middle of revisiting right this moment – “The Hounds of the Morrigan” by Pat O’Shea.
My others were:
The Secret Garden
The Cricket in Times Square
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Are You There, God? It’s Me Margaret
I stuck to books before age 10 because the preteen-early teen years deserve their own list, I think.
…and I loved Charlotte’s Web, too.
marisa – I agree. At age 11, after all, I read Forever and, uhm, my life was forever changed. Flowers in the Attic was not far behind. And so innocence was murdered in a small Rhode Island town. hahahaha
No, but 11, 12, 13 – that’s when I read Anne of Green Gables, Huck Finn, all these other books which … I guess are childhood reads … but not the same as books I read at age 8 or 9.
I LOVED Cricket in Times Square – totally forgot about that book until this moment!
Trumpet of the Swan, too. GORGEOUS book.
Phantom Tollbooth! Doh! Another one I forgot. Loved that book.
Oh – and one I forgot – I found my old copy the other day that I had when I was a kid. Around the World in Eighty Days. It was my first British book and I remember as a kid being baffled by the backwards quotation marks and some of the words being spelled funny, and my dad explaining to me the difference between British and American English. I even wrote my name in the front cover in that dumb little kid writing.
I think Cricket In Times Square was the first time I understood that I could LOVE a character in a book in a genuine way and care deeply what happened to them. That changed everything.
The most unusual one for me is realizing, in retrospect, that I read The Chronicles of Narnia squirrelled away IN A SPARE ROOM, surreptuously hiding them from my mother who had forbidden me to read them. Until doing this meme, that bizarre serendipity had not really occurred to me. I’m sure it added to my attachment to the books themselves.
Emily – Ballet Shoes was that “British” book for me. Words like “splendour” and “honour”, and I so wished that I could say stuff like “macks” for “mackintosh” (even though Americans don’t even say that, really!) – I loved the language.
Marisa – wow. The lure of the forbidden.
Incredible. I love it when weird incongrous (and yet meaningful) memories come up like that.
Marisa,
Oh my god…that’s so funny. When I was a kid, I first read the LOTR trilogy under the cover of darkness and fear of punishment. I wasn’t told I couldn’t read them – I was never told I couldn’t read something. My parents probably would have let me read Lolita when I was nine. It’s just I had taken them off my dad’s shelf and for some reason, I thought he’d be mad at me. A couple of years ago, when the films were flooding the theaters, I told my dad about being afraid of getting caught reading his books and we was like “why in the world…?!?!”
You could do more than 5 you know. I won’t call the meme police.
From Old Guy Land:
Little Toot (Hardy Gramatky picture book)
The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (early Seuss in prose, not rhyme)
Two Oz books, neither writtem by L. F. Baum
1. The Gnome King of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thomson
(The preface concludes with her address!
254 S. Farragut Terrace
West Philadelphia, Penna.
May 1927) Can you believe that?
2. Lucky Bucky in Oz by John R. Neill (who
illustrated most of Baum’s Oz books and all
of Thomson’s.)
These two books were the best gifts I ever unwrapped.
Charlotte’s Web (The only time in my life I’ve ever had a crowd in the palm of my hand. How? I was chosen to read it out loud, a chapter a day, to my fifth grade class.)
The Lucky Terrill series by Canfield Cook. Young pilot doing young pilot things.
My Friend Flicka and Thunderhead, Son of Flicka. We had horses. It was nice to know other horse people had the same problems.
The Oz books by Frank Baum. Our local library had the entire set in first edition. Then, they’d even let the kids read it.
Tom Sawyer. Boony kids get into trouble and think their way out. Like that one needs to be explained.
Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I’d never seen a New England village, but I knew the terror of hearing a ridden horse you couldn’t see. Didn’t help that my nearest neighbor (3/4 mile away) was the Brom Bones type.
Can I cheat and add Ivanhoe?
Must be a guy thing.
i have been going crazy to try and figure out what this book is…i vividly remember a book about a boy (dutch? hollandaise? ranch?) who has a toy horse. It is a wooden horse and it comes to life. the whole feel of the book was those little eggs that keep popping open to reveal a smaller egg inside…very european. it wasn’t a long book and i don’t remember what happens in it. all i know is that it seemed dutch and the white horse comes to life. but it had a colorful saddle with dressage on it. arggh! anyone know what this book is?
as far as that ol’ ‘things were better way back when’, i like to quote one of my heroes joe strummer…’start diggin’ the new’. hmmm, let’s examine this thought…were the fifties better? really? sixties? really? it is preposterous. also, think back to caveman times. imagine dorg saying, ‘listen flar and blang, back in the day being a caveman MEANT somethin’. good lord. it’s the silliest thing. ok, i’ll give it to you if you’re saying something like, wow, back in the middle ages people really knew how to design cathedrals. but they were still picking maggots out of their meat. give me a break.
-the Encyclopedia Brown books
–LOTR
–Daybreak: 2250 AD (and darn near anything else by by Andre Norton
-theFoundation trilogy
–Delta of Venus oops! never mind…
I loved Encyclopedia Brown! Oh! and Brendan’s question about the wooden horse jarred memory of another much loved book – The Velveteen Rabbit. My first tragedy!
Great subject!
Kon Tiki
(Forgotten title): the book about Sir Edmond Hillary’s ascent of Everest
The Yearling (cried for hours)
Mutiny on The Bounty
Pitcairn’s Island
Mid-youth favorite: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Oh, and Huck Finn was way better than Tom Sawyer.
Hey Bren – that book you describe actually sounds VERY familiar. I bet Jean would remember it.
Here’s a book I loved (and I think you read it too??) – but I cannot remember the title:
It was about a crazy British family with various insane people in it – eccentrics – who all lived in a townhouse in London. One day it began to rain. And it rained so much that their townhouse floated away and ended up on an island of cannibals in the South Sea. The whole thing was very British and “are you being served?” and I remember it being HYSTERICAL. But the title? No idea.
Tempe – I totally remember that Christopher Robin rhyme. From “Now We Are Six”!
And hahahaha with the “It’s partly games” comment from your mother. That’s hilarious!
I should do this on my blog when I get a moment.
One that was big for me – but that I don’t think was mentioned here – was “My Side of the Mountain” by Jean George (don’t read the later books; they get treacly-activist, but the original is really, really good).
I wanted to run away like Sam and live in a hollowed-out tree and live off the land. Even at eight I knew that was basically impossible but I loved the idea of it SO MUCH. I would even have been willing to butcher meat I caught, I think.
I still read back-to-the-land/self-reliance books these days, because it’s a fantasy I love. I know in reality I’d come running back to the wal-mart as soon as I ran out of t.p. or hot chocolate, but it’s still a nice fantasy.
Oh and Bren – FLAR and BLANG? hahahahaha
But yeah. One of my least favorite qualities in anyone is an insistence that YESTERDAY was always better than TODAY. Everything was GREAT yesterday. The skies were bluer, the people were nicer, blah blah blah. Oh really? Really? I think you just have to ignore enormous swaths of, uhm, REALITY, in order to maintain such an idiotic point of view.
Shut your whinging mouth, get in the present moment and stop yearning for a utopia THAT NEVER EXISTED ANYWAY.
So sayeth Sheila.
Oh – and here’s another childhood book I loved – and can’t remember the title:
It has to do with the legend about selkies – and seals who, on All Hallow’s Eve, I think – come onshore and become human. Almost like a werewolf or vampire situation. And it was a novel about a small town in Scotland, I think, that had this happen. It was beautifully written, if I remember – and very haunting.
Can’t remember the title.
ricki – I loved books like that too. Survivalist books – and I loved them even more if the main characters were orphans. God, I loved orphans.
??? No idea why, but they fascinated me … and there was something in me that found the lack of … accountability to a parental figure … awesome to contemplate. I mean, there’s Anne Shirley, and Oliver Twist … and many many more. I loved them all.
The Hardy Boys series. I was obsessed. If my town had as much crime and as many violent thunderstorms as Bayport, I’d move to River Heights and shack up with Nancy Drew.
The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Further cemented my lifelong love of mysteries.
Tie: The Riddle-Master of Hed, Patricia McKillip. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin. My intro to the fact that imagination could create a fully realized world full of detail and richness. This was before I found LOTR, Narnia, and others.
Lord Foul’s Bane, Stephen Donaldson. This one still sticks with me strongly, I identified with feeling that though we may feel impotent, we have power within us that must be embraced to be utilized.
The Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey. I especially liked how the dragons could all communicate telepathically with each other, but people only to their own dragon, so I’d have to get my dragon to tell your dragon to tell you something. I don’t know why I liked that, but it seemed plausible to my adolescent mind.
How can I put Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, Brian Daly’s Han Solo adventures, Spillane’s Mike Hammer novels, and Fleming’s James Bond books in here if I’m limited to five? Oh.
Ping!!
red – your selkie book – is it the one one which the movie “The Legend of Roan Inish” is based?
(The book has a different title but if you looked up the movie I’m sure you’d find the title – I don’t remember it now).
And I am TOTALLY doing this over on my blog.
ricki – hmmmm, let me check. It was a very very dark book. Terrifying – in the night, these creatures heaving themselves out of the ocean … and there’s a sort of Little Mermaid-ish dilemma – one of the village girls falls in love with one of them …
Damn. Let me do some checking. Thanks!!
Looks like it’s based on a book called Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry – which does not sound familiar to me … it’s out of print – was published in 1959 – and the used books being sold on Amazon start at 96 bucks! So I’m not sure if that’s the one … I can see the cover art of the version I read in my mind’s eye – it was all dark, and black , and midnight blue – and the image was of a wave rolling in on the sand. A close-up, really. It’s like you can see the wave as it crawls up the sand – very ominous and beautiful. I’d recognize it if I saw it (I think).
And I know the book wasn’t Irish – it might have even taken place in Iceland.
Dernit.
Eric:
//I’d have to get my dragon to tell your dragon to tell you something.//
I love that! I also love that that appealed to you – wonderful. (I haven’t read the books – I just love hearing what you took from them)
Ohhhh… childhood books for which there was a before and after reading them…
-A Wrinkle in Time. I still remember being sick and my mom getting this from the library for me, and absolutely not getting into the first chapter and throwing it (well, not literally) aside. Then I got bored… and flipped to “The Man with Red Eyes.” And then I was hooked.
-The Dark is Rising. These books… wow. I read them over and over. Eventually, I did Anglo-Saxon and Welsh for a year. This can all be traced back to these books.