Seminal books as a child ....

topic posted Fri, August 17, 2007 - 3:39 PM by 

Don't know quite why it occured to me, but out of the blue i started thinking about what books were the most affecting / captivating to me as a rug rat....
You know... the first books that made u beeeeegggg like u did for nothing else - for just ONE MORE CHAPTER TONITE....!!!!!! PLEEEEEEZE!!!

James and the Giant Peach
Charlie and the Choclate Factory
Stuart Little
Alice Thru the Looking Glass

(Treasure Island too..., but it doesn't fit into the startling point i'm about to make...)

But what hit me outta the blue was how related they all kinda are.....
They're ALL kid alone, out of his(or her) element.....in varying degrees...

Anybody else able to draw parallel about thier faves like that....
posted by:
  • Re: Seminal books as a child ....

    Thu, August 23, 2007 - 4:41 AM
    Okay, I'm hazy on Stuart Little, but hte other 4 treat children as people in their own right, and are to some extent subversive of the grownup world order.
    • Re: Seminal books as a child ....

      Fri, August 24, 2007 - 11:14 AM
      The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C C Lewis sticks in my mind. I remember it being read to me by my first class teacher. I was so enthralled that I got my parents to buy it so I could hear it again at home read to me by my mother. It was also the first book I learned to read on my own. I quickly followed it with the other Narnia books by Lewis. I still have copies today. It lead me to reading such fantasy classics as The Lord of the Rings by Tolkein and many other in the genre. I will always rememebr the first with affection though.
  • Re: Seminal books as a child ....

    Wed, August 29, 2007 - 11:01 AM
    The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
    Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

    There was another little story I read about a tiny doll that is lost and she's living in a grocery store and making a bed in a box of tissues and things like that. It was so cute and I loved the story, but sadly, I cannot remember a title or author or anything.
  • Val
    Val
    online 7

    Re: Seminal books as a child ....

    Sun, September 9, 2007 - 3:51 PM
    l had a huge appetite for books as a child and belonged to a local library so l was never short of reading material.
    l really enjoyed Milly-Molly-Mandy, Brer Rabbit, Doctor Doolittle, Hans Christian Anderson's fairytales and all of Enid Blyton's works including The Faraway Tree, the Mallory Towers series and my all time favourite The Famous Five - l eventually bought the entire set of these which l still have.
  • Re: Seminal books as a child ....

    Thu, October 4, 2007 - 8:11 AM
    I think that's a theme that really appeals to children --probably for many reasons. The more obvious one is simply to feel their own power, how they'd be strong and capable without adults to look after them (and tell them what to do) ----being autonomous, making their own decisions...
    Some wonderful examples I can think of off the top of my head are the Dickensian Barbara Brooks Wallace books (Sparrows in the Scullery, Twins in the Tavern, etc...), The Magician's House Quartet by William Corlett (The Steps Up the Chimney, etc..), Lucy Boston's Greenknowe series, Joan Aiken's incredible stories (from The Wolves of Willoughby Chase on...) --even in the fun Edward Eager books with their book-loving characters are based on the premise that the children's adventures are their own, however challenging they become.
    I could go on... but I'll restrain myself!
    • Re: Seminal books as a child ....

      Wed, October 10, 2007 - 4:08 PM
      I'm probably of an older generation but some of my favorites were:

      At the Back of the North Wind
      The Black Stallion series by Walter Farley
      Black Beauty
      Flicka
      Marguerite Henry's horse books

      Lots of horse stuff. I was crazy about horses.
      • Re: Seminal books as a child ....

        Mon, October 15, 2007 - 12:54 PM
        I loved Marguerite Henry, and Wind in the Willows was a fave, along with the Little House series. I think they were instrumental in making me a mountain woman. Lion, Witch and THe Wardrobe and all the rest of the CS Lewis books provided many hours of pleasure and of course all the Black Stallion books.
      • Re: Seminal books as a child ....

        Sun, November 11, 2007 - 10:55 PM
        One of the earliest books I remember loving as a young reader is an illustrated Peter Pan (J.M. Barrie). The Hobbit (with those amazing maps of Middle Earth) was also an early sacred read, and a little later on, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars series and the Hardy Boys books. Great memories!
  • Re: Seminal books as a child ....

    Mon, November 12, 2007 - 2:44 PM
    The Narnia series, set next to my dinner plate one fantastic evening :) ( Was anyone else disappointed after tasting real Turkish delight?!)

    My mother handed me her tattered copy of The Hobbit in the third grade..

    Arthur Ransome's series about kids and sailboat adventures - "Swallows and Amazons" might have been one of the titles...

    The Little House series by LI Wilder (girly, I know :)

    The Moomintroll series was probably the most surreal series I read (and liked) as a child.


    • Re: Seminal books as a child ....

      Mon, November 12, 2007 - 5:15 PM
      Swallow and Amazons, yes. Swallowdale, Coot Club, We Didn't Mean to go to Sea, Peter Duck. I've forgotton the rest. Pigeon Post.

      Great stuff.

      And boy, those moomins. Revisted them this year, they hold up. Has anyone seen the comic book collections?
    • Re: Seminal books as a child ....

      Mon, November 12, 2007 - 8:14 PM
      Yeah! The book makes Turkish Delight sound so incredibly delicious... --though I didn't want to admit that the real thing was a let down...

      speaking of surreal... has anyone here read the Lucy Boston Greenknowe books? I love them --and loved reading them to my children.
  • Re: Seminal books as a child ....

    Mon, December 17, 2007 - 12:08 PM
    When I was 8 my grandmother bought me a handful of second hand books at a salvation army store. One of them was a hardcover flip over double book with illustrations, one side was The Swiss Family Robinson, the other side was Robinson Crusoe. I loved that book and tried to keep a hold of it . My sisters were attracted to all the pretty pictures and that was that ,I had it maybe 3 years then it disappeared . I've been trying to replace it every since but I can only find altered children's versions and only as singe books.
    • Re: Seminal books as a child ....

      Tue, December 25, 2007 - 3:59 PM
      I remember having that same book, don't know where it is now though.
      • Re: Seminal books as a child ....

        Sun, December 30, 2007 - 11:54 AM

        Even tho i didnt understand alot of it... I remember reading "The Annotated Alice In Wonderland" and being blown away that there in the margin could find out about whatever i didn't understand........
        • Re: Seminal books as a child ....

          Wed, January 2, 2008 - 6:59 PM
          Yeah! I had that too --what a wonderful thing for a bookish child. I also had a large volume of the works of Lewis Carroll that included Sylvie and Bruno --an odd (what do you expect from LC?) story I've never seen elsewhere, that I loved and read several times.

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