Last week a local plea went out online for a copy of Nina
Bawden’s Carrie’s War. I immediately
pictured my Puffin version from 1974 with the cover photo from the BBC teatime
series, and sure enough, there it was in the little collection of books I have
treasured since childhood.
I sank into a reverie of book lover’s nostalgia. There was no
need to ponder a list of my favourites –here were twenty-seven browned
paperbacks that I had loved enough to keep. Fascinated, I searched through them...
Classics
Books Off the Telly
I was surprised to find that this was such a large category
– but then I come from a telly-devoted generation, brought up in front of an
array of brilliant 1970s children’s series – and clearly they encouraged my
reading. Carrie’s War was one of
these – I have fond memories of the TV version from when I was nine.
I also found A Pair of Jesus-Boots, a 1974 Puffin that I bought after seeing the
series Rocky O’Rourke, about a
slum-dwelling Liverpool lad. Already I liked my fiction on the gritty side. I discovered The Secret Garden through
a teatime adaptation, and Ethel Turner’s Seven
Little Australians, written in 1894, was brought to life for me by the BBC
in 1973.
In 1979 I found the TV version of The
Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy funny, if a bit irritating, but I enjoyed
Douglas Adams’ book much more.
A haunting BBC series of Tom’s
Midnight Garden was the taster that led me to the book. A few years later,
Philippa Pearce did a talk at our school. She said that being a writer was like
having English homework every night of the week. ‘Don’t do it if you don’t have
to,’ she said. ‘But if you have to – good luck.’ I
already knew that I had to. I never forgot.
Nina Bawden
At around the time of Carrie’s
War, our teacher, Mrs Skett, read The
White Horse Gang aloud to us, and I became hooked on Nina Bawden. She was
the kind of writer I wanted to be: her child characters were vivid and
believable, their adventures rooted in the real world. My collection includes The Peppermint Pig, The Runaway Summer, On the
Run, The Secret Passage, Squib and The White Horse Gang. I read others from the library.
Children’s Favourites
Stig of the Dump appealed
to my fascination with the idea of the primitive within us, and of a life ‘in
the wild’. I must have overcome my
fear of dogs to love The Incredible
Journey – though there was also the cat character to draw me in.
Magical
I had forgotten Barbara Sleigh’s Carbonel and The Kingdom of
Carbonel, but memories rushed back of these wonderful tales of a night-time
world of cats on the rooftops. There was a potion that allowed a little girl to
understand the cats’ language, found in those oversized bottles that used to
advertise chemist’s shops. I remember peering at the one in Boots... The Winter of Enchantment by Victoria
Walker had a similar theme of a child escaping an unpleasant reality to
discover a world of magic.
A Mixed Bag
The final four show how my taste was varied, then as now –
there’s I am David, about a Jewish
boy who escapes from a concentration camp. I am still willing to be challenged
and disturbed by what I read. But there’s also Flicka, the story of a Wyoming ranch boy and his beloved horse – I
remember relishing the horsey sentimentality and scenes of Mom making doughnuts.
There’s early teen fare: Freaky Friday,
about a thirteen-year-old who swaps places with her mother, but also Eleanor
Atkinson’s Greyfriars Bobby which was
hard work, but worth it, with a lot of pages spent in a graveyard and a Scottish
dialect to grapple with, which may have prepared me for A Clockwork Orange.
But now we’re getting onto teenage reading, which is a whole
other subject…
I’d love to hear from you if you remember any of these books
or series, or if you have a treasured collection of your own? What books were
landmarks in your childhood reading journey?
E Nesbit. Some Famous Five- on Kirrin Island. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. Lucy Boston books : The Children of Green Knowe. Roger Lancelyn Green' s tales of the Greek Heroes and The Tale of Troy. Elizabeth Goodge - Linnets and Valerians.
ReplyDeleteForgot the The Ruby Ferguson books : Jill's gymkhana etc. I read them again and again. And Pat Smythe and the Pullein-Thompsons- All during my extended horsey phase. Malory Towers and the Chalet School.
ReplyDeleteAnd I devoured the Sword in the Stone - funny, sad, complicated, thoughtful, fun.
ReplyDeleteLovely, thanks for commenting! We loved Enid Blyton too - all the 'of Adventure' ones in particular. My Dad used to read them to us at bedtime - but they haven't made the cut in my collection. At some point I must have got snobby about them!
ReplyDeleteClassics for me. The Little Women, Good Wives etc series, the Katy Books and the Heidi books were all much loved and read time and again. I remember as a child making a ‘bed’ on the shelf above my toy cupboard and playing as Heidi, eating bread and cheese and drinking milk in my hideaway - no straw bedding though.
ReplyDeleteI also loved Little Women, and do you mean the What Katy Did books? They were great too. I think often my Dad would read a book to us at bedtime and I'd be inspired to find more in the same series. I'm afraid I never read Heidi although I did love a TV version of it!
ReplyDelete