This is a collection of favourite childhood books remembered, taken from our Children's Newsletter. We stipulate that the books must still be available.
Ramona books by Beverley Cleary
The
Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater
Winter
Holiday by Arthur Ransome
The Secret
Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Heidi
by Johanna Spyri
E. Nesbit
Kidnapped by R. L. Stevenson & Eagle of the
Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliffe
The Curse of the
Darkling Mill by Otfried Preussler (£4.99)
The "Ramona" books by Beverley
Cleary (£3.99 ea.)
I loved the Ramona books when I was
little and gradually collected the whole series. And now, as an adult, I still
sometimes go back to them and reread them all over again!
The main reason I like the Ramona series so much is the personalities of the main characters: Ramona and her family are all good people, but that doesn't stop Ramona from being naughty, Beezus from telling on her younger sister, or their parents from arguing; these characters are much more real than most children's characters, and as a result, you care about them so much more. The author, Beverley Cleary, introduces real-life situations (such as Ramona's father losing his job, or her mother being over-worked), but in an entertaining, non-preachy way.
These books are a part of my childhood, and remain with me years after I first finished reading them. - Amy
"The Wind on the Moon" by Eric Linklater (£5.99)
Dinah and Dorinda helpfully tie big and little bells right up to the top of the apple tree in the garden to give their father a good send-off to the dangerous East European country to which he's been posted and repack his luggage. But the bells frighten their mother and their father is angry his best uniform's been creased. He notices that the moon has a ring round it and at these times a wind can blow from the moon into people's hearts and keep them behaving "badly". In the rest of the book, Mrs Grimble, the witch in the wood, helps the sisters in their plan to revenge themselves on some spiteful villagers, free a puma and falcon from a zoo, and, with these two as allies, finally rescue their father and bring him home.
I kept re-reading and enjoying this book when I was young, for its adventures, its anarchy, its throw-away jokes, its characters, and for the wonderful way it's written. Adults might like it too. It's just been reprinted as a paperback with the original Nicholas Bentley pictures. - Felicity
"Winter Holiday" by Arthur Ransome (£4.99)
Dick and Dorothea are on holiday in the country during the wintertime and join up with some other children to have lots of adventures. The other children already know each other well from previous holidays – Arthur Ransome’s earlier books “Swallows and Amazons” and “Swallowdale” – and at first it seems that Dick and Dorothea will not be able to keep up. When the weather worsens however and snow and ice set in, Dick and Dorothea are able to show that they can ice skate really well and are able to teach the others. Things get complicated when Nancy - one of the Amazons - gets mumps and has to stay at home. Luckily there are some ingenious ways of overcoming this problem, and the book reaches a climax with a race across the frozen lake to be first to the “North Pole” in the middle of a blizzard.
I read all of the Arthur Ransome books when I was young and liked “Winter Holiday” best of all, because it really does create the feelings of being out in very cold weather, both the dangers – when a sheep gets stuck on a snowy ledge and has to be rescued by Dick – and the fun. I still read these books now when I am older and have collected the full set. Despite them being a bit old fashioned in lots of ways, particularly the names – “Winter Holiday” was written nearly 70 years ago! – there are still things I like about them, particularly the simple black and white illustrations. - Richard
"The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett (£1.00 and up)
It may not sound like it but this is a book for people who are going to change the world for the better. It’s about working to bring out the best in everything and everyone around you. Both child and adult characters in the story start out alone and full of their own self-importance but things change for them all.
Set early in the last century, there are three children - Mary a sulky, spoilt and lonely little girl, orphaned and brought from the heat of a childhood in India to the cold comfort of a winter isolated in a large house with grounds in Yorkshire; Colin, a wealthy invalid who is used to getting his own way through throwing tantrums, and Dickon, a poor country boy from a large local family. Dickon is the most attractive of these characters because he is able to look after wild animals and birds and they seem to like him. He is the only one of the children who seems to have a loving family. The three children are thrown together with the discovery of a secret place. Unknown to the adults around them and against all the odds they bring this secret place – a garden - back to life.
For me the existence of the secret garden behind high walls and reached only through a hidden, locked doorway is the best part. It reminds me of the ‘dens’ and secret places that I had as a child. My father worked in a large Victorian country house and I was lucky to be able to play in the grounds. Secret places where adults couldn’t find me were very special. There is one part of the book where Mary is scraping the dead leaves and plants away from the ground and she discovers new shoots coming up underneath. Watched by a chirpy robin, she clears the debris and allows the shoots to ‘breathe’. I always remember that passage at this time of the year when I start to clear my garden and look forward to the new growth the Spring and Summer will bring. It’s like discovering the secret garden again! The children’s alliance changes them and the adults about them for the better: exactly how that happens you’ll have to find out by reading the book. - VP
"Heidi" by Johanna Spyri (£1 and up)
I was well on the way to reading before I went to school. At eight I was helping the infants to learn letters with the help of the “Peg family”. I suppose no-one remembers remembers this matchstick family reading scheme except me (I really am not that old. It’s just that I have an elephantine memory!) The teachers at Midgley School would say, “You’ll be a teacher when you grow up,” and I thought that I would prove them wrong and I would work at the sewing shop with Aunty Elsie.
I read avidly and the one shelf at the end of the landing upstairs soon grew to two and then three. I remember being presented with a Sunday School prize called Precious Bane by Mary Webb at eight years old. I still have it - but it’s an adult’s book and most unsuitable for a child, good reader or not. Of course I read it even though I thought that the title was Mary Webb as it came first on the spine of the book. It stayed on the shelf alongside The Water Babies which I thought was strange.
Enid Blyton’s goblins and gnomes, the Famous Five and Secret Seven were my companions as I read in bed. Then I was bought Heidi by Johanna Spyri. I still remember the feeling of being on the mountain in the snow with the goats and a big friend Peter the goat herd. I was transported to a place with wild flowers and a cantankerous old Alp Uncle who was called Grandfather. I felt the emotions that Heidi should have felt at being abandoned for the second time in her short life. Dorfli was a place I could visit without feeling travel sick as I did on the bus into Halifax. The air was fresh and clean and I could be on the sledge with Peter. I could drink the goats’ milk and eat the cheese at Peter’s blind Grannie’s house. When Heidi went to Frankfurt to be a companion to Clara who couldn’t walk, I was sad for Grandfather and for Heidi who missed the goats and the mountains. In Frankfurt she became quite ill through pining though she learnt to read. The rest of the story is of change in the lives of all the characters. Of course, it has a happy ending even though there were unhappy moments on the way. Aren’t all good stories like that? When I was 11, I lent the book to a friend who never returned it and denied my lending it to her. That taught me a good lesson.
Just for the record, I did become a teacher, when I decided to, for my reasons, not least because I wanted to show children that by reading they can be anyone, or anything, anywhere, any time.
Hilary Shackleton
It took me a while to discover E. Nesbit. Most of the books I had read up to then had all been about children at boarding school, which seemed very exotic to me but not something I wished to emulate. All of her books however, like The Railway Children, The Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet and The Bastables were almost adult free.
In her world adults are either entirely absent or absent-minded. The children live chaotic, topsy turvy lives, coming home only to snatch ill-cooked food prepared by surly cooks who regard them as little nuisances who will “come to a bad end”. They never go to school, but wander the streets of London , or wherever else the tales are set. Father is a war correspondent in a far-away place at the front in one book while Mother is recuperating from something in Madeira. The parents are always in the background busy with their own pursuits.
To this day, if I walk down Fitzroy Street near the British Musem in London I look up at the houses and wonder which one the old gentleman lived in who translated the words “Ur Hekau Setcheh” on the talisman. She was the magical part of my childhood.
Valerie Cullinan
For an appreciative article on E. Nesbit by Gore Vidal go to http://www.nybooks.com/articles/13132
'Eagle of the Ninth' by Rosemary Sutcliffe and 'Kidnapped' by R.L.Stevenson.
I have linked these two books together as they both had the same appeal to me as a young teenager. They are both very gripping adventure stories that carried me forward at a fast pace - certainly fast enough to surmount any difficulties with not fully understanding all of the political and historical material.
'Kidnapped' has some wonderful moments, such as when the young narrator, now an orphan, turns up at the home of his miserly uncle. After a dismal meal of porridge with salt he is sent up to his bed without a light, and only a flash of lightning reveals the gap in the stairs through which his uncle intended him to fall to his death. Similarly when his uncle has arranged his 'kidnap' aboard the ship of a violent and criminal captain, there is an unforgettable scene when he allies himself with a stranger the Captain plans to murder, and there is a ferocious and bloody fight.
However on further readings of both of these books, the historical and political detail which underpinned them became increasingly fascinating. Both Sutcliffe and Stevenson have an eye for those tiny details that carry the reader into a period without ever becoming obvious or didactic. So, for all the life-threatening incidents and hair’s-breadth escapes that confront the young heroes, a much wider picture of the complexities of warfare and justice informs both books.
In 'Eagle of the Ninth' the discipline and ruthlessness of Rome is juxtapositioned with the tribal culture north of Hadrian’s wall, and in 'Kidnapped' it is the rule of England, and the clans who support her, opposed to the less structured and more heart-ruled beliefs of the Highlanders. There are no black and white answers - villains and heroes are individuals who live out their lives within certain beliefs and cultures which then put them on oppposite sides of a conflict.
Pauline Stephenson
"The Curse of the Darkling Mill" by Otfried Preussler(out of print)
What is in the sacks taken to the Dead Stones? What magic can turn boys into ravens? Why can the millers’ apprentices never escape from the mill at Sow’s Fen?
The answers Krabat discovers while forced to work to the master miller - the miller with a black patch over one eye. But Krabat and his friends are also forced to learn the secret arts of the Black School, the black magic.
Krabat, who we first meet as an orphan beggar boy in sixteenth-century Germany, studies hard so that maybe he can outwit the master by more powerful magic and so escape from the mill. He does not want to suffer the same fate as his friend Tonda.
Strange events happen. A new grave is dug each New Year when an apprentice disappears and his place is taken by a new young lad. This is how Krabat first found himself at the mill when he was fourteen.
Krabat learns about dark magic powers, but also about friendship and loyalty, and one Easter he meets the girl singer with long, fair hair.
This is an adventure story with events moving swiftly as Krabat’s magic powers increase. Will goodness at last overpower evil? Or will the master’s dark magic prove too strong and Krabat remain a prisoner at the mill?
Pauline Andrews
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