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Thursday, June 16, 2005

Another challenge from Tinkerty

In college, I reread a number of children's books that I loved as a kid for an independent study on children's literature. Then I reread them again to my son, which was great. The ones I loved have held up:

# The Chronicles of Narnia
# The Wind in the Willows
# The Little House series
# Mary Poppins


Okay, I agree with all of Tinkerty's choices, so that's four.

As a kid, I loved the books of Maud Lovelace, Betsy-Tacy, Betsy-Tacy & Tib; Betsy-Tacy and the Jewish problem--you know the drill. Amazon lists more than a dozen of them and I read all I could get my hands on. The school library had most of them. I loved that they were about another time, when a little girl had two dresses, one for everyday and one for church; I loved the small town atmosphere.

When I was 9 or 10, I started to read the novels of Janet Lambert. They were all about girls of 15, 16 or 17, their families and friends, and the careers they decided upon. They made me aware of all the choices out there: I could be an artist, a photographer, an actress, a flight attendant, etc. They opened the world to my eager eyes.

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Pollyanna, Anne of Green Gables--all were series, and I loved them all, particularly Anne of Green Gables, set in the exotic (to me) venue of Prince Edward Island.

Unlike modern young adult novels, which are about your mother having a fatal disease or your stepfather raping you or being a 200-lb. outcast at school, they were about normal kids suffering from normal problems.

I would probably not re-read any of these, except the ones mentioned by Tinkerty.

2 comments:

prairie biker said...

Tom Sawyer, Tom Stetson, The Hardy Boys, blah blah blah. And comics. Lots of comics.

miriam sawyer said...

Oh, yes--Tom Sawyer. Loved it and always will. Also books by Jean Webster, Daddy Longlegs, When Patty went to college, and others.

And comics, of course. There was always a pile of them left in the bathroom.

I meant to pass the challenge along to Isabel and Akaky, but I am a bad blogger.