Childhood Books That You Loved?

Debby

Debby

Well-known Member
Location
East coast of Canada
This is sort of a detour from the books for Christmas thread. I thought of it when I was reading through the others comments but rather than distract, thought I'd start a new thread.

How many of you remember the books of your childhood and have read them recently just for fun.

When I was about eight, my first science fiction book was one called 'A Wrinkle in Time' by Madeline L'Engle. I absolutely loved the book and I actually have two copies that I recently bought online so that when my grandchildren are old enough, I will be able to give them each their own copy. When I bought the first one here recently, I reread it and enjoyed it almost as much as I did the first time, 42 years ago.

So folks, any childhood books that you loved and remembered?
 

The book I remember reading is The Plump Pig, and I remembered liking it very much, don't know how old I was at the time, but I was pretty young. It made me happy and sad, can't really remember the story or how it ended. I haven't read it since, but I did look for it in the library once. Here's something online that mentioned it.


What A Mom Wants: The Plump Pig



From time to time I get bent out of shape because my mother refuses (Books! How boring can you get?) to read my "blob" as she calls it. Hmph. If she had a blog, I'd read it every day. Even if it was all about her QVC obsession or her potholder collection, I'd be right there, leaving sunny comments, posting links from my blog to hers and running up the stats on her "Visitors To My Blog" counter.

Looking on the bright side, sometimes this admittedly ultra-mild version of parental neglect comes in handy. I can write movingly about my rampant alcoholism and recent sex change and...oh wait -- I haven't done any of that. Well, I can drop a few f-bombs now and then and she's none the wiser. And what about now?! I can openly discuss her birthday gift with the world at large and she'll never know. Nyah, nyah!

A few nights ago, Mom and I were on the phone and somehow, we got on the subject of her favorite childhood book, The Plump Pig. This picture book was around the house while I was growing up, but neither of us have seen it in years. With all the moving over the years, we're guessing that it's lost forever.
"Do you think that maybe there's a new copy in a bookstore somewhere?" Mom asked. She was thinking of how her other childhood favorite, The Boxcar Children had had a resurgence of popularity.

"I've only ever heard of The Plump Pig because of you," I said, but while I was talking, my fingers were on the laptop keyboard, flying to Amazon. Bingo! It was there: The Plump Pig by Alf and Helen Evers. Several copies. No images were available, but the descriptions listed copyrights of 1938, 1942, 1944, 1956 and 1960.

"Well, 1938, that's got to be the same book," Mom said. "That's the year I was born, but I think I got my copy in 1942 for my birthday from my grandmother and grandfather. They were big on giving books for birthdays."
I checked out Abebooks and found a description that contained the first line: Although the Plump Pig was the youngest pig on the farm...
"That's IT!" we both screamed.
Since we still had no pictures, we argued about the cover and the plot: "Wasn't the cover green?"
"No, it was white."
"And the pig was there."
"Yes, he was standing in flowers."
"He was eating an apple."
"Wasn't he running with the apple?"
"How did he get from the skinny farmer's place to the fat farmer's place?"
"They weren't farmers -- they were out for a ride and saw the Plump Pig and just had to have him."
"They took him home and let him run around in their yard with the dog and cat."
"No, they made a little garden for him and fed him delicious treats."

Mom sighed. "I'd love to read The Plump Pig again."
"Me too." As far as picture books went, The Plump Pig lacked the interpersonal conflict and drama of my own personal preschool favorite, Nurse Nancy, but it was pretty damn good.

You probably already know how this ends. I pulled out the plastic today and bought a first edition, very good condition of The Plump Pig. How much? Quite a bit more than the 1938 price of twenty-five cents, but you know how it is: It's a book. It's my mom. Check out the map of my psyche and you'll see that I'm at the four-way intersection of Sentiment, Obsession, Nostalgia and Compulsion.
I can't wait to see this book. I can't wait to see my mom's face when she opens her package next month. Happy Birthday, Mom!
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The only ones I specifically remember reading, before middle school, were the Sherlock Holmes novels. I think there were 4 of them? I was probably about 10 yr old.
 

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and A Little Princess were my favorites. I loved The Five Little Peppers series, the Box Car Children books, and the Betsy-Tacy books. When I got a bit older, my two favorites were Mara, Daughter of the Nile and The Witch of Blackbird Pond. I tried to instill my love for reading in my daughter, but to no avail. She was a good reader but just didn't have the *passion* for books that I had. She was a "doer". She did start reading a lot as an adult, though. My granddaughter, now......I got my reader. She loved to read as a child and now is passing that along to her students as a teacher.
 
I can't remember titles before age 12, 13 and mostly at that point I was reading a lot of biographical material, prior to that what I do recall is Hans Christian Andersen, Grimm stories, there was also this huge book I used to read every time I went to the library, it was filled with beautiful pages of fairy tales of which I have no recollection of the title or what stories were contained within, I do remember being made fun of in front of the other kids about it by the librarian in a means spirited way. stuff. I know one thing, I disliked the Cat In the Hat series to the point I would want to poke my eyes out anytime a teacher pulled one of those books out for class reading.

I've never really been good with book title recall, even if I'm presently reading a book, I would have to go get it to look at the title. Still, I did read often. a lot of my book memories are jumbled to some degree, like I don't remember when I read the Hunk Finn or Nancy Drew books. pre-teens or later.
 
NancyNGA said:
The only ones I specifically remember reading, before middle school, were the Sherlock Holmes novels. I think there were 4 of them? I was probably about 10 yr old.
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Loved, loved, loved that series, but I was quite a bit older when I was reading one of the Holmes series, but I couldn't get enough.
 
One of my most cherished books as a child was the "Arabian Nights", written entirely in German script, now over a hundred years old and slowly falling apart.
Also loved "Grimm's Fairy Tales", and two books by Wilhelm Busch. Was fortunate to find them in Stuttgart in 1983.
One is called "Der Struwelpeter", the other "Max and Moritz".
These two books are very colorful and entertaining, but also very cruel.
Grandad owned many works by Wilhelm Busch, but was not allowed to send them (former East Germany).
Hope they found a good home!
 
Top of my list have got to be Wind in the Willows and Peter Pan. Others I enjoyed were Little Women, Heidi, Famous Five series plus Hans Christian Andersen and Grimm's Fairy Tales.
 
NancyNGA said:
The only ones I specifically remember reading, before middle school, were the Sherlock Holmes novels. I think there were 4 of them? I was probably about 10 yr old.
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Me too. The Hound of the Baskervilles had me mesmerized at eight. I thought it was the best book ever written.
 
SeaBreeze said:
The book I remember reading is The Plump Pig, and I remembered liking it very much, don't know how old I was at the time, but I was pretty young. It made me happy and sad, can't really remember the story or how it ended. I haven't read it since, but I did look for it in the library once. Here's something online that mentioned it.
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That title sounds sort of familiar. Can't say for sure, but I think that little piggy is tickling my brain!

I also tried to get my girls reading early on and one did for a while, but never an obsession with either of them like it was for me. I remember going to the library each Saturday and coming home with the maximum stack allowed (I think it was 20) and reading them all by the next weekend. How I survived childhood is beyond me in retrospect because I remember walking the entire 10 blocks to school with my nose buried in a book. I think I relied on peripheral vision to make it across the road at intersections! Really safe huh?

Some of the other titles mentioned here are familiar to me as well.
 
AprilT said:
I've never really been good with book title recall, even if I'm presently reading a book, I would have to go get it to look at the title. Still, I did read often. a lot of my book memories are jumbled to some degree, like I don't remember when I read the Hunk Finn or Nancy Drew books. pre-teens or later.
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I find myself getting a book from the library and when I start reading it, I'll say "Oh, hell, this is the one where the woman found out she had a twin sister and the sister's son came back and killed the whole family..." I completely forget titles and authors. I guess the nice thing about getting short-term memory loss would be that I'd only have to have one book in the house. I have that to look forward to.
 
jujube said:
I find myself getting a book from the library and when I start reading it, I'll say "Oh, hell, this is the one where the woman found out she had a twin sister and the sister's son came back and killed the whole family..." I completely forget titles and authors. I guess the nice thing about getting short-term memory loss would be that I'd only have to have one book in the house. I have that to look forward to.
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The book has to be less than memorable for that to happens and it has happened more than once that I've picked up a book and started reading and realized, just as you did, that, been here, before. In the past months, I've read some fantastic books, but unless I look up my reading history, most I couldn't tell you the titles or authors. I would however still, at least for now, remember them if I come across the title, the authors names, ah, maybe a few. LOL. But if it were a good read, I still have the subsistence of the quality of the book in memory if not the name. Even my favorites listed in my profile, sometimes I forget the exact titles or author or both on one or two.
 
jujube said:
I find myself getting a book from the library and when I start reading it, I'll say "Oh, hell, this is the one where the woman found out she had a twin sister and the sister's son came back and killed the whole family..." I completely forget titles and authors. I guess the nice thing about getting short-term memory loss would be that I'd only have to have one book in the house. I have that to look forward to.
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We do that all the time with movies lately. Who needs to record anything new right?
 
I went to Catholic school and some of the first books I remember were the stories of the saints. At about the age of 10, I loved reading the Beany Malone series by Lenora Mattingly and the Cherry Ames Series by Helen Wells, then it was on to Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys. What I considered to be my first really grown up books were Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson, a Tale of Two Citiies by Dickens, and They Fought Alone by John Keats by the time I was 12. My world was forever changed. The 7th Street Library was my home away from home.
 
The Anne of Green Gables books, were and always will be a favourite of mine. Even now as an adult I will re-read them again.
 

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