Top Ten Tuesday: Special books from my childhood

July 2, 2019July 1, 201967 Comments

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl, asks for our top ten childhood favourites.

There were many, many books that I loved as a child, so this is by no means a definitive top ten and if I did this again next week it could be a different list entirely. For now, though, here are ten books – in no particular order – that bring back special memories.

1. Watership Down by Richard Adams

I was about ten years old when I first read this book and it immediately became a favourite. I have re-read it many times since – the last time was in 2010 and I still loved it as much as ever. It’s beautifully written and certainly doesn’t deserve to be dismissed as just ‘a book about talking rabbits’; it’s about so much more than that and has a lot to offer an adult reader as well as a child.

2. Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat by Ursula Moray Williams

I think I was probably about seven years old when I fell in love with Gobbolino, a little cat who is rejected by his mistress, a witch, because he has blue eyes and a white paw. Dreaming of being an ordinary kitchen cat, Gobbolino sets out in search of a new owner, but finds that nobody wants to give a home to a witch’s cat. This book was published in 1942, a few years after Williams’ more famous children’s book The Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse. I loved the little wooden horse too, but his adventures never resonated with me as much as Gobbolino’s!

3. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

I loved this book as a child, despite it being so sad and despite the themes of animal cruelty and suffering making me cry every time I used to read it. I had (and still have, somewhere) a gorgeous hardback edition with colour illustrations and it’s the book itself that I remember as much as the story. The image above doesn’t really do it justice!

4. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

I had a lovely hardback edition of The Secret Garden too, although I’m not sure what happened to it (it was not the one pictured above). It’s been a very long time since I last read this book but I still remember the excitement when Mary discovers the door to the locked garden at Misselthwaite Manor. I’ll have to put it on my list for a re-read in the near future, if I can find my copy.

5. Ballet for Drina by Jean Estoril

I loved books about ballet as a child, and nearly included Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes on this list, but I think I preferred the Drina series by Jean Estoril (a pseudonym of Mabel Esther Allan). The series was published in the 1950s and 60s and consisted of eleven books following the dancing career of Drina Adams. Some of the later books were stronger and more interesting, but the first, Ballet for Drina, is the one I remember most clearly.

6. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

I can’t remember how old I was when I first read Little Women, but my first copy of it was an abridged version for younger children with the cover shown above. It was part of a series of classics and I also had a few of the others including Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels and Kidnapped. I didn’t like any of them as much as Little Women! My grandmother later gave me her own old copy which contained both Little Women and Good Wives and I still have that book on my shelf.

7. A Visit to Folly Castle by Nina Beachcroft

A more obscure one next. I read this several times as a child and loved it, but had forgotten both the title and the author’s name so spent hours a few months ago googling everything I could remember about the plot to try to identify it! It was a fantasy novel about a girl called Emma who finds a message in a bottle that leads her to the home of Cassandra, a lonely girl who is desperate for a friend. As Emma begins to get to know Cassandra, she discovers that there is something not quite human about her new friend’s family. Does anyone else remember this one?

8. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

It seems that a lot of my childhood favourites involved animals! I loved this classic novel about the friendship between Wilbur the pig, Charlotte the spider and a little girl called Fern. I used to like the film too (the animated one from 1973, not the more recent live-action one).

9. The Valley of Adventure by Enid Blyton

I could have included almost any Enid Blyton book here, as I read and loved so many of them. Her Malory Towers and St Clare’s school stories and The Five Find-Outers mystery series were particular favourites, but if I had to pick just one of her books it would be The Valley of Adventure. In this book, a group of children find themselves stranded in a lonely Austrian valley surrounded by mountains and waterfalls, trying to hide from a gang of criminals who are searching for hidden treasure.

10. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

I was torn between several books for the final place on my list, but I finally decided on L.M. Montgomery’s classic Anne of Green Gables. I did read some of the other titles in the Anne series as well, but was less interested in the later ones. The first book was my favourite because I loved watching the development of Anne’s relationships with Matthew and Marilla.

Have you read any of these? Which books would be on your list?

Children’s Classics Quiz: The Answers

April 7, 20134 Comments

As promised, here are the answers to the Children’s Classics quiz I posted last weekend. Well done to everyone who participated!

1. The primroses were over.
Watership Down by Richard Adams

2. Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs.
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

3. I myself had two separate encounters with witches before I was eight years old.
The Witches by Roald Dahl

4. Roger, aged seven, and no longer the youngest of the family, ran in wide zigzags, to and fro, across the steep field that sloped up from the lake to Holly Howe, the farm where they were staying for part of the summer holidays.
Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome

5. If you want to find Cherry Tree Lane all you have to do is ask a policeman at the crossroads.
Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers

6. It began with the day when it was almost the Fifth of November, and a doubt arose in some breast – Robert’s, I fancy – as to the quality of the fireworks laid in for the Guy Fawkes celebration.
The Phoenix and the Carpet by E. Nesbit

7. “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

8. It was seven o’clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day’s rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips.
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

9. A sudden snow shower put an end to hockey practice.
Many Waters by Madeleine L’Engle

10. The first place that I can well remember was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it.
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

11. The little old town of Mayenfeld is charmingly situated.
Heidi by Johanna Spyri

12. This is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child.
The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis

13. Harriet was trying to explain to Sport how to play Town.
Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

14. The tempest had raged for six days, and on the seventh seemed to increase.
The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

15. When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

16. The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

17. “Mother, have you heard about our summer holidays yet?” said Julian, at the breakfast-table.
Five on a Treasure Island by Enid Blyton

18. A tall, slim girl, “half-past sixteen,” with serious gray eyes and hair which her friends called auburn, had sat down on the broad red sandstone doorstep of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August, firmly resolved to construe so many lines of Virgil.
Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery

19. The Fossil sisters lived in the Cromwell Road.
Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild

20. When Mrs. Frederick C. Little’s second son arrived, everybody noticed that he was not much bigger than a mouse.
Stuart Little by E. B. White

A Quiz for Easter: Children’s Classics

March 30, 2013March 30, 20136 Comments

I was expecting to be posting my third monthly War and Peace readalong update this weekend, but as I’ve found myself behind with this month’s reading I’ve decided to do something different instead. I know ‘first lines’ quizzes are not exactly very original, but I haven’t seen any book bloggers post one recently so I thought this might be something fun for the Easter weekend.

I’ve listed below twenty first lines from children’s classics, all of which I remember reading when I was younger. There’s probably a slight British bias here, but I’ve tried to include some that I would expect most people to be able to guess as well as some that are much more obscure. I’ll be impressed if anybody knows all of them.

Have fun and feel free to share your answers in the comments!

***

1. The primroses were over.

2. Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs.

3. I myself had two separate encounters with witches before I was eight years old.

5. If you want to find Cherry Tree Lane all you have to do is ask a policeman at the crossroads.

7. “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

9. A sudden snow shower put an end to hockey practice.

10. The first place that I can well remember was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it.

11. The little old town of Mayenfeld is charmingly situated.

12. This is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child.

13. Harriet was trying to explain to Sport how to play Town.

14. The tempest had raged for six days, and on the seventh seemed to increase.

15. When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.

16. The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.

17. “Mother, have you heard about our summer holidays yet?” said Julian, at the breakfast-table.

19. The Fossil sisters lived in the Cromwell Road.

20. When Mrs. Frederick C. Little’s second son arrived, everybody noticed that he was not much bigger than a mouse.

I’ll post the answers next week.

Good luck!

Memories of A Christmas Carol: a Classics Club meme

December 23, 2012December 23, 20127 Comments

The Classics Club monthly meme question for December asks us for our thoughts and memories of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens:

What is your favorite memory of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol? Have you ever read it? If not, will you? Why should others read it rather than relying on the film adaptations?

I was given a copy of A Christmas Carol as a Christmas present when I was a child, though I don’t know exactly how old I was. I can’t remember who gave it to me either, but I suspect it was probably an aunt or uncle. I remember taking the book with me to my grandmother’s a few days after Christmas and reading those famous opening lines for the first time:

Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.

The last time I re-read the book was in 2009, shortly after I started blogging, and it was still a pleasure to read – both the story itself and this particular edition. It’s a beautiful hardback book with colour illustrations and black and white line drawings by Arthur Rackham. Reading a book that looks and feels beautiful can really enhance the experience! Rackham’s twelve colour plates, originally published in 1915, can be seen here. I’ve always liked the one of Bob Cratchit sliding down the icy street.

I received a different edition of the book a few years later from another family member (again I’ve forgotten who it was). I’m not sure where I’ve put this one, though I know I must still have it somewhere. After a lot of searching online – which wasn’t easy, as there are literally hundreds of different versions of A Christmas Carol and I couldn’t recall the names of either the illustrators or the publisher – I managed to find a picture of the front cover for you:

This edition, which I’ve discovered was published by Viking, was illustrated by Peter Fluck and Roger Law (who were also the creators of Spitting Image) with pictures of grotesque puppet-like caricatures, like the one of Scrooge pictured on the cover.

There have been so many adaptations of A Christmas Carol, but although the story and the sentiment might be the same, if you only watch them instead of reading the novel you will be missing out on so much. As I said in my 2009 post on the book, even if you already know the story it’s still worth reading it for the richness and humour of Dickens’ writing and for his wonderful descriptions and imagery.

You can see how other Classics Club members responded to this month’s meme here.

Have a great Christmas and I’ll be back later in the week with my Best Books of 2012!

Childhood Memories: An evening with Enid

June 26, 20116 Comments

When I sat down to write this, my third Childhood Memories post, I was shocked when I discovered it’s been more than a year since the last one! I had been hoping to make Childhood Memories a regular series, so I do apologise for the long delay between posts. If you missed the previous ones, I wrote about Ursula Moray Williams last April and children’s ballet books last May.

Like many children I grew up reading Enid Blyton books. For those of you who aren’t familiar with her books, Enid Blyton was one of the most successful British children’s writers of the twentieth century. She wrote over six hundred books and I’m sure I must have read most of them! For a while now I’ve been desperately wanting to revisit some of my old Enid Blyton books and I recently found time to do so.

Of all Blyton’s books, The Valley of Adventure was one of my absolute favourites. The Adventure series (published between 1944 and 1955) featured four children – brother and sister Philip and Dinah Mannering, and two orphans, Jack and Lucy Ann Trent, who are later adopted by Mrs Mannering. Philip is an animal lover and always seems to have a mouse, toad or other small wild animal hidden in his pockets, much to the disgust of his sister Dinah, while Jack is passionate about birds. Another character who appears throughout the series is Bill Cunningham, a member of the secret service who becomes a good friend of the Mannering family. In The Valley of Adventure, Bill offers to take the children for a flight in his new plane. However, they somehow get on the wrong plane and end up stranded in a lonely Austrian valley surrounded by mountains and waterfalls, trying to hide from a gang of criminals who are searching for hidden treasure.

I think one of the reasons I loved the Adventure series so much was that whilst most other Blyton books were set in small English villages or in boarding schools, the Adventure books had more exotic settings: a cruise ship in the Greek islands, a circus in the fictional country of Tauri-Hessia, or a river in a mysterious distant land, for example. Oh, and I also used to love Kiki, Jack’s talking parrot!

Blyton’s books were never politically correct (one of the reasons why they’ve suffered a decline in popularity) and this one was no exception. Dinah and Lucy Ann automatically take on the jobs of making beds and preparing food and the boys refuse to let them take part in anything that might be dangerous. And of course, the villains are usually either foreign, ugly, working-class or all three. I can understand why newer editions of the books have tried to change some of these things, though having looked at a few of these updated versions it seems that a lot of words and phrases have also been altered that didn’t really need to be. The old-fashioned vocabulary was part of the charm and never caused any confusion for me.

The second book I decided to read during my recent ‘evening with Enid’ was The Mystery of the Invisible Thief, one of the Five Find Outers series. This was another of my favourite series, which I always preferred to the more popular Famous Five series. The Five Find Outers – Fatty, Larry, Daisy, Pip and Bets (and Buster the dog) – were a group of children who lived in the village of Peterswood and solved mysteries during the school holidays.

In The Mystery of the Invisible Thief, the Find Outers investigate a number of burglaries that have taken place in Peterswood. The mystery is quite a clever one, with lots of clues, disguise-wearing and interference from the village policeman, Mr Goon. I really enjoyed my re-read of this book and could remember exactly why I used to love this series! As you can probably tell from the picture, my copy has been read many, many times.

Were you an Enid Blyton fan too? Which were your favourite books?

Childhood Memories: Books and Ballet

May 10, 201020 Comments

I have never had much interest in watching ballet, I’ve never attended a ballet class in my life – and yet I used to love reading books about ballet dancers. For my second Childhood Memories post (you can see the first one here) I thought I’d take a look at some of the children’s ballet stories that I remember reading.

One of my favourite ballet series was the Drina series by Jean Estoril. Jean Estoril was a pseudonym of Mabel Esther Allan, a British author of children’s books. The Drina series consisted of 11 books following the dancing career of Drina Adams. The only ones I owned – and I still have them – are Drina Dances in Italy, Drina Dances Again, Drina Goes on Tour and Drina, Ballerina, but I remember borrowing the others from the library.

In the first book, Ballet for Drina, Drina starts attending ballet classes much to the disapproval of her grandmother. She can’t understand why her grandmother doesn’t want her to dance – until it is revealed that Drina’s name is really Andrina Adamo and she is the daughter of the famous ballerina Elizabeth Ivory who was killed in a plane crash following a performance. Drina’s grandmother blames ballet for her daughter’s death and has vowed that her granddaughter would never be allowed to dance. Over the course of the series, we see how Drina overcame obstacles, coped with the jealousy of other girls and dealt with some devastating disappointments to eventually, in the final book, become a prima ballerina. I think part of the reason I liked these books was that they showed fame, celebrity and the ballet world in a realistic light, rather than portraying it as glamorous or romantic.

Another great book by Jean Estoril was The Ballet Twins. This one was about the Darke twins, quiet Doria and confident Debbie, who compete against each other for a scholarship at a London ballet school.

It’s sad that these books now seem to be out of print, but I suppose they would be very dated now and maybe not what kids would want to read anymore (although, as they were published in the 1950s and 60s, they were already pretty old-fashioned by the time I was reading them).

Probably one of the most famous authors of ballet stories was Noel Streatfeild. Her 1936 novel Ballet Shoes, the story of Pauline, Petrova and Posy Fossil, is a children’s classic (and one of those books that can be enjoyed by adults too) but another of her books that I loved was Ballet Shoes for Anna. The book was about a little girl called Anna who lives in Turkey. Her grandfather is a ballet instructor and is teaching Anna to dance. When an earthquake destroys the family home, she and her brothers Francesco and Gussie are sent to England to live with an aunt and uncle. The rest of the book looks at the problems the three children face in settling into their new home in 1970s England and their attempts to earn money so that Anna can continue to learn to dance.

Mary Noel Streatfeild was born in Sussex, England in 1895, the daughter of an Anglican Bishop. Apart from the books I’ve mentioned above, she wrote many other children’s books including White Boots, A Vicarage Family and Thursday’s Child, and several books for adults.

Did anyone else enjoy reading ballet books – whether or not you actually like ballet?

Childhood Memories: Ursula Moray Williams

April 21, 201017 Comments

I don’t usually review children’s books on my blog, but in my new series of Childhood Memories posts I’ll be spotlighting some of my favourite authors from my childhood, many of whom seem to have been largely forgotten today. In this first post I’m remembering Ursula Moray Williams.

Ursula Moray Williams was born in Hampshire, England on April 19, 1911. Throughout her career she wrote nearly 70 children’s books including Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse, Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat and The Good Little Christmas Tree. She died on October 17, 2006, having had one of the longest publishing careers of any children’s author.

Author Trivia:

Ursula had an identical twin sister called Barbara.
Her uncle, Sir Stanley Unwin, was the founder of the George Allen and Unwin publishing house, who published J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit in 1937.
She married Peter John in 1935 – he was the great-grandson of the poet Robert Southey.

Ursula Moray Williams obituary from The Independent

Wikipedia entry with bibliography

Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat was one of my favourite books as a child. I had a copy at home, but I remember reading it at school as well (where we also learned a song to go with the book – no, I’m not going to sing it for you! I was able to find the lyrics, though.)

Gobbolino is a witch’s kitten, but unlike his sister Sootica who enjoys learning magic spells and flying a broomstick, he dreams of becoming an ordinary kitchen cat. When the witch notices that Gobbolino has blue eyes and one white paw (apparently a witch’s cat should be black with green eyes), she abandons him and he sets off alone in search of a warm fire and a family who will love him. In quick succession, Gobbolino attempts to become a farmhouse cat, an orphanage cat, a show cat, a ship’s cat, a princess’s cat and a woodcutter’s cat – but every time he thinks he’s found the perfect home, his new owners discover that he’s really a witch’s cat and ask him to leave.

“Oh, why was I born a witch’s cat? Oh, why?” thought Gobbolino when at last they were out of sight. “I could wish for nothing better than a home with such kind and pleasant people as these, but no! Everyone turns against me, and oh my goodness, what is to become of me now?”

Gobbolino is such a lovable, kindhearted character it would be almost impossible not to like him and to want him to find the happy home he’s been wishing for!

Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse was published in 1938, a few years before Gobbolino, and was a very similar story. The little wooden horse is a toy who doesn’t want to be sold, preferring to remain with his creator, Uncle Peder the toymaker. When Uncle Peder becomes ill, the little wooden horse is forced to go out into the world and attempt to make his fortune – while dreaming of the day when he and the toymaker will be reunited.

Although I loved these books I used to think they were very sad, and would cry every time Gobbolino or the Little Wooden Horse had to leave yet another potential home – though I didn’t find them quite as sad when I re-read them this week in preparation for writing this post! I think these books would be perfect bedtime stories because of the way they are structured with each chapter being a complete little story in itself.

Have you read any of Ursula Moray Williams’ books – or have you read them to your children?