Spoiler warning for books that quite honestly you really ought to have read already.
I've always been a reader. Other parents of young children worried when there was no noise. Mine? Well, they knew I was sat somewhere reading. My love of books, as I think I mentioned before started with my Dad. He was the one who read to me each evening from a rather large book of fairy tales that had some beautiful illustrations. My favourite story was The tale of the Elephant and the Bad Baby, written by Elfrida Vipont. An Elephant takes a baby for a walk and gives the baby everything it asks for even though it never says please. Annoyingly I can't remember the ending, nor can I find the book it's in (which I still own), so I can't tell you how it ended. Fairly sure the Bad Baby learnt to say please ... Anyway.
This is one of the pictures that went with the Hansel and Gretel Story. Lovely isn't it.
Once I'd progressed onto reading on my own my book collection started to swell. Every birthday and Christmas my parent's, Aunts and Uncles and friends would shower me with new books. Sets of Enid Blyton Noddy and Faraway Tree books made their way into my hands, through my eye's into my brain and onto my bookshelves. Nothing was safe from me, Roald Dahl's Matilda was my role model even if I knew I'd never get to move things with my mind. When my Mum and I went into town on a Saturday, every charity shop we went in I was plonked in front of the bookshelves and told I could have which ever books I wanted. Soon enough the staff in the shops were keeping by books they thought I might enjoy. These are the books, in no particular order, that turned me into the person I am today.
Roger Red Hat, Billy Blue Hat and the Rest.
Reading was the one thing I really excelled at when I was in primary school. Most of the books that went in our book bags to be read at home were finished before I was even out of the school gate. In my first year at school we had a series of leveled books called "One, Two, Three and Away". These books were only like, ten pages long but they obviously made an impression on me. There was Roger Red Hat, Billy Blue Hat and Sita and Ramu. These last two my brain remembers as indian twins who wore purple but I can't find any evidence of that. This was thirty odd years ago.
Another favourite book series of mine were the Puddle Lane books.[1] These were produced by Ladybird books and based on a children's TV show of the same name. There were five colours of books from blue through to red, with the earlier one's having a read-along style. Lots of text on the left page for the parent's to read and a condensed version on the right for the kids. These books were magical and I would give anything to have that collection on my shelves again.
Surely You've Heard of Narnia
My lovely copy of the Tales of Narnia, which I got at six and which turned out to be a lie ...
When I was eight I discovered something horrifying. Not only were there more Narnia stories that weren't in my book Tales of Narnia, the first story in my book wasn't even the first one in the series! And there was one between The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian. I felt like I had been misled. This information was thrust upon me by the BBC who did an excellent adaptation of the books (seriously, forget the films, this BBC production is where it's at). They had done the three stories that appeared in my book and were announcing that they were doing a fourth called The Silver Chair. This shocked me to my core, remember this was a time before the internet and never any reason to suspect that I might be missing out on whole four extra books.
The BBC brought these stories to life for me.
But four other books there were. I was given three more of the series the very next Christmas - The Magicians Nephew, The Horse and his Boy and The Silver Chair but I was still missing the end of the series, The Last Battle (it took me another three years to acquire that book). I refused to watch The Silver Chair until I had read it, already I had become a book snob. My friends at school were prancing around playing at being Scrubb, Pole and Puddleglum the Marsh Wiggle whilst I sat in a corner eating up every word. I'll never forget Narnia, maybe having read them increased my isolation from my peers, books were not cool when I was young (more evidence of my Hipster-ness I guess) but with Peter, Susan, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, Jill, Mr and Mrs Beaver, Trumpkin the Dwarf and Aslan in my head I was never really alone.
Two Bears Beginning with P
Bears are big with the under ten set so it's hardly surprising that I'm featuring two books about bears here. Paddington, not Winnie was my first bear. Paddington who like me, loved Marmalade sandwiches, wore a blue coat and a red hat and, well that's where the similarities end really. He entranced me. It was the first time I'd ever heard of Peru (I was young, it was the 80's, still no internet) somewhere I've harbored a desire to visit ever since. I loved how polite Paddington was, calling people by their title and surname and how even though he always tried to do his best, trouble always found him. I don't remember the stories anymore, I just remember the book (which I still own). It's a huge book, especially considering the font size used - whilst most children's books had large lettering my Paddington book had lots of words and pictures to jam into a small space and so went with the standard size. I fell asleep with that book in my hands so many times it's a wonder it hasn't fallen apart already.
Pooh and Paddington.
In 1977 (before I was born for once hahahaha) Disney released The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Ten years or so later it was broadcast on terrestrial TV (I didn't have Sky, no Disney channel for me). This is when I learnt to love Winnie the Pooh. At that point I didn't know it was based on a book, a fact I didn't find out until three years later when my Grandad died and my Mum got a box of her childhood things. In this box was my Mum's collection of Pooh-bear paraphernalia. In there was a poetry book called "Now we are six" and my Mum's favourite childhood book, "A House on Pooh Corner". When I looked opened it to begin to read, I was confused, these weren't the animals I was expecting. Piglet looked about right, was wearing the stripy top I was expecting but something was not quite right. Then I realised, Pooh was naked, no red top on this incarnation of Pooh. But I read it anyway and found myself swept away like a stick along a stream.
Books with lots of words: Dahl, Hinton and Beyond
This sections gonna be a long one, just warning you now. It's just if I didn't write a ton about the books that really brought me here, I wouldn't be doing justice to the people who poured their hearts and minds onto the page to help kids like me escape the world they lived in. The previously mentioned books are great, but it's in these books I really found myself. I think I'll even subtitle it.
Flat Stanley
So, who's heard of Flat Stanley? If you're American you've got a higher chance than most. I'm forever asking people if they've ever read it and the answer is yes from maybe one in fifty. This is one of two books that my first junior teacher Ms Giles read to us that I'm going to talk about (at primary school we changed teachers every year). She was a lovely woman who had red hair but never lost her temper. She told us a friend had brought her the book back from America to read to us and that it was really popular over there. I thought it was fantastic even if it did give me lifelong fear of cork boards falling on me in my sleep. The whole concept was quite surreal really. Nobody was upset when Stanley was suddenly flat, they just accepted it even let him spend the night alone in an art gallery in order to catch a thief.
Beaver Towers
This was the second discovery of Mrs Giles, a book that came out in 1980, she told us she had been reading the trilogy to classes for years. Beaver towers is a proper kids fantasy novel. It's about a boy who is swept away by his kite to an island run by talking animals. The animals are under threat from an evil witch who the boy has to defeat so he can go home. I say it's a kids book because it's very simply written, I read the trilogy quite recently and it took me less than an hour. But it's a sweet story and realistic in it's own way. When we meet the boy again in the second book it's revealed that he'd actually been missing. His parents even took him to a Doctor because they thought he'd gone mad. If you've got a eight or nine year old son, daughter, niece, nephew, whatever - I would seriously recommend these books.
Roald Dahl
No particular title for the Dahl section. You've probably read them all just as I have. When was the last time you read your favourite? Is it James and the Giant Peach with the matching giant insects and the evil Aunts? Or perhaps you love Charlie Bucket and his adventures with Willy Wonka. No? The BFG then. My favourite? It's a toss up between The Witches and Matilda. I love The Witches because even though it has a happy ending it's not the ending we are expecting. I mean really, when kids get turned into things in books they get turned back into kids, am I right? But no, in The Witches the unnamed lead character remains in his altered state. It's a book that's been banned for being misogynistic (don't believe me? Go read the Wikipedia page) and has probably the best (in my opinion) movie adaptations of any of Dahl's works to date. Angelica Houston is chilling as the Grand High Witch. If I can't persuade you to read it, at least go rewatch the movie, it's excellent.[2]
Matilda is magical in another way. Matilda wins her story, she gets the perfect happy ending, gets to live with her beloved Miss Honey. Matilda's utter decimation of Ms Trunchbull, who is not even half as foul as her parents, serves to remind us of the power of a child's imagination. No, voracious readers don't have telekinesis, no matter how much we wanted it. No, instead we escaped our sad worlds to the fantastical places authors offered us. Maybe I couldn't beat the bullies back but in my mind, my best friend, The BFG came and swept them all away. Matilda is about having control over who you are, that you can choose the people and things that shape you. Without Matilda, my peers probably would have got to me long ago on the school playground and turned me into vapid piles of bleach, make up and technology, like they are now. Being a reader was never easy but Matilda (and Roald Dahl) made it easier.
Ms Trunchbull makes Dolores Umbridge look positively Grandmotherly.
Well that's the end of this shortlist of books you should've read already, books you should read with your kids and the books that made me the person I am. If you're wondering where Potter and co are, don't worry I'll get to them in my next book post. TTFN. x
[1] Weirdly enough, both the Puddle Lane books and the One, Two, Three and Away books were written by the same person. I just found that out.
[2] There's also an opera of it. Seriously.