MASSIVE BOOK POLL. I laboriously compiled a list of my formative books. pls check what you've read!
icon: "bluestocking (photo of a book lying open on a table with a bright window in the background, overlaid with a yellow fractal that looks like the sun shining through dust motes)"
( under a cut to save your flist. Please do the poll if you have read even just one of them! )
I didn't tick Oz because I read about... five of them? I had no idea there were 14! Part of this may be the fault of my local library but I remember gradually losing interest as Billina the chicken and Peter Pumpkinhead got involved. Loved the original, Glinda Of Oz and Return To Oz though. I didn't tick The Borrowers as I read the first book and didn't like it. I remember being ill at the time but usually that would help me to prefer a book as it was companion in sick times. I just have a recollection of disliking the main character and seeing them as smug.
I read Arabian Nights but it was a translation/adaptation by an English children's author called Enid Blyton. I read a lot of Enid's stuff. She also adapted Pilgrim's Progress for children.
I adored the Doctor Dolittle series [which were a lot darker than most people realised] although I didn't read them all because the library didn't have them. If I could have I would have though, so ticked it. Same with Mary Poppins [I read 5 of the 8 I think], so magical and aware of the secrecy of childhood.
White Boots was my Noel Streatfield favourite. Something about the gradual learning of how to ice skate and the fact that Harriett started to skate to strengthen the body after health issues spoke to me and I think I really loved the descriptions of the skating competitions. Even then, competitions thrilled me.
But I'm really amazed The Girl With The Silver Eyes is here! Perhaps it was super well-known in America but over here no-one has ever heard of it. My Dad found it for me one day in a second hand shop when I was about 7 and I can still remember what I was wearing and eating that night when I started reading. I literally have photos of me reading it as a kid and I still own it. Maybe it was my first experience of sci-fi, of 'otherness', of dark things and dissension between family members. Kids admitting that not everyone fitted in.
This is a wonderful list you've compiled and I hope to come back to it and read some more of the books.
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I think I remember disliking Arrietty but I loved the imagery and the concept so much that I read them all anyway. Same for the Oz books -- the characters weren't much to speak of but I loved the surrealism and unexpectedness.
I didn't read all of the Dr. Doolittle or Mary Poppins either but would have and wanted to, lots.
Huh, I loved the shoes series for the fact that the main characters were orphans (I wanted to be an orphan) and also for the competitions. I remember one character being cast as the sort of ugly ogre in a dance, and relating to that a lot. As a child I was in plays a lot and always wanted the main character but never got it -- instead I was cast as a boy or an old lady or a bit part.
The Girl With The Silver Eyes is not at all well-known here! I'm amazed that so many of my friends have read it! I found it by searching through the library catalogue for the word "silver" -- I found a good number of my favorite books by searching for words I liked. I can remember silver, smoke, Egypt, cat, mirror, unicorn.
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Finding it was extremely random. I used to go into second hand bookshops with my parents and my Dad would sometimes lift books out of the bookstack if he thought they sounded interesting and on this occasion, I agreed with him! I usually didn't agree though.
I had the same experiences with plays and auditions as a child. Even playing with friends in my street I was made to be the boy... Unless I wrote the play. Even as an adult I got bit parts in plays... so I started writing poems!
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