It is curious what travels and what does not. Pinocchio is, of course, THE Italian children's book - curiously, because it the most harshly moralistic piece of writing I ever read, in which every transgression is very thoroughly paid, and has a streak of tragedy more uncompromising than most adult writings. Verne is pretty universal, and so is Hector Malot's Sans Famille, which never seems to have made it in the English-speaking world. Sherlock Holmes is universally beloved, and so are many other detectives - I grew up with Nero Wolfe, Commissaire Maigret, Hercule Poirot, and Perry Mason; above all, with the great Father Brown - even though the basic story ideas were, from time to time, pretty strong meat for a ten-year-old. The Alice books I just never understood, and to this day I can summon up very little enthusiasm for them. Little Lord Fauntleroy impressed itself on me, not for the protagonist, but for the villain Bevis and the occasional but, to me, scarring descriptions of rural poverty and backwardness. A major enthusiasm was Little Women; I actually started from Jo's Boys, which I read to pieces and still recall almost word for word, and went on to the opening novel, which, again, I read over and over and over again. Jo and Lawrence and Lawrence's grandfather and Amy were all utterly wonderful characters, and it deepened my sense of them to have read the later story first and know what kind of adults they would become. I actually inherited from my father, already half read to pieces, two (as I was later to realize) stupendous and unsurpassed translations of Captains Courageous and The Jungle Book, and CC, in particular, has been my friend and companion for life. On the other hand, I never could make head or tails of The Three Musketeers, although I enjoyed many episodes, until I had access to an unexpurgated adult version and got to understand what Milady was doing and how. The version I first had went so far as to censure the fact that she had been married to Athos! I hated Moby Dick and still don't enjoy it, and I was given Don Quixote about four years too early - irony is not a natural form of mind for a child of eight. On the other hand, I read an awful lot of Robinson Crusoe; the idea of building one's own house and little world, by one's own intelligence and skill and hard work, says a lot, I think, to a young boy. On the other hand, I regret to say that I never read The Wind in the Willows or the Narnia stories until I was well into adulthood. If I were asked, I would say that the place that Wind in the Willows had in your childhood, LM Alcott's saga had in mine.
Well, now, it is curious.mshawpyleJanuary 22 2012, 19:51:11 UTC
Fr Brown was a part of my youth, also. And Dumas, I re-emphasize - both Les 3 M and the Count. Unexpurgated. Stevenson, the same. I was lucky: I read Pinocchio; most US kids got the Disney version. My Defoe was unexpurgated also - including the Prot tract elements. Same for Bunyan. (We may have been High Church, but lit's lit.) And Sir Walter, and Dickens. I suggest you get a-holt of Post's Uncle Abner, by the way: great sleuth.
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Alcott never did it for me, but tastes vary.
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