The Children's Book Meme

[jacey]

From lil_shepherd because I'm feeling memeish

Books selected for The Independent by Philip Pullman, Michael Morpurgo, Katy Guest, John Walsh, Michael Rosen.

Meme rules:
Bold those you read as aged 0-18.
Italicise those you read aged 19-now.
Underline those you started but didn't finish.
Strikethrough those you have never even heard of.

1843 - A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Not a children's book

1865 - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. horrible books and I hated the movies. Even Johnny Depp couldn't improve the last one.

1868 - Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Boring.

1883 - Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. Read the picture book version aged about 7 but that probably doesn't count, does it, especially since I hated it (and the movie).

1883 - Treasure Island by R.L. Stevenson.

1888 - The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde.

1891 - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Not a children's book. It's on my try again list.

1902 - The Elephant's Child From The Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling.

1910 - The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson-Burnett. Because I felt as though I should.

1922 - Just William books by Richmal Crompton. Really not my style

1925 - Carry On, Jeeves by PG Wodehouse. Not a children's book.

1929 - Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kastner.

1930 - Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. I could never bring myself to read a book with a character called Titty

1937 - The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein.

1939 – date - Beano Annual. A few of them in the late 1950s, anyway.

1945 - Animal Farm by George Orwell. Not a children's book. Had to read it for school

1946 - Mistress Masham's Repose by TH White.

1948 - I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.

1951 - The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. This is so NOT a children's book.

1953 - The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono.

1954 - How to be Topp by Geoffrey Williams and Ronald Searle. I read St Trinians, but that doesn't count, I guess.

1954 - Moominsummer Madness by Tove Jansson.

1956 - The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier. Can't remember much about it.

1958 - A Hundred Million Francs by Paul Berna.

1961 - The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. Loved this!

1961 (Tr) - Finn Family Moomintroll (and the other Moomin books) by Tove Jansson. (see 1954)

1963 - The Castafiore Emerald by Hergé.

1964 - Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken.

1967 - The Owl Service by Alan Garner. This was just plain weird (but not as weird as Red Shift) The Weirdstone of Brisingmen and The Moon of Gomrath are still my favourites

1971 - When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr. Brilliant book, This and all later books weren't published until after I was 19.

1979 - After the First Death by Robert Cormier.

1983 - People Might Hear You by Robin Klein.

1990 - Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett. Not a children's book, though I enjoyed it immensely.

1990 - The Singing Tree by Kate Seredy.

1992 - Greek myths by Geraldine McCaughrean.

1998 - Skellig by David Almond.

2000 - Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz.

2001 - Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman.

2001 - Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah.

2001- Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer.

2002 - The Story of Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson.

2003 - Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo.

2003 - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. Enjoyed this against my expectations, but surely not a children's book

2004 - The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson

2007 - Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney.

2007 - Red Cherry Red by Jackie Kay.

2007 - The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd.

2007 - The Tygrine Cat (and The Tygrine Cat on the Run) by Inbali Iserles.

2010 - Einstein's Underpants and How They Saved the World by Anthony McGowan.

2010 - Talkin Turkeys by Benjamin Zephaniah. See above.

What a random list. I wonder if Michael Morpurgo selected his own? These guys are pretty out of touch with what kids are reading. I used to read 5 books a week from the local library at the age of 7 - 12 and not one that I read is listed here. Of course it would have had to have been published before 1961, so the books I grew up with are pretty well off the radar for most of these guys. CS Lewis, Monica Edwards, Elyne Mitchell, Sheila Chapman, Primrose Cumming, Enid Blyton, Hugh Walters, the Pullein-Thompsons, Ruby Ferguson, Marguerite Henry etc... and from 12 onwards every yellow jacketed Gollancz SF book that the mobile library carried plus Peter O'Donnell, Ian Fleming, Monica Dickens, a few Jean Plaidys and others of that ilk. And too many children's books read post-19 to count (well, it was my job for a while.)

Comments

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I know, I know.

I still collect Monica Edwards (i.e. am replacing my tatty paperbacks with VERY EXPENSIVE second hand hardbacks.) Likewise Ivan Southall and Nicholas Stuart Grey. I have yet to find a fan who doesn't prefer Weirdstone and Gomrath to The Owl Service.

Then there's Andre Norton and Robert Heinlein's juveniles. They're still relevant.

I used to read a lot of children's fantasy, though not much SF - the reasons. I don't are analysed nicely in Farah's The Galactic Playground.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I didn't find the Norton and Heinlein juveniles until I became a Children's librarian but then read most of them. I collect Nortons, especially Witch World. She's almost filled a whole bookcase.

I also collect the Monica Edwards Romney Marsh stories (and the Punchbowl Farm crossover ones, though not as avidly). My paperback copy of The White Riders has disintegrated and I need a new one. Also my Midnight Horse is the one in the omnibus of Three Great Pony Stories. Wish for a Pony was the one that started it all. It was a Christmas present in (about) 1958 or 59 and I loved it. I lent Summer of the Great Secret to a friend at college and he lost it (nearly ruined a beautiful friendship) but later another mutual friend found a copy in a secondhand bookshop - though the dust jacket was in tatters and mine had been fairly good.

I came across another hardback of Wish for a Pony recently (so had to buy it, of course) and I have two copies of Strangers to the Marsh if those are ones you haven't got in hardback yet. I paid £35 for Operation Seabird, but have had most of the others for long enough that they didn't cost me a fortune. No Going Back and A Wind is Blowing are the only two I have in hardback first editions. Of course some of the reprints and Armada paperback editions are abridged, so I'd like the original versions so I have them in full. They'll probably cost a fortune _if_ I can ever find them. Hard to say which I like best, really. The foot and mouth one (No Entry) was pretty dramatic and Storm Ahead I came to like much later after I leaned about the Mary Stamford lifeboat disaster which is was based on and which ME's father did the service for.

I think I fell in love with Meryon when I was about 12. Sad that the boy she based him on died at university. The characters always seemed to real to me that when I read it I immediately thought, 'Oh, poor Tamzin!' I'd always imagined them growing old together as Doctor and Mrs Fairbrass. By now they should be surrounded by grandchildren who all have ponies of their own and get into innocent scrapes. And Young Jimmy will be a bearded octogenarian with the 'sardine can' photo of his dad still proudly displayed on the mantlepiece.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I never thought Meryon was good enough for Tamzin.

An interesting thing here - I was reading a book of criticism on children's literature and the author remarked, anent the Romney Marsh books, that it was one of the most difficult things in any book to make a genuinely good person interesting, and Edwards achieves this with Tamzin. This is a great observation.

I can't remember which book I read first - maybe The White Riders or Cargo of Horses from the library. I have copies of all the Romney Marsh and Punchbowl Farm books (all from The Outsider onwards in first edition hardback, purchased at the time), and a couple of her autobiographical pieces, but some are very tatty and I am looking to spend reasonable amounts to replace them. (I just missed a good hardback of Cargo of Horses. Bother.)

Mind you, the most I have ever spent on a book was over a hundred pounds for an ex-library none-DJ edition of Mystery at Mycenae by Roger Lancelyn Green, which I adore. (Odysseus as Holmes and Menelaus as Watson.) It was the cheapest on Abe...

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Oh, I though Meryon was the bees knees, well, a bit whingy in Wind is Blowing, but who wouldn't be? That was a bit of an oddity anyway. Why didn't you think he was good enough for Tamzin? She obviously adored him. (Think how jealous she was when he went off skating with [name forgotten] the pretty girl.

He was a bit of a white knight, really, and very handy with a sick bucket when the sea was rough. A bit rogueish with a soft centre. What's not to like?

Yes Tamzin was a genuinely good person but managed to remain interesting. She never really thought of herself as a good person, so it stopped her getting smug. They were all pretty 'good' really, though Roger never seemed to develop much. (Perhaps he had more of a change in the Punchbowl crossovers. I don't know them as well.)

It is truly difficult to make a good person interesting. And I do like ME's collection of rogues. Old Jim and Hookey Galley being my favourites. I shamelessly stole Hookey Galley and turned him into Hookey Garrity in the Magic Pirate novel. He's younger and not quite as morose, but ever-ready to sink his hook into someone's throat if necessary and happy to humbug the excise men whenever he can. He's also got a girl in every port, but he's quiet about it and equally happy in a whorehouse. Actually, since he's pretty well devoted to my cross-dressing pirate captain he's a bit of a cross between Hookey Galley and Willie Garvin. (I should get him to throw knives as well. he's got one good hand.)

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I found Meryon too good to be true, to be honest. Everything came far too easily to him. He was that very, vary annoying elder sibling - rather like Julian of the Famous Five or Guy in the Marjorie books. He was also bloody condescending at times.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

You may be right, things do come easily to him, but I wouldn't necessarily have held that against him when I was 8/9/10. I think my opinion of him was set when I didn't notice that kind of thing. Even recent re-reading hasn't flagged it up. Of course I didn't _have_ an elder sibling, annoying or otherwise, so perhaps he didn't push my buttons in that way. I also didn't read Famous Five or the Marjorie books, so any similarity to annoying characters will have gone right over my head. (Note I did eventually read _a few_ FF books and some Secret Sevens, but sporadically, and probably not until after meeting Meryon. If Meryon was based on a real person it may well be that the real person was one of those people who things came to easily. I haven't got the Companion to hand at the moment but I think the real M died while at Oxford University, so I guess he was at the front of the queue when brains were handed out.

All this is making me want to go back and re-read the whole lot.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I have yet to find a fan who doesn't prefer Weirdstone and Gomrath to The Owl Service

Well, there is me. :)

I loved Weirdstone and Gomrath when I was in my teens, but ever since I read it at university in Aberystwyth, I've thought his best novel was Owl Service. I even made cut out paper owls and had them perched around my room in the hall of residence. Red Shift, on the other hand, was an interesting idea that didn't quite work for me.

However, my absolute favourite of his was Elidor because the bits set in the old part of Manchester that is being demolished is where I lived. I was astonished at the time that anyone could write a fantasy set in an area of urban dereliction and was a big influence on my writing ever since.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure why, but Elidor didn't have the dramatic (visceral) impact (for me) that Weirdstone and Gomrath had, though I can see it would have been fascinating if I'd known the area, so I can fully understand why it's your favourite.

I've re-read Red Shift fairly recently because I truly thought it was a load of hogwash when it first came out. I was apalled that it was seriously considered for the Carnegie that year (I was involved in selection at regional level). I think most people (librarians, that is) said they thought it was good because they hadn't a f***ing clue as to what was going on. Emperor's new clothes.

However on re-reading it seemed more logical to me. maybe it was 'ahead of its time' and I grew into it. I don't know. I still think it wasn't right for the award, though. It wasn't really a children's book.

I should re-read Owl Service, but I have so many books to read that it's way down my list

[slrose.livejournal.com]

The Singing Tree by Seredy was a Newbery Honor book in 1940.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Ah, thanks. Wrong side of the Atlantic and way before my time. No wonder I didn't recognise it. Though I used to be passing familiar with the Newberry list in my college/history of children's lit./children's librarian days,

[del-c.livejournal.com]

1948 - I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

Not a children's book.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Those yellow jackets were a godsend. They helped me to find so many SF writers on library shelves.

Супер блог!

[ofeliapuco.livejournal.com]

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[artykuzuw.livejournal.com]

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