I decided to take on a simple young adult book challenge for 2008 – read more about that on my other blog later- but it got me thinking about books that I read as a child in particular. I read everything I could get my hands on, from Enid Blyton to Charles Dickens to Jean Plaidy to Roald Dahl. I had no boundaries, not a whole lot else to do and an advanced reading age so I got through a LOT of books.
I owned a lot of books, mostly second hands but people often gave me a lend of books not to mention the books I got from the public library and the school library. Two of my greatest “book lenders” were my grandmother and an extremely nice elderly man that my mother worked for as a home help. His books were infinitely random and diverse whereas my nanny always had a huge supply of Catherine Cookson books that she liked giving me to read. The one book she had that she wouldn’t allow me to read was Flowers in the Attic. That was her only “censor”. I used to sneak quick looks at it whenever I had to go into her room for anything 🙂
I read a lot of books about the environment and nature, books written from an animal’s point of view and a lot of books by Irish authors for example, Tom McCaughren wrote some amazing books about foxes that were some of my absolute favourites – I remember his name because my ma brought me to a book show to see him and get his autograph, I’m not really an autograph person so the memory stuck. Don Conroy has some good books about owls Marisa Conlon McKenna had the Under the Hawthorn Tree series that were incredibly popular. The Ruby Ring (?) and The Connemara Pony (?) were also two books that stand out for me. I loved horse books, there was one about a girl called Ginny and an Arabian Stallion that I read over and over again yet I can’t remember the stupid name, grr! That wasn’t Irish but I have a feeling it was set in Scotland. If you want to read an interesting book about Ireland, Eamon McThomais wrote some brilliant books about his life. I know I’m spelling his name wrong now…
My book collection was thrown away as a punishment when I was younger so a lot of my old favourites have been long forgotten – although my search for twelve young adult books has sprung up a lot of memories. Unfortunately, I’m notoriously bad with names so although I may have bits and pieces of the stories in my head, it’s not much use without the name!
I got a lot of joy and entertainment out of reading when I was young and I would love to share that with my own children so I have sort of made an agreement with myself to look out for the children’s books that I have forgotten over the years and make an effort to return them to my home. Actually, strangely enough, a couple of months ago, my ma got a lot of old books from a sale of work and gave them to me – one of them was a book that I owned years ago, had forgotten the name of and recently thought about because I wanted to read it again. Freaky!
I’d love to find all of the books I used to own – impossible I know. Is there anything you read as a child that made such an impression on you, you would love to read it again even now?
Mad House 