QotD: Books From My Childhood
What books did you love as a child?
Submitted by hearts.I was a voracious reader as a child, but I picked three series here that really stand out in my memory.
In the young-adult fantasy literature department, The Dark is Rising fits somewhere between The Hobbit and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy (though I did not read Pullman until I was an adult). Arthurian legend and the ancient battle betweeen good and evil is played out with children as the true protagonists. Their childlike wonder and inquisitiveness, combined with the way children rise to the occasion in times of hardship, gives them power the adults lack. This series is a fantastic companion or alternative to the Narnia series for parents who choose, for whatever reason, to avoid heavy religious undertones but would like to read a series of that type with their children. It engrossed me as a child and it does not lose me as an adult.
Girls who love horses are drawn like fireflies to Marguerite Henry's story of Misty, a wild pony with unusual markings found one year during Virginia's Pony Penning between Chincoteague and Assateague Island. The coolest thing my parents ever did for me as a child was to surprise me during a summer-long east coast road trip with an actual visit to Pony Penning.
As a girl growing up in the alpine woods, building our own house and living in a camper while we did so, I felt a close kinship to Laura despite the years that separated our childhoods. I wonder whether this series holds the appeal now, in the age of technology, that it did for me in the years before we owned one of the very first IBM home computers.
Comments
Pony Penning is an interesting experience. Keep in mind that I went 20 years ago as a teenager; at the time it was very touristy and I felt like a lot of it was more for our entertainment than anything else. There is of course good reason for keeping the herd at a reasonable size, but it probably seems even more carnivalesque and antiquated now. Most of all I remember being grumpy that I couldn't get a pony, lol.
If you do make it there, I highly recommend making the swim to Chincoteague from Assateague. It is an experience all unto itself... if they still let people in the water there, anyway.
Yes, if we had gone to Pony Penning when my daughter was young we probably would have come home with a pony or two. Wait, even if we go now, (she is 21), we will probably come home with one. Sheeeesh. I was going to say how much more mature and sensible we are now, but realized that is totally untrue! :D Ha!