RSS FeedI’ve been reading a lot of children’s and young adult literature lately, and it’s fascinating to see what’s aimed at children. Some of the books I’m reading now are new to me, but others I first read fifteen or twenty years ago, or perhaps I had them read to me even a little longer ago than that. I can’t help but view these through a lens of nostalgia, though I try to be a little more objective, when I review them.
I can’t help but consider, as I go along, what sort of books these children’s book are that I’m looking at now, compared to what I actually read as a child. Certainly some of what I read would be recognized as the sort of thing traditionally intended for children, but others seem to me, even now, to be perfectly enjoyable by adults, as well. I imagine that what children would choose to read and what adults would choose for them (or write for them) aren’t quite the same. So, what did I read as a child?
I must first say what I mean by ‘as a child,’ for that’s not very precise. I suppose I mean ‘before I entered high school, but especially when I was still in elementary school, or earlier.’ What did I read, then?
I remember that I read the Berenstain Bears books. My favorite was The Bear Scouts, though I enjoyed some of the others, too. Looking back on them, The Bear Scouts is still great, but most of the others don’t hold up very well.
In elementary school, I began reading The Chronicles of Narnia–I know that I read The Magician’s Nephew and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in elementary school, but I may have been in middle school before I finished the series. Those are still great. I could read them any time.
I was about nine years old when I first read Robinson Crusoe. It influenced a lot of my thinking, later in life, and increased my appreciation of science–I appreciated Crusoe’s ingenuity and perseverance, and I took to heart the lesson that if you are clever and work hard, you can turn a situation to your advantage. I read A Journey to the Center of the Earth, too, which I suppose had a similar effect, increasing my curiosity about the world.
I know that I read plenty of other children’s fiction, during elementary school–I remember reading Time for Andrew and The Girl with the Silver Eyes, along with Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, The Celery Stalks at Midnight, and more Goosebumps books than were probably healthy. I read Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and its sequels, and their illustrations are still terrifying to this day. I loved The Phantom Tollbooth.
During middle school, though I read more works intended for adults, I still read some juvenile fiction–I remember the My Teacher is an Alien series by Bruce Coville, which may have created my interest in science fiction. I read Asimov–the local library had a copy of The Complete Robot, which I read and enjoyed immensely, leading me to read more of Asimov’s works during middle school and high school. I read a lot of Star Trek novels too, and a few Star Wars novels. I read Earth by David Brin and The Dark Beyond the Stars by Frank M. Robinson. I read 1984, and, on a lighter note, the five books in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy.
I read fantasy as well–The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and whichever Narnia books I hadn’t read in elementary school. I read all of the Magic Kingdom of Landover series by Terry Brooks, and some of the Shannara books, too. I enjoyed A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain.
I began reading the classics in middle school, too. I read The Three Musketeers, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, and Oliver Twist, then. It must have been around this time that I first read Silas Marner, which remains one of my favorite books. I also read all of the Sherlock Holmes short stories, though I’ve never read the novels, to this day. I read The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.
I read Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, though I never read its predecessor. I read Stephen King’s books–Tommyknockers and Gerald’s Game, at least, though I can’t vouch for whether I read any of his other books before high school. I read the Tackett trilogy by Lyn Nofziger, which are probably the only westerns I’ve ever read, unless you count The Gunslinger.
Of course, not all of my reading was self-directed–I read the books that were required for school, too: The Giver and My Side of the Mountain were particular favorites.
What can we learn from all this? Not much, maybe, but it’s a catalogue of the things that influenced me, early on. Certainly by the time I entered middle school, I was mostly reading books aimed at adults. Why, if I abandoned children’s literature so early, am I reading it again now?
I guess that I still think there’s value in it. The Chronicles of Narnia led me to The Lord of the Rings. My Teacher is an Alien led me to Asimov and so many others. The best of the children’s books are still fun to read as an adult.
I hope that I’ll eventually get to re-read and reflect on all these things that shaped my literary life, because I know that what I read, then as now, influenced me greatly. A lot of my moral intuition is owed to science fiction and fantasy, which so often stressed the need to treat others ‘humanely’, even if they aren’t human. How much easier, then, to treat other humans well?
I can’t call this a ‘must read’ list for children, by any means, and there’s no reason that such a list should be restricted to books that I read back then, either. A new book like Nate Rocks the World by Karen Pokras Toz is as suitable as Judy Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, published forty years earlier, and Shadow Castle by Marian Cockrell was published in 1945, though I didn’t read it until I was in college.
Maybe this list can provide some insight into my commentary on this blog. When I think of children today, surrounded by modern books, I wonder how ever they will be able to understand me, or I them, when the books that formed the foundation of our mental growth are so different.
What about you? What did you read as a child? What stories, alien to me, influenced you? I wonder…
