rachelmanija | Childhood nostalgia poll

I only read one or two Bobbsey Twins books and they didn't grab me, but I checked them.

Little House on the Prairie books, ALL OF THEM. Not the truncated series offered today. Having them as background knowledge -- even though there were parts that didn't mke sense to me at the time -- gave me CLICK! moments when studying history (not just events history, but social history and costume history, stuff like that) later. So THAT'S what Laura was talking about, with (pick a detail).

A lot of children-and-the-Holocaust books, why did you have to remind me? (Did you know that When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit has sequels?)

Edward Eager, Susan Cooper, Lloyd Alexander, John Bellairs.

Nina Bawden. My school library had a whole SHELF of hers. They were often very depressing.

Rumer Godden's doll books. I loved them to PIECES. I loved them so much I sought them out to give to my child. The Doll'sHouse, the one about Tottie and the wicked Marchpane, can make me cry now, and Impunity Jane made me very careful about using TINY stitches when sewing for dolls, because someone tried to sew for her but the large stitches HURT. And the Japanese doll books were fascinating.

The "A Little Maid of (colonial state)" series by Alice Turner Curtis -- again, there was a whole shelf of these in the town library (perhaps not surprising as I lived in Lexington MA) but I don't remember details at all. I see that some free downloads are available. I may have to re-explore.

The Noel Streatley "shoes" books -- "Ballet Shoes," "Theater Shoes" -- I know there were a lot of them, I know I read them, I don't remember much.

Anne of Green Gables, of course.

Carol Ryrie Brink wrote more than just Caddie Woodlawn. There was one called Louly, about a girl and her friends in 1908 America. I remember a whole bunch of related books about the same town. That may have been a different author.

All the Lois Lenski books, like Strawberry Girl.

There was a whole series about this girl Betsy and her friends. They were all around six to eight. There was a boy Eddie, and this other girl who'd had her front teeth knocked out and had the replacements held in with tiny gold hooks that hooked to her other teeth. Google tells me the author is Carolyn Haywood. The children were always getting to do things like ride on floats wearing costumes for a town Easter parade. I figured this was normal and that my town was sadly deficient for not having such a thing and that if only I weren't Jewish I'd get to dress up like Little Bo Peep and have ruffles sewn to my snow pants because it was too cold to go without them but the costume needed pantalettes.

I tended to trust book reality more than my observed reality. I also felt very cheated that we didn't get the amounts of snow that Laura got, and that his was a sign of degenerate modern times, and didn't grasp the distinction between New England weather and Great Plains weather. I was somewhat reassured by the Blizzard of '78.

The Anastasia books by Lois Lowry! Made more charming by happening in modern times in locations I knew.

I read ALL THE TIME.

Oh yes, yes! Anne of Green Gables! I think I read everything by LM Montgomery. I also loved the Anastasia books, The Dark Is Rising, and Lloyd Alexander. And Little House.

And while I'm remembering things, Tolkien. I read The Hobbit in fourth grade and Lord of the Rings not long after. (I know they're not typically thought of as children's books, but they were all actually stocked in the children's section of my local library as well as the adult section.)

The Hobbit in second grade, LOTR in third. I can trace it directly to a network broadcast of the Rankin-Bass animated Hobbit, after which my parents said "There are books, you know," and I was off and running.

I had a poster of the party trudging over the Misty Mountains on my bedroom wall for years.

I read both The Hobbit and LOTR so young that I literally do not even remember reading them for the first time -- I don't know when I first picked up my dad's paperbacks, but I'd definitely read them all by kindergarten: my mom had to fight with the school administration to get special permission for me to go to the school library along with the first-graders. Apparently they didn't bother taking kindergarten kids because we weren't supposed to be reading well enough to go, and she had to make a huge fuss about how I was already reading high-school-level books on my own.

The Silmarillion I read for the first time when I was nine -- I can date that exactly because it was a Christmas present the year it came out, and I still have that much-battered inscribed copy on my massive shelf-o-Tolkien.

I never made it through the Silmarillion. I would try with the creation myths, get lost, and skip ahead to Beren and Luthien.

I totally called dibs on Luthien when I was part of a masquerade entry enacting

filkertom's song "Return of the King, Uh-Huh" -- Aragorn in an Elvis jumpsuit, Eowyn and Arwen in prom dresses made from a vintage fifties pattern, and a crowd of fangirls in poodle skirts, representing all the races of Middle-Earth. With our poodle emblems referencing our characters. Our Entwife had a tree on a leash! Of course I had Luthien's emblem, and I also had LED blinky stars in my hair. It was AWESOME.

Ah, no love for poor angsty DOOOOOOMED! ~~Kullervo~~ ~~Elric~~ Túrin Turambar, or all the mad-bad-dangerous-to-know angsty DOOOOMED! Sons of Fëanor? I am a total sucker for Fëanorian angst...and in retrospect, I'm pretty sure that Maedhros/Fingon was one of my formative h/c slashy ships long before I had any idea just why those scenes thrilled me so much.

Those costumes sound AWESOME. Please tell me there are photos somewhere!

The instigator's photos have developed link rot, but you can see a few here: http://www.sickpupsnot.org/arisia2004.html

The emblem on green next to Luthien's was just supposed to be "semy of elanor flowers" because the concept was that the 8-year-old was Elanor Gamgee.

Eee, you used the canon heraldic devices! *hearts* And the Uruk biker jacket is EPIC win. XD

Edited 2011-03-21 01:27 (UTC)

(no subject)

rikibeth.livejournal.com - 2011-03-21 01:52 (UTC) - Expand

My dad read me The Hobbit, a chapter a night, when I was about 3. There was never a time it wasn't there, and I read it myself as soon as I could.

There was never a time it wasn't there, and I read it myself as soon as I could.

Yes, THIS! I don't even remember if my parents read it aloud to me, but they *did* have a marvelous boxed set of LPs of Nicol Williamson reading the whole thing; I *adored* those records, and loved to listen to them even long after I was reading the books on my own.

_{Not exactly children's literature, although I did read them for the first time while I was still in high school...every time I see your username, I grin and wonder if it's a "Dancers At The End Of Time" reference?}

That sounds wonderful.

And yes, my username is a modified reference to the Dancers at the End of Time character.

(no subject)

smillaraaq.livejournal.com - 2011-03-22 14:11 (UTC) - Expand

The Doll's House was SO HEARTBREAKING. Birdie gives her life for Apple! It is seriously making me tear up right now just remembering it.

I KNOW, RIGHT? I teared up too, writing it!

And do you remember Home Is The Sailor, with them miraculously finding the lost doll at the beach? Oh my heart.

No! I missed that one!

I read the Betsy books over and over again; also Betsy-Tacy, by a different author.

The Lenski books are surprising -- her own doll-like illustrations really belie the serious content. I remember in STRAWBERRY GIRL, the heroine, the daughter of migrant workers, had her mother make a new dress for her of carefully-saved feedsacks. Then she proudly showed up at school for a birthday party only to find out she wasn't invited, and was mocked for her dress.

I know. And in one of them, someone was permanently weakened by rheumatic fever, and I pronounced it wrong, and, after my mother corrected me with some amusement, she explained about why I'd never heard of it or known anybody in real life who had it -- it was because when we got strep throat, we had antibiotics that would clear it up in a couple of days, and that was a thing that happened with untreated strep, before antibiotics.

She explained about diphtheria, when Laura and Almanzo had it in The First Four Years, and all the childhood diseases they had in all the Betsy books (measles, mumps, German measles, the works) and the Great Brain books (another series!) and polio, too. She grew up pre-vaccine and lived through polio scares, and all I'd ever dealt with was chicken pox. I grew up thoroughly respecting the powers of vaccination.

The 1918 flu epidemic was very vividly in the All-Of-A-Kind Family books. I wish I'd thought to ask my grandmother about that, before she died. She would have been five, then.

Lois Lenski! I loved her books and gobbled up my elementary school library's supply. Then I started rereading them.

I credit her with starting my love of sf/fantasy/anthropology, because learning about how people in other cultures/times live is fascinating.

There....there are more than one Doll book? (gapes in happy shock)

I'd forgotten about A Dolls House but I know I have it around here somewhere. I remember that wicked Marchpane, and sweet little Apple...oh, that was a wonderful book. I didn't know it was a series. I will have to find those immediately.

Since we're talking about books that were extremely old when I was quite young, anyone remember "The Surprise of Their Lives?" (by Hazel Hutchins Wilson, per Amazon) There were a brother and sister whose little sister got scarlet fever, and they couldn't go home, and they had to stay at the nasty overly strict elderly neighbor's house, and somehow they accidentally stowed away on a cruise ship...

Oh, and what about Jane's Father (by Dorothy Keely Aldis, per Amazon)? Jane's father was very silly--I think they wound up putting his head in a birdcage at one point. And calomel was the cure-all, which confused me because I'd never heard of it. I thought it must be a precursor to St. Joseph's Baby Aspirin.

I liked Carolyn Haywood's Betsy books too, though it was odd because they started out way before my time and suddenly there was a time warp and they became quite contemporary to my mid-70s childhood.

This happened with Beverly Cleary too--Henry Huggins was a 50s kid with a coonskin cap watching Davy Crockitt and Ramona was a 3-year-old enamored with a Howdy Doody analog. And then when Ramona starts kindergarten she's a 70s kid, and then her father loses his job in the 70s recession and her mother goes back to work around the time my mother does the same...it was sort of confusing.

Edited 2011-03-21 04:13 (UTC)

I remember the Ramona time warp, and Beezus wanting a Dorothy Hamill haircut. My mother had a Dorothy Hamill haircut. it wasn't possible for me with my curly hair, and I wanted it long so I could have braids like Laura's, but I lacked the patience to grow it out, especially since having it brushed HURT. My aunt sewed me a calico gown and a sunbonnet, though. I adored her for that.

I don't remember the Betsy time warp - I suspect my school library didn't have the new ones.

There weren't any more Rumer Godden books about Tottie, but there were other dolls! There were several about the Japanese dolls, Miss Happiness and Miss Flower. Miss Plum arrived in her own book, and so did the boy, Little Peach. MOAR DOLL BOOKS.

Another marvelous doll book, NOT by Rumer Godden, is "Hitty: Her First Hundred Years." Get the original, not the later abridged version pitched at younger kids.

I didn't read the two other books you mentioned, but OMG CALOMEL. I only learned about that through Heinlein and that it was MERCURY and TOXIC and used as a laxative. Scary!

The archaic medicines I remember were the quinine in Little House on the Prairie for "fever and ague" which was malaria, and the belladonna Beth took for her fever in Little Women, which I realized years later when working in a natural foods store had to be HOMEOPATHIC belladonna, since homeopathy was very popular at the time (and way safer than calomel, if it came to that) and in homeopathy, belladonna is the go-to remedy for fever with red face! Oh, and in the British books, there always seemed to be calf's-foot jelly and beef tea for invalids. I've figured out the calf's-foot jelly, but even with the help of historical cookbooks, I haven't quite sorted out what distinguishes beef TEA from beef BROTH. It's so weird!

Hitty! I was kind of meh about a lot of the classic girly books -- too much dull domestic stuff, not enough adventure for my tastes; and I wasn't all that into dolls as a kid (if they'd been as customizable and posable as my current BJD collection, it would have been another story...) -- but I really enjoyed Hitty. I was already a bit of a history buff, so I think it was that sense of the depth and passage of time that made that one work for me.

I haven't quite sorted out what distinguishes beef TEA from beef BROTH. It's so weird!

My understanding is that "tea" is just made by simmering boneless meat, with only a bit of salt of flavor, while "broth" is made by simmering meaty bones and may or may not contain additional spices and/or aromatics for flavor: this 1917 cookbook goes into some detail on the beef juice/tea/extract/broth/soup variations.

Not the truncated series offered today...

*eyes this warily* Are they abridged, did they edit them for content (to make them less racist), or do they just not offer some of the books? (I have to say, the racism was the /friendliest/ racism ever. Looking back on it, it's kind of surreal.)

They just quit after By The Shores Of Silver Lake -- I guess they figure that as she becomes an older teen, they're less relevant for the preteen girls who they're targeting them at? They totally slipcase a smaller set now..

But. What? The Long Winter!

Man. People. I just don't know.

"A Little Maid of..." is the series title that has been eluding me forever! They were in the library when I was living in the US (Maryland) and I've been desperately wanting to see how they read now.

Now if someone just comes up with the sort-of-equivalent Native American tribe series, my lost childhood books will all be recovered. (Those I fear will be horrendous, but I guess there's always hope. At least they weren't just books about generic "Indians".)

SUSAN COOPER. She was incredibly formative to me -- I can totally trace her influence in my writing style -- and I have reread the Dark is Rising series so many times in my life.

Little House on the Prairie, yes! I can recognize all the problematic bits of our nation's mythologized history in it now, but as a child I adored them. My longstanding childhood favoritism for the goody-two-shoes characters meant I loved Mary best, but really what I loved was the world, and all the details of things like making latches from a peg and a scrap of leather.

And oh, Lloyd Alexander. Prydain, of course, but also Westmark and a lot of his incidental stuff.