Childhood nostalgia poll

[rachelmanija]

Please reminisce, fondly or not, about any of these, or other books read in childhood, especially if they seem to have, deservedly or undeservedly, vanished from the shelves. I'd love to hear about non-US, non-British books, too.

[Poll #1720139]

Comments

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

"My Friend Flicka" and its sequel-ish things. Everything by Marguerite Henry.

How can you possibly forget the Oz books? We had all 41!!!!

Two or three Elsie Dinsmores. Loathed her.

Edit: How can I forget the All-of-a-Kind family? Fantastic food values. "Quarter-penny chocolate babies."

Edward Eager! Edward Eager hurray! And E. Nesbit.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Oh, I loved All-of-a-Kind Family!

[eruthros]

Me too!

[mscongeniality.livejournal.com]

Me three!

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

Me four. The middle books were the best. I loved Ella's romance with Jules, and I was so worried when Lena got polio.

My grandmother lived in the Lower East Side when she was a small child (though slightly later than the time span of the All-Of-A-Kind books). I really felt like those books connected me to her childhood somehow.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

YES to Oz, Marguerite Henry (first time I ever cried for a book was at the end of Black Gold), and the All Of A Kind Family, which, I was given to understand, was MY family history in a way that Laura Ingalls' history was not and would never be.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

First time I read Black Gold (as I think I have even said in Rachel's comments section before), I was about 20 pages from the end, and then... a section from earlier was inserted! And the end didn't exist.

(So I got to pretend it wouldn't end in complete and abject tragedy for awhile, til we ILL'd it from another site.)

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Being a child of the 70s, I watched the "Little House" TV series pretty regularly, but I was so meh about the one book from the series that I read (Farmer Boy) that I never had any interest in picking up the rest of them. Which is probably a good thing, because it meant I never had to reconcile the wholesome, kindly Pa Ingalls on TV with the book-Pa who thought the only good Indian was a dead Indian until I was old enough to understand how fucked up so many of the American "classics" were about my family's history. :/

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, Pa was fairly respectful, it was MA Ingalls who believed that the only good Indian was a dead Indian, and I believe she'd actually been local for the Minnesota massacre that happened before Laura was born, so she was coming from a place of fear.

Laura actually wrote some fairly sympathetic things as an adult, when she had a newspaper column.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Ah, my bad...looking back to the critical essays where I first heard about the depiction of Indians in those books, it seems that my memory had conflating the Scotts' talk of massacres and Pa's reminiscing of childhood games where he imagined stalking "wild animals and Indians". In my muddled memory's defense, I should note that when I was little, family friends who knew I was a big reader but didn't grok my tastes frequently gifted me with "classic" girly books from their own childhood -- that's how I ended up with that copy of Farmer Boy in the first place; and I'm pretty sure my mother never read them, she never mentioned any familiarity with the series and it was only just starting to come out back when she was a schoolgirl on the rez, so she probably wasn't forewarned as to how Indians were portrayed in the books. So when I first came across Native academics discussing the issues with these books, I read those essays with an increasingly queasy feeling that I'd dodged a bullet there. :/

[handyhunter.livejournal.com]

"My Friend Flicka" and its sequel-ish things. Everything by Marguerite Henry.

Me too. Also Elyne Mitchell's Silver Brumby series, The Saddle Club, Thoroughbred -- because these series had girls and weren't just about racing, unlike The Black Stallion series (which I also read, but didn't love as much).

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

I didn't even care about real horses that I recall; just the books. And Marguerite Henry could draw.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Those scenes with the cracker flavors! And the one where the girls each pick out their own penny treat, of a piping hot sweet potato or a dill pickle or candied grapes or...

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

That's the thing. A book with a really great description of food I will remember forever.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Yah, all the horse books. (And Oz. The non-Baum person wasn't any good.) Never did read Elsie Dinsmore.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

OMG, All-of-a-Kind Family! My library actually gave me their copy when they deaccessioned it because I'd checked it out so many times.

[skygiants]

All-of-a-Kind Family, YES. And Edward Eager was intensely formative for me - the part in Seven-Day Magic where the kids are talking about their favorite kind of fantasy book still fits exactly my favorite kind of fantasy book now, and I'm pretty sure it's his fault. I can't be the only one he led to E. Nesbit, too!

[cofax7]

My Friend Flicka! I even have O'Hara's memoire around here somewhere...

(I really wish I was a paid LJ member now because I keep wanted to edit my answer.)

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, I inhaled the Marguerite Henry horse books. Well, horse books in general, but hers were at the top of the heap.

[genarti]

Yes absolutely to Marguerite Henry! I read so much of her stuff.

And Oz too absolutely; I owned all the L. Frank Baum ones except Tin Man and Glinda, which are still a hole in my collection. I really ought to acquire them sometime for completeness's sake. I never read the sequels written by anyone else; I was a tiny snob about the very idea.

I read and loved the All-of-a-Kind family, but only the first. I think there was a sequel I didn't read? Unless I'm misremembering.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Marguerite Henry was great. My favorite was, and still is, King of the Wind: The Story of the Godolphin Arabian. I loved the beginning in Morocco, and the relationship of the horse and the boy.

There were more All of a Kind Family books: More All-Of-A-Kind Family, All of a Kind Family Downtown, All-of-a-Kind Family Uptown, and Ella of All-of-a-Kind Family,

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

The only two Henry books I owned were Album of Horses and a paperback of Misty of Chincoteague that came with my Breyer models, but I read and reread the rest in the library, and King of the Wind was my favorite there.