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

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

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.)

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

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.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

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.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

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.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

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!

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

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.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

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

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

That was the instigator's jacket, and she wore it with the One Ring skirt. Oh, and that fellow in the green jerkin is my ex-husband, and we looked up the Quenya word for "security" and how to spell it in tengwar and appliqued that in white felt on the back of his cloak. And someone was able to READ IT FROM THE AUDIENCE AND KNOW WHAT IT SAID. We figured that was the most epic win of all.

I was responsible for three skirts -- Luthien, Elanor, and the Entwife.

Also epic was the White Tree of Gondor on the back of Aragorn's jumpsuit, done up in EL wire. Due to last-minute alterations, the circuit wound up routing THROUGH his torso. Not ideal!

[ironed_orchid]

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.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

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?}

[ironed_orchid]

That sounds wonderful.

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

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

It really was a marvelous recording -- you can hear the first ten minutes here, with links to streaming/downloadable versions of the rest, if you're interested; apparently it's never been rereleased, which is a damn shame.

(And hee, I am delighted to hear that! That series is a great favorite of mine, but I've never run into anyone else who knew them...)