Big Books in my Little Life

In the Little House series of books, Laura Ingalls Wilder told captivating stories of the hardships and triumphs of American settler life in the late 1800s, based on her family’s time in Wisconsin, Missouri, Kansas and Minnesota.  The storytelling style was different to anything ten-year-old me had ever read.  Loving the character and voice of Laura, I vowed if I ever had a daughter, she’d be named Laura.*
 
From 1974, the stories gained a worldwide stage via the hit TV series Little House on the Prairie.   Yet most Australians have never read the books.  Until the 1980s, our childhood literary fare was heavily British-influenced.  Our schools, however, had to meet a homegrown quota; thus we were force-fed the best and worst of Australian literature.
 

                            
British kid-lit was a wholesome genre.  Just to re-affirm my worship of Enid Blyton, favourites were:


The Famous Five.
The Naughtiest Girl
Mallory Towers
The Five Find-Outers
The Faraway Tree Trilogy

I didn’t like The Secret Seven.  Controversially**  I didn’t like The Wishing Chair.  Other great Brit fantasy authors were Mary Stewart and Ursula Moray Williams.  If the masterpiece Harry Potter series had existed, I’d have been in heaven.

Brainwashed by British accents and magical forests and castles and boarding schools, I hated my first all-Australian novel, Storm Boy (Colin Thiele).   But! – here's the lesson: never discount a popular author on the strength of one book.  Weeks later, I devoured Thiele’s February Dragon as quickly as the raging bushfire ripped through its chapters.    

I recoiled at the silly title of our next Aussie ‘required text’ -  I Can Jump Puddles (Alan Marshall).  Yet once read, the true poignance of the title is revealed, and its mere mention will move you. 

Then at age ten, despite the best efforts of the education system, I discovered American junior literature.  Hello Trixie Belden!  Encyclopedia Brown!  Bring on Anne of Green Gables, A Wrinkle in Time  and the wondrous coming-of-age novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  Most brilliant of all: The Phantom Tollbooth.   And of course, the Little House books.

Wilder's simply-expressed wisdom stays with me.  Fans of the books will recall the devastation of Mary’s blindness; I found this line so affecting:

“Her blue eyes were still beautiful, but they did not know what was before them, and Mary herself could never look through them again to tell Laura what she was thinking without saying a word.”

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*  A kind American friend, aware of the story behind my youngest daughter’s name, last week sent me a lovely package of Ingalls souvenirs, direct from Walnut Grove.  The memories prompted this post.
   
** everyone except me seems to love The Wishing Chair

Putting The Past Out To Pasture

Swamped in a smorgasbord of media choice, will today’s children ever know what it’s like to be sentimentally attached to a book?

I had so many ‘favourite’ books. Some I loved for their stories, some for the illustrations, others for what they’d meant as a gift, and one simply because I’d saved so long to buy it.  (Another concept that might be lost on Generation Y: delayed gratification)

A book could become tatty with use, but you loved it no less.  Perhaps even more, because the tat said “much used, much loved.” My Enid Blyton books were still with me in my 20s.  Even non-bookish types have been known to secrete a dog-eared Little Golden Book in the back of a wardrobe.   Of course, we romantically imagine that any children we might have, will love them as much as we did.  

Certainly Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree trilogy has stood the test of time (although I can never forgive the PC crew for changing the names of the children – as if modern kids couldn’t handle having a Dick and Fanny on the same page, puhleeeeze). 

Eventually I shed most of mine, disappointed that my firstborn didn’t get the same buzz from The Naughtiest Girl as I did.   I’ve blogged before about my general dismay that Milly Molly Mandy and the girls of the Chalet School are barely known to anyone under 40, but we can’t keep looking back ... right?

That’s what I tell myself today as I sort through a stash of my oldest books.  It's finally time to discard “The All Colour Book of Horses”

First published in 1972, the illustrations have an old-fashioned tone to them.  Hell, it’s so dated, there’s even a ‘recent’ photo of Princess Anne competing on Doublet.  I’m not into horses anymore.  And yet ... gazing at the Arab mare and foal on the cover, I’m transported back to the Christmas when my heart rose to my throat with the excitement of receiving this gift. I remember how for years – yes, literally years – I would check in with this book, studying each photo, inventing a name for each horse.

This book has no relevance to my life now.  And yet ... it’s so hard to bin it.

Look what I found next to the Funk & Wagnalls

My brother and I weren't the only ones to mispronounce Funk & Wagnalls, right?   

Having already chatted about some of my favourite books, here’s a random smattering of other ‘early’ books that stay strong in my memory. 

Age 6:      Milly Molly Mandy     Joyce Lancaster Brisley

A sweet, very old-fashioneded account of English village life, with delightful line drawings.

Age 8:      Little Dream     Cynthia Leonetti 

Quite simply, the sweetest story I’ve ever read.  Yet you can’t find the book anywhere now   except in  national library holding collections.  I was captivated by oh-so-pretty Little Dream, the pompous Big Dreams and the wonderful finale.  Would love to meet somebody else who’s actually read it!

Age 9:          I Am David     Ann Holm

The epic and moving tale of a boy who “learned the meaning of beauty.”

Age 10:      Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat     Ursula Moray Williams

Easy to find with its glaring hot pink cover, this fantasy was a ripper read!

Age 11:       On The Beach    Nevil Shute 

My first grown-uppish ‘apolcalyptic’ book.  We're a long way from Enid Blyton now, baby.  Basic synopsis: nuclear bomb ends the world.   When the film of the book was later shot on location in Melbourne, Australia, the star Ava Gardner infamously said that it seemed like the end of the world, anyway ;p

Age 12:       Old Yeller   Fred Gipson

Came across this in my Dad’s “Readers Digest Condensed Book” collection, (which btw, looked awfully smart on the bookshelf next to the Funk &. Wagnalls).   The saddest story.

Age 13:    To Kill a Mockingbird     Harper Lee

What a powerful and moving story (and for once, the film was even better).  Atticus Finch rocks!

Age 14:    The Grapes of Wrath     John Steinbeck

A classic.  Fascinating in its alternating chapter style.  Loving Rose of Sharon.

Age 15:  My Darling, My Hamburger    Paul Zindel

If only for the title

Age 16:    Picnic at Hanging Rock     Joan Lindsay

Evocative and worth reading for the exquisite prose;  disturbingly frayed.

Age 17:   The Loved One     Evelyn Waugh

Only Waugh could make death funny.  Sharp and original, his command of satire is second   to none.  

Age 18:     Portnoy’s Complaint     Philip Roth

Even as a tiny child, I was aware of the outrage when this book was first published.  So when I came across it in a bookshop when I'd finally "come of age,"  I had to read it.  It wasn’t what I’d imagined, but so much better - possibly the funniest book I've ever read.   A masterpiece of Jewish humour.

"A love of reading: the golden key that opens the enchanted door."

Reading was an enormous part of my childhood.  My parents correctly predicted my future would be about books and writing.

First blood was the wondrous work of Enid Blyton in The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage.  I immediately squirreled away pocket money to buy the rest of the series (all the while wondering why such a great crime-solving unit would name itself “The Five Find-Outers and Dog”), then graduated to the Famous Five.  Blyton could write a ripping yarn, complete with  lashings of teacake and ginger beer. 

Almost every child I knew read The Enchanted Wood  trilogy with utter joy.  My children loved this series too; the Faraway Tree may well delight a future generation.  I must say I had no time for Silky (the token submissive female) or The Saucepan Man (why?) but longed for Blyton to explore the psyche of Dame Washalot (one serious case of OCD) and the Angry Pixie.  We were never told why the Pixie was in such a state: was it psychosis, I wondered, or just haemorrhoids?

I enjoyed Blyton’s three school series (The Naughtiest Girl, St. Clair’s and Mallory Towers) despite the repeated themes.  Each featured wild lacrosse games, colicky horses and batty French teachers. I found further succour in the gripping Adventure series, but sorry, Enid - the Secret Seven never did it for me.

American authors also brought much joy into my life, notably Betty Smith's beautiful coming-of-age tale A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Madeleine L’Engle (A Wrinkle In Time), Elizabeth Enright (The Four Storey Mistake), Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth) and the Trixie Belden series.

So wash my mouth out, but Australian authors held slightly less appeal, excepting two stand-out tales: Alan Marshall’s moving I Can Jump Puddles (to this day, just hearing the title makes me emotional) and Colin Thiele’s February Dragon - quintessential Australian fiction that I read as quickly as the bushfire ripped through the chapters.