Books You Loved As A Child - Do they stand the test of time?
This morning a schoolgirl aged about 7 or 8 got onto my bus with her nose buried deep in a book. She didn’t look up once, not as she climbed on the bus and not as she tried to find a seat, she was totally engrossed in her book. When she shifted the book to turn the page, I caught a glimpse of the title, Ramona and her Mother by Beverly Cleary. I got a little tingle of delight as I used to read the Ramona books at that age and it was great to see them still being read and loved almost 35 years after they were written.
Seeing this girl so wrapped up in her book this morning got me thinking about books that I read as a kid. Of course there was the Ramona books and I was also a huge fan of Judy Blume’s from Tales of Fourth Grade Nothing to Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and the book my mother forbid me to read but I read anyway, the scandalous, Forever.
I was also a huge fan of Enid Blyton’s from The Magic Faraway Tree and Adventures of the Wishing-Chair when I was younger to Mallory Towers and The St Clare’s series when I was older. I devoured The St Clare’s series on school holiday at age 11 when my parents took us to a farm house in the middle of nowhere that didn’t have a TV. I don’t remember much of what we did, but I do remember sitting on the porch reading St Clare’s.
I also read The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S Lewis when I was younger, loving the tales of adventure and magic. I read them again when I was 16 and had just won the role of Susan in a musical version of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”. I was shocked to discover that the books were so heavily stepped in Christian symobolism, a fact I had totally missed as a child and it made the books almost a chore to read. It was then that I first became aware that books can have layers. That a book you read as a kid can be a completely different book that you read as an adult. Sometimes this adds to the richness and wonder of the book, but other times it takes a book you loved as a kid and makes it one of the worst books you have ever read.
Why is this so? Why can a book you read at age 8 be the best book ever but when you read it again at age 16 or 26 it is just a piece of drivel. Did we fill in the missing gaps with our imaginations as a children? Or as an adults are we much more critical readers due to the number of books we have read?
What books did you used to love when you are a kid and have you read those same books as an adult? What books have stood the test of time and are still as wonderful as they were when you were a kid (or are even better) and which ones just totally don’t live up to your childhood memory of them?
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Tags: beverly clearly, books, C.S. Lewis, children books, judy blume, narnia
