What Books Did You Read As A Child?

[ziltha]

I’m probably at least a generation or maybe two generations older than most Fugees. I started school in 1950. I learned to read the Old Lob readers. Old Lob was a farmer, he had Mrs Cuddy a cow, Dobbin the horse, Mr Grumpy the goat, Mother Hen and the chicks plus, of course, Percy the bad chick and my favourite Mr Dan the dog.

 

I remember our teacher reading us stories about Mr Milligan the ginger Tamworth pig, so called because he was ginger like Mr Milligan, an Irish neighbour .

 

I think those days in the infantschool must have had a real influence on me. I grew up with cocker spaniels, both my grandfather and father always had cockers and I had Sally ,a cocker, for my 6th birthday. But, Mr Dan was a collie and I’m a sucker for collies. Since leaving home I’ve always had a collie or a collieX. I have had horses, reared calves and had hens and chicks. I've always wanted a goat but never persuaded OH to let me have one. OH has always preferred Large White pigs but I’m a Tamworth fan through and through.

 

For O level I remember Twelfth Night and Lark Rise to Candleford. A level was Chaucer’s prologue to the Canterbury Tales, King Lear, the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Much Ado about Nothing.

 

When I first started teaching we used the Janet and John readers. Having had them read to me so often I can still quote them - I walked and walked and what did I see. I saw puppy and he saw me. "Come play" he said, "Come play with me." etc.etc.

[scotslass]

When I started school, we were still using the reading books my mother's generation had used, back in the the 20s/30s. "Come, Pat, Sing to Mother". "Sing, Sing to Mother, Pat". The children in the stories wore gaiters and had twenties-style haircuts.

 

My grandpa, who lived with us, used to read me bits of George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde - before I was school age. I learned to read from his dictionary and the Glasgow Bulletin newspaper. I loved fairy stories, Heidi, What Katy Did, Lorna Doone, Jane Eyre, Little Women, the Famous Five books, the Chalet school series, and Aesop's fables; when a new library opened in our village, I was one of its best customers.

 

The school system did its best to turn me off literature - a diet of Shakespeare, Milton and Chaucer didn't do it for me. In my teens, I discovered Laurie Lee, DH Lawrence, John Updike, Edna O'Brien. I'm a very fussy reader; I've never been the sort to plough through a book if I'm not enjoying it. I give it 20 pages or so, and if it doesn't hook me, that's it. I also hate fat books; too many books are long because the publisher thinks they look better on the shelf, and much of the content is padding, and I can't get into detective novels or fantasy or thrillers. I read a lot of poetry and modern literature, but I still hate Shakespeare, apart from the odd sonnet.

 

Like suzeanna, books were an escape from an often weird childhood and some of my happiest times were spent with my nose in a book.

[eilrex]

I was also, and still am, an avid reader but my favourites were The Chalet School Series (have the whole 58 in hardback and still read them) the Katy books, Little Women series and Anne of Green Gables series. I hate to part with books and have to keep buying more bookcases to put them in!!

[chasta]

I remember I had

 

To Kill a Mockingbird

 

The Catcher in the Rye

 

Animal Farm

 

I had those, and The Crucible, Romeo and Juliet and Far from the Madding Crowd

 

Jay, doing GCSE's now has read Romeo and Juliet, Of Mice and men and loads of modern poetry

[snow]

Oh the memories. Can you recall what the books were called? The characters were all stick men and women and dogs of course

 

Can't remember exactly but I think they were by this bloke: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/search...n%20ap%20Dafydd

 

I had a look on amazon to see if anything triggered my memory but most of the ones listed were published long long after I'd left school but theres a few which I remember from when Nick was learning to read in nursery school in Pencoed. Although he remembers very little of the language now he does have very clear memories of the Welsh alphabet freeze which was around the classroom walls

 

a b c ch d dd e f ff g h i j l ll m n o p ph r rh s t th u w y

[murtle]

I love this thread - the more I read it the more books I remember I read (usually prompted by someone else mentioning them)

 

So To kill a Mockingbird, one of my all time favourite books.

 

Never read Animal Farm though.

[phoebejo]

We read Wuthering Heights too, brilliant book.

[celeste]

Anyone remember a book called Mylor ? about a scientist and a group of kids who had to build a mechanical horse that could win the Grand National ?

[Laurel n Hardy]

White Fang and Tarka the Otter were favourites too.

 

This thread is bringing back so many memories

 

 

Did Tarka the Otter make anyone cry

 

err no me either

[lazydaisy]

Did Tarka the Otter make anyone cry

 

err no me either

 

 

I cried when I read it (aged about 10)

 

I read the whole Foresyth saga, starting when I was 11.

Edited June 3, 2009 by lazydaisy

[mum24dog]

Anything I had to read for school I hated. Still hate "literature" but loved reading anything and everything of my own choice as a child.

Aged 7 - anything about dinosaurs

Aged 8 - astronomy

Aged 10 - the Narnia Chronicles

Aged 12 - Greek and Roman mythology and historical novels

Aged 13 - 14 - ghost and horror stories

15 + - boys - books took a back seat

18+ - uni and back to reading boring books I hated.

 

Never read Lord of the Rings and don't intend to - probably because I was made to read The Hobbit at school.

 

All 4 of my daughters have hated reading (despite - or possibly because of my efforts to encourage them) but it's a very different world nowadays. Two of them started reading around the age of 17.

 

Pam