The Biblioracle has me thinking about favourite books from childhood.
(yes, that’s me)
On his Substack The Biblioracle, John Warner starts with the recent piece in The Atlantic about how young people are hopeless today: “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books“, and goes off in a much more interesting direction.
First off, all you need to know about the Atlantic article is that it contains the following sentence:
No comprehensive data exist on this trend, but the majority of the 33 professors I spoke with relayed similar experiences.
See that? ‘No comprehensive data’, ‘the majority’ ‘similar experiences’. It doesn’t get better from there. It doesn’t ask whether “Can you sit down and read Tolstoy?” is a question worth asking in 2024. It’s a bad article, but if you’re inclined, here’s an archive version. (also)
Anyway, Warner winds up with this:
Mostly it got me thinking about my favorite books and how they’ve changed over the years as I’ve evolved as a reader and overall human being. I’m going to say that one’s favorite books can tell us a lot about who we were and what we cared about at any given time. Here, then, is a chronology of my favorite books during different parts of my life up through high school.
His main point is that the books on his list weren’t assigned by teachers, they were books he found on his own. I imagine most people are the same. Click through to see his picks, but here are mine:
Age 0-5
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
I don’t remember a thing about the story, but I remember the art so clearly. I had a stuffed rabbit just like it. It had pink satin in its’ ears.
Age 6-7
The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch
Everything Robert Munsch, of course, but I remember borrowing this from the library again and again. I have all of his books in a box from when my kid was little, and I’ve read all of them alound a zillion times, with the exception of Love You Forever. I’ve never been able to get through that one.
Age 8-10
Encyclopedia Brown! Warner and I share this one, but I’m not sure I would have come up with it on my own. I had a mittful of those books, and I clearly remember one where the key to solving the mystery was that ‘nobody puts mustard on top of sauerkraut on a hotdog’. That was bullshit, and I didn’t even know what sauerkraut was.
Age 11-12
Choose Your Own Adventure books: my oldest sister and I would devour these things, almost competitively. Don’t remember any specifics at all, but I fondly remember that she was able to find weird patterns and outcomes that I couldn’t. Maybe that’s why she’s a doctor and I’m a random business guy.
Age 13-15
Tie: The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. I’m sure those that know me well would nod their heads there, those somehow describe adult me fairly well.
Thanks to the Baldwin/Connery film I had Clancy’s first seven books, and I read them all, even if the politics went way over my head.
As for the Hitchhiker’s Guide: in the vein of Monty Python, Mel Brooks, Airplane!, anything with that absurdist humour streak gets me going to this day. I’m afraid to re-read this book and find out it’s not as funny as I remember it.
So yes, like Warner, none of these were assigned in school (though I did like To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies).
What about you? What were your favourites as a kid?
Have something to share?
Something you wrote or made? Something you just think more people should see?
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