Karen Sommerfeld asked her followers on Facebook what present they had gotten as a child, that made the biggest impression on them or that they loved the most, and the comments section exploded with people reminiscing about Spirograph, Lite-Brite, Barbies, and various other things like bikes and toy keyboards and perfumed pens. I immediately thought of the giant Barbie head I got one year for Christmas that you could put makeup on and style her hair. Not terribly interested in either makeup or hair styling after that, but it definitely got played with.
I had a Spirograph, too. And of course we got a lot of board games that have provided many fond memories: Payday, Mousetrap, Life, Yahtzee, Sorry!, Monopoly, etc.
A girl down the street from my Grandma Pangborn in Detroit had a Lite-Brite, and oh my god, how I coveted it. I must have asked for it every year for years, but I never got one. My parents were probably against the potential of a million tiny pieces everywhere, which is bogus since we also had LEGO. My friend Carolyn, after hearing about my deprived childhood, gave me one while I was in college. I was SO HAPPY. I had it for about a decade, then had to leave it behind when we moved to Sweden, because, plugs. Stupid plugs.
But the best presents I got were almost always books. Both my mom’s parents and my dad’s mom knew that I wanted books most of all, and boy did they deliver. I got hardback classics every year for my birthday and for CHristmas, all inscribed with love from Grandma & Granddad Pangborn or Grandma Slaughter. I still have all of them, though the dust jackets are long gone. They’ve all been read so many times that the covers are soft and velvety. To be clear, these weren’t little kid books. They’re all chapter books and some of them were definitely young adult for a kid that was maybe 8 or so, when I started getting them.
These are just a few of my all-time favorites from my stash of classic children’s hardback literature (and which I’m wanting to go re-read right now):
The Three Toymakers by Ursula Moray Williams
Lad: A Dog by Albert Terhune
Jack and Jill by Louisa May Alcott
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Mandyby Julie Edwards (yes, DAME Julie -Andrews- Edwards)
The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Edwards
Heidi by Johanna Spyri
The Little Broomstick by Mary Stewart
The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
A Book by Georgina by Barbara C. Freenman
Turi’s Poppa by Elizabeth Borton De Trevino
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
They’re the books that started it all, after the kid’s books like Dr. Seuss and Maurice Sendak, and Winnie the Pooh, which lit the spark. We were faithful library visitors and I checked out huge piles of books every time. I checked out D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths so many times that when I finally bought a copy for myself as an adult, I almost cried from acute nostalgia. We had an Illustrated Treasury of Children’s Literature and a set of Bookshelf for Boys and Girls, both of which had stories and excerpts of all the best books. I was hooked at an early age, for sure, and my addiction has never faltered.
When we were young, I used to get Nancy Drew books, Sarah got Bobbsey Twins and John got Hardy Boys. I discovered Trixie Belden a little bit later as well. In addition to the books that were “mine”, I read everything else in the house that I could get my hands on. My mom had two beautifully illustrated hardcover copies of Little Women and The Swiss Family Robinson, and I read those over and over.
There was already a thread of fantasy and fairytale running through the books I loved best, and when I was 13, and on the loose in a bookstore with my own money, I found a paperback copy of A Spell For Chameleon by Piers Anthony, and never looked back from a skyrocketing love of Sci-Fi and Fantasy.
I’m still reading like a maniac, burning through at least a book a week and often more, and re-reading books I love quite often. There’s nothing like the feeling of submerging yourself in a story or world that you feel deeply, getting inside the head of characters that speak to you on a visceral level. I have the most ridiculously long “books to buy” list, as well as a ridiculously long list of sample books I’ve downloaded on Kindle. I’ll never read all the books I want to read in my lifetime, which is kind of sad, but I’ll die trying!
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to the book that currently has me hooked!
*Tom Clancy
Mood: nostalgic
Music: Cultured Pearls—Not This Time