I was at a bookshop recently, choosing books for Hanan to read, when I started thinking back to some of the books/ authors I read when I was a kid. So here are a few of them.
Enid Bylton (read more about her here)
Did anyone really escape the long reaching arms of St Clare's and Malory Towers, Famous Five and Secret Seven, The Five Find-outers (and Dog)? What about the Enchanted Wood, The Magic Faraway Tree and the dozens of elfs, fairies, goblins and pixies that lived in the bottom of the garden (wherever that was; we flat dwellers know no such thing.) And then the creepier stuff - the toys that came alive at night, the witches and the mean mean adults, who never the children have midnight feast or row themselves to uninhabited gardens.
Miss Blyton sure had a fertile imagination and judging from the new books she has been churning out since her death in 1968, enough ghost writers to keep her memory alive and flourishing.
L M Montgomery (Read more about her here)
L M Montgomery wrote the Famous Anne of Green Gables series, which is about an orphan girl Anne Shirley, who was adopted by a man and his sister on Prince Edward Island, who wanted a boy to help with the farm. They decided to keep her anyway, and it changed all their lives forever.
The Anne Shirley Series is more a milieu book than a protrayal of the title character, because through her eyes we see the early pioneers of Canada and how they survived the harsh landscape to make a life for themselves. Montgomery also wrote many papers and books on Prince Edward Island life and her life's work is kept in an Institute run by her grandchildren.
Laura Ingalls Wilder (read about her here)
Remember the TV series "Little House on the Prairie? Well, that series was based on the tru life accounts of this amazing woman and her family, who were one of the first pioneers to settle the Wild West of America in the late 1870s. The story of their struggles, loves, joys and sorrows are in a series of 8 volumes , which someone (I think my dad) gave me for my 9th birthday. Mrs Wilder claimed that she didn't know she was writing history at the time, but that's what those books were - from the perpective of a frontier woman, whose life helped to build the foundation of so many others.
From Wisconsin to South Dakota, Mrs Wilder brought to life these remote far away states that even alot of Americans don't know about, and she started in me my interest in anthropology and the history of my own people.
I am grateful to the people who bought me the books by these amazing women, with no grumble or complaint of how quickly I devoured them and asked for more. Goke Akka, thanks for buying me my first "St Clare's" book, and letting me have the run of your select but amazing home library. You think I don't remember, but I do. And Dad, I remember you bribing me with "Black Beauty" if I would get my ears pierced without a fuss. And mum, thanks for letting me read the bible when I was just a wee lass. Without that, I would never have found the Faith I did. And it is still the best book I have ever read.
2 comments:
I read "The Magic Faraway Tree" when I was a kid, they were truly special. I think if I ever have kids, I will read it to them at night :)
Wow gal, u sure have an elephantile memory. ~goke
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