This week’s theme comes from Samantha, who suggested that one week we all write about our fond memories of childhood books.
You could approach this several ways. I’ll probably list my favorite childhood books with maybe a paragraph about each book: why I loved it, how old I was when I read it, where I got the book, etc. You could also just pick one childhood favorite and review it as you would any other book. Or, if you’re fast, you could make up a meme other weekly geeks might like to use. It’ll be interesting to see how everyone personalizes this theme. Don’t forget to come back and leave a link to the post in your comment once you’ve written your post. No wrap-up post this week; just the one childhood books post.
When trying to decide how to approach this week's post, I debated about a few different things, but in the end have decided to focus on four different examples!
The first is my first chunkster....or at least I thought so at the time. I remember being in grade 1 or 2 and being so proud of myself because I had read this huge thick book (yes, I loved them even back then!). Having listened to the book with my son not all that long ago, I think it is probably fair to say that there was very big writing in the book, but still...size matters! The book was Wind in the Willows. Funnily enough, the videos for Wind in the Willows have long been my grandmother's favourites, so perhaps a love for Toad, Mole, Ratty and Badger has been passed down through the blood.
I think I have mentioned the second and third books here before, and they are Enid Blyton and the Trixie Belden books. I cannot tell you how much I used to love some of Enid Blyton's books. Not for me the tales of the Famous Five (although I did still like them), but I was captivated by the books like The Magic Faraway Tree books where the land at the top of the tree changed every few days, and you had to ride a big cushion down the big slide in the middle of the tree. The other books I loved by this author was The Wishing Chair books. Can you tell that I used to read to escape reality. Actually I have not so long ago been accused of still reading to escape reality, but that's a whole other post!
As I got older, I then became interested in the Trixie Belden mysteries. I had basically the whole set and I used to love reading their stories, and taking part in the adventures that Trixie and Marty, Brian and Honey, Jim and their other friends and family used to get involved in. My favourite was Jim....what a guy! I guess I still have a soft spot for him.
I also had this thing that I used to do with these books where I tried to give the words in these books a value by assigning a value to each letter and then adding it all up. Good job this is already a post about weekly geeks, otherwise you would all be going...how geeky is she...making up maths games out of words in a book! I am sure if you were to find one of these books there would be pencil marks on it from where I was playing my game!
The fourth example is The Hobbit. When it came to schoolwork, give me Maths or English, or Social Studies and I did quite well, but the subject where I REALLY struggled was Art...couldn't stand it! So the fact that I loved the title page that I did for my book report on The Hobbit really stands out in my mind!
I posted earlier about the longlist and shortlist for this prize, so I should probably post about the winners too really!
The Overall Best First Book prize was awarded to Tahmima Anam of Bangladesh for A Golden Age.
