children's classics

[calimac]

British newspaper article by Anna Bonet, listing "The 14 children's classics every adult should read." Most of them British, of course. Organizing them by my experience with them, they are:

Read in childhood
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
The Hobbit I encountered at 11, and it changed my life. I would not be most of the things I am today if I had not read The Hobbit. The Railway Children I remember enjoying at about the same age, but I haven't seen it since. I know Nesbit mostly through adult introduction to her as a foundational children's fantasist. Alice and The Little Prince were OK, but didn't really grab me. Watership Down wasn't published in the US until I was 17, but that was the perfect age to find it. Not even excepting Earthsea, which has a different feel, it is the only post-Tolkien epic fantasy with the same sweep and power. (Most of them are utter crap.)

Failed to read in childhood
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
One of two classics I was given in childhood that I utterly bounced off of; the other was one of C.S. Forester's Hornblower novels. I did like Tom Sawyer.

First read in adulthood
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
The Wind in the Willows, which I picked up at about 24, is the one children's classic that I didn't encounter until adulthood that has become as dear to me as my childhood favorites. I read the entire Narnian saga when I joined the Mythopoeic Society at 18, having previously ignored Lewis; I found them thin and not particularly appealing. The other two I don't remember when I read them, but only once each. They were OK, but I find I rather preferred their cinematic adaptations.

Not read
Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
I think I may have picked up the Durrell at one point, but I didn't read much if so. I had a different encounter with Streatfeild, as I had another book of hers as a child, The Children on the Top Floor, which I did like very much (and still do, actually). Enid Blyton was completely unknown in the US in my childhood, though she's seeped in a little since then. I'd heard of Anne of Green Gables but never ran across it.

Comments

[cmcmck]

I'll admit to being a huge fan of Gerald Durrell's work.

[sartorias]

Someone at our local main library got the ADVENTURE books by Enid Blyton. I was lucky enough to read them at age nine or ten, the perfect age--they're pretty bad, but to a kid they were thrilling.

I loathed Alice in Wonderland with fiery hatred. Bounced hard off Wind in the Willows, though read it as an adult and while I still got impatient at the whimsy (I could not get images to reconcile, as in a frog or toad driving a car) there was one chapter I found transcendant. Anne I read and loved. The rest I read as an adult, with mixed success.

[calimac]

I much preferred Rat and Mole to Toad (or even Badger) as characters, though Toad's adventures could be amusing. I'm sure there were other books I found more annoyingly whimsical.

Was the chapter you loved "Piper at the Gates of Dawn"?

[petrea_mitchell]

Read as a kid:
The Hobbit
Watership Down
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The Little Prince
Treasure Island
Little Women
The Wind in the Willows
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (I think I may have first been introduced to it by the 1979 animated version though)
Ballet Shoes

I feel The Little Prince, The Hobbit, and Watership Down are better appreciated as an adult.

I really took to the Narnia books (my favorite was The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) but I must disappoint Mr. Lewis by saying they did not convert me to Christianity. In fact, by explicitly linking it to fantasy, the books may have made me even less likely to believe in it.

I also really liked Ballet Shoes, though I identified best with the girl who winds up in nothing at all resembling the performing arts.

First read as an adult: none.

[sartorias]

Yep. Gave me the good kind of chills. But I wouldn't have appreciated it as much as a kid reader. Reading it as an adult I got the burst of delighted surprise of a first reading in addition to the effect.

[calimac]

There's a whole book, The Magician's Book by Laura Miller, about the author's fury at discovering the Christian allegory in Narnia. She felt cheated and connived at. Your reaction is intriguingly different. Lewis of course intended for it to be swallowed and to prime the reader for the 'real thing.'

Let's see, you must have been about 6 or 8 when the animated LWW came out. (I knew you then: I'm trying to remember.)

[wild_patience]

The only ones of these I read in childhood were Little Women, Alice, The Secret Garden (not a fantasy) and the Railway Children, which was a huge disappointment after her fantasies. Oh, and I read The Hobbit in 7th grade; I bounced off of it. Even in childhood, I was not a fan of books with no girls in them. I think I read The Wind in the Willows and Treasure Island.

In high school I read The Little Prince, as it was popular at the time. That, like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, was not something I was a fan of. In college, when Watership Down was new and popular, I read it. I didn't care for it (as I didn't care for the other college-time best seller, Interview with the Vampire.)

I read Anne of Green Gables as an adult and loved it.