I got mighty tired of Dr. Seuss some years ago, we had every single book and while I’m glad my kid enjoyed them so much, I got all Seussed out. The Wind In The Willows is much, much more enjoyable to read as an adult, I think to a young present day American kid, it would just bore him and it would just fly right over his head. (Winnie the Pooh, OTOH, brought on fits of absolutely hysterical laughter from the get-go! :)) And…Watership Down is in no way a children’s book.
I just realized I should have added “The Cat in the Hat” to my original post. As a child, that was one of the few Seuss books I remember disliking. Loved the Oobleck book by Seuss & many others tho.
signed, Well he’s back (Philistine Golden Compass Hater)
She draws on her career as a teacher to write perceptively about the hopes and fears of early teen characters. I’ve seen accolades for this.
I had the focus to read books without pictures, actually. What I lacked was the life experience and the empathy for what the characters were going through. Even in the 60s, it was hard for me to imagine getting excited about a Christmas in which every child was delighted to get a stick of candy and new mittens. Laura received a new rag doll as well, because she was the youngest girl and her previous doll was a corncob wrapped in a handkerchief.
I enjoyed a lot of books at that age (I’ve always enjoyed books) but until I could put the setting into the proper context, I didn’t really enjoy the Little House books.
I know that book - The Cold Moons by Aaron Clemment. I loved it as a kid and read it over and over again. But I was a melodramatic girl who liked books about Brave Animals Fleeing Cruel Humans. Had dozens of variations of the same thing. I’ve seen it in second hand bookshops more than once, but haven’t been able to pick it up - I have a feeling that it’s not actually a masterpiece but is actually preachy and overwritten.
Gyrate, do you work where I work? One of my colleagues caught scarlett fever a couple of months ago, and most people’s reaction was surprise that it still existed.
I could never get into Anne of Green Gables or Little House books, either. And I loved the Famous Five but could never get into Enid Blyton’s other series. My brothers had Asterix books out from the local library in constant rotation, but I didn’t get the appeal.
Canary Wharf.
I was in a bookstore the other day and noticed that the teen section had a new category called “Dark Romance”. No points for guessing which books belong there.
I am told I didn’t much like Where the Wild Things Are as a child. (I don’t remember one way or the other.) Both my kids enjoyed it, though–my son in particular loved it.
The Little Prince, I did like as a kid. The hat/elephant swallowed by a python was particularly intriguing to me, I recall. But I never read it again until a couple of years ago, when my reaction was different. “Left me cold” is exactly right. It’s hard for me to see why it appealed to me.
The Secret Garden. And The Little Princess. Frances Hodgson Burnett–sigh.
My dad loved to read books aloud to us when I was a kid, and he did extensive on-the-fly editing when he dug out the Wind in the Willows. The storyline does get lost in the poetic descriptions. The more exciting parts are quite good, though.
Heh, I liked the “goodnight nobody”, because it introduces the concept of paradox (if there is nobody, who are you saying goodnight to?) to the little ones - all in a couple of words.
I thought that was clever.
Edit: though some may like this version better. http://goodnightdune.com/
The Little House books left me cold, as I went west after reading them and I got cought in a couple blizzards.
But seriously, Alice In Wonderland didn’t go over well. I think I wondered what drugs the author had taken, and this was before I got into the experimentation phase of life.
Velveteen Rabbit? Big whoop. The kid survives and the bunny gets made, so it’s a happy ending, and yes I have been through a scarlet fever scare. It resulted in an argument with my mother, who was mad that I didn’t inform her that i was possibly spreading a lethal illness. Later I did, but that’s another story.
Oh gosh. Well there’s the question of what books we never got into in the first place, and which we liked as kids but give us pause as adults. Then there’s the issue of it’d be nice to have a list to work off of. And…
Anyway. I’m a kid at heart, so I still love most of the kids books I can remember. For convenience, I’ll list all I can think of:
The Ships Cat
Where the Wild Things Are
Giving Tree
Missing Piece, etc by Shel
Purple Crayon
Rainbow Goblins
Remember the Night Rainbow
The first two remain particularly pristine in my memory because I associate them with my first cat, who looked like the ship’s cat and was named after Max king of the wild things.
I grew up before Goodnight Moon and never got it’s appeal. I like the Dune parody though.
Now as an adult I look on The Giving Tree from a much more dubious outlook. :dubious:
In addition to that, my friend Brian likes to tease my other friend Oz by taking books from his childhood and reading them in such a way as they now seem naughty. The Giving Tree is especially prone to this technique.
OTOH, The Missing Piece while it seems like a codependent manifesto, is completely saved by it’s sequel.
Well yeah but… That sidesteps the problem. Shel works on several levels. The innocent level is all sweet and the adult level is all dubious. I guess ultimately it’s good - kids feel secure and adults are forced to think for themselves.
When my daughter was a baby she got the book “Love You Forever” as a gift. People just love that book, for some reason that completely escapes me, but I find it really, really creepy. Breaking into your adult kid’s house at night to rock them as they sleep is…I don’t even know what that is.
Princhester writes:
> She draws on her career as a teacher to write perceptively about the hopes
> and fears of early teen characters.
What career as a teacher? She didn’t teach that long, and most of her students were adults, as far as I can determine:
It took me until I was a teenager to like A Wrinkle In Time. It’s the only book in my elementary school library that I actually returned without finishing.
Oh, and the only reason I ever liked “Goodnight, Moon” was because it was 100% predictable. I could “read” it by knowing what the pictures were. This is the first time I’ve ever thought about it having anything to do with childlike wonder.
Hmm. Sorry, must have misremembered. Anyway, she has still received accolades for writing perceptively about hopes and fears of early teen characters. Unless I’m misremembering that too.
Whatever she did, it left me cold: I did not find her characters as compelling as other YA characters in other YA fiction.
As for Love You Forever, that book didn’t leave me cold, it gave me the serious creeps. The image of the old lady crawling across the floor of her unsuspecting adult son after stealthily breaking into his house through a window is hilariously horrible.
Not trying to be pedantic, just confused… Goodnight Moon was published about 20 years before The Giving Tree, which you read as a child? Or am I misreading that?
I didn’t research publishing dates. When I was a kid (born 74 Long Island) Shel books were well known and popular. Not until college had I heard of GM. But when I did hear of it then it seemed like a lot of people were talking about it suddenly so I assumed it had been recently published or at least recently popular.
So I guess revise that to “I grew up before being aware of GM”.
Ah, I see! Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend, just was confused whether you meant you read Giving Tree as a parent or a kid. I get it now 
No offense
Left Hand of Dorkness said re J.K. Rowling/Harry Potter -“Whatever she did, it left me cold: I did not find her characters as compelling as other YA characters in other YA fiction” - EXACTLY. sometimes it feels I’m the only one in the world who feels this way.