What is your favourite childhood book?

Do you have a book that takes you back to your youth? Something that you read and loved as a child? Mamamia Site Manager Lana writes:

When I heard that a new Enid Blyton manuscript had recently been discovered I was terribly excited.  Googling furiously my mind was a flux. Should I go back there ? Should I return to my youth just one more time and indulge myself in a little more famous five?  Or should I leave well enough alone?

I grew up loving Enid Blyton.  I wasn’t aware that gollywogs were anything but dolls, nor did it cross my mind that Noddy and Big Ears had any relationship other than that of friends , okay maybe chauffeur and passenger because Big Ears did seem to spend a lot of time in the passenger seat of Noddy’s car.  I wished my mother  send me to school at St Clares, or at least introduce me to  friends like Amelia Jane or Mr Pink Whistle.

I devoured all her books, well not all of them – she wrote over 800.  But my firm favourites were the Faraway Tree series. Which little girl wouldn’t get swept up in the fantasy of a huge tree  with a slide down the middle and  secret lands that change every day ?.  It wasn’t just the lands, although they fascinated and delighted me, it was the tree itself and its inhabitants Silky, Moon Face, Dame Washlaot and the Saucepan Man.  I remember them like friends.  I recall those books like I lived them, I tasted the foods, I felt the excitement, I was part of the wonder.

Many years later when I fell pregnant my first purchase was the The Folk of the Faraway Tree.  I was determined my child was going to experience the joy of visiting an enchanted forest and discovering a magical tree.  I was impatient and when my son was born 10 weeks early and the only contact we were allowed was voice I read it to him, – the entire series in two days.

He slept through it and in a way I wish I had to.  The wonder of Enid Blyton was certainly tainted with the experience of life.  Suddenly the book had lost its magic.  It seemed silly. Trite. Even a little boring.

Maybe it is a good thing that the new Enid Blyton manuscript is not being published.  Maybe some books are best kept alive in your head.

What is your favourite childhood book? Have you read it again as an adult?

 

About the Author: Lana grew up in South Africa where she learned to read, write and teach others to do the same. She gave up teaching when she arrived in Australia and tried her hand at almost everything else. She now lives happily in Sydney with her husband, son and dog.  She has the dream Site Manager position at Mamamia and when she has a spare minute she tweets here and blogs here.

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