Childrens’ Book Week is almost upon us. I asked my teenagers what books they loved when they were really little. Out of the hundreds of books they read, looked at and listened to in their early years, these three struck a chord. (The links are to Librarything – if you haven’t tried that out, you should get over there soon)
Books I remember from my childhood
- The enchanted wood – I loved the idea of a faraway tree, where you could travel to different worlds by just visiting the canopy.
- Narnia series - read them a few times over
- A little golden book that began… What do children do all day while there Daddy’s are away? Talk about old-fashioned sounding. Can’t remember the title, can you?
I also remember going to the Coolangatta Public Library and sitting on black-framed chairs with coloured plastic webbing. There were four chairs, red, blue, yellow, green.
What was your favourite when you were a child? What’s your earliest memory of a library?
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August 19, 2006 at 21:41
First library memory – wooden display panel with elastic on it in the kindergarten corner. We could borrow one book a week if we had our special cloth book bag with us.
Favourite kiddy book – apparently “Me too” and “The wait-for-me kitten”, both Little Golden Books.
Also loved the English kiddy comic, “Playhour (and Robin)” We used to subscribe to in a Western Australian country town, so read about the very English “Magic Roundabout” and “Num Num and his funny family” and, oddly enough, Rolf Harris’ “Coogee Bear”.
August 20, 2006 at 20:34
Mine was finally being able to borrow from the big kids section. Had to be old enough to do so, or have demonstrated reading etc level. Our library was reasonably sized, but very dark, all dark wood and dark carpets and not many windows.
My favourite reading as a young child as also the Faraway Tree and the Wishing Chair.
August 21, 2006 at 20:23
I feel very deprived because I didn’t have access to public libraries where I grew up. But we did have a lot of books at home, and I enjoyed The enchanted wood and all the others in the series. Also loved The Famous Five, The Secret Seven and Mallory Towers. And then there were the classics like Black Beauty, Treasure Island, and Robin Hood.. and that’s just the English language books!
August 23, 2006 at 17:29
I thought I’d gone to heaven when we first went to the public library, when I was about seven – however I don’t recall actually choosing the books. My mum used to walk to the same library as a child, borrow a pile of books, read them over two days then run back again and get some more before it closed.
September 1, 2006 at 11:20
For me it was Brer Rabbit. I owned those books and read them over and over and over
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My earliest memory of a library was getting changed into PJs, dressing gown & slippers after dinner and being driven over to the Ferntree Gully Library when it was in the old RTA building on Burwood Highway. I loved looking at the back of the books to see the records of previous borrowings. I searched for all of mine and looked to see if I knew anyone. Libraries weren’t worried about privacy then
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Cheers