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What was your favourite book as a kid?

Started by Barry Admin, March 01, 2020, 07:34:06 AM

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Chollis

Quote from: checkoutgirl on March 02, 2020, 08:18:03 AM
I liked World Champ Dan and the Sleepy Pheasants.

Corrr that takes me back. Absolutely loved Champ Manager Daniel. Got the tape too. Gonna fucking download it now actually.

The Minpins was another banger.

Egyptian Feast

The first book I can remember reading (as opposed to flicking through my dad's collection of 1970s Orbis magazine 'The Movie' which was full of nudey pictures and helped make me the massive perv I am today) was Roald Dahl's The Witches, which I still love, but my favourite book as a kid was this unexpected Communion gift from a family up the road. I read it back to front countless times and even tried recreating Cousin Olaf's funeral in Lego (he was mortally wounded while fucking over some monks in Ireland). Over 30 years later, it's still one of the best presents I've ever received. Appropriately, it currently sits next to the complete run of 'The Movie' on the top shelf of my bedroom bookshelf.


Twit 2

Absolutely loved the Willard Price Adventure books as a kid, read them all about 5 times, learned tons about the world from them. Also, another vote for the Robin Jarvis (Deptford Mice, Whitby Witches). Proper dark pagan shit.

bgmnts

Quote from: Captain Crunch on March 01, 2020, 06:30:08 PM
Someone on here recommended The Velveteen Rabbit which is wonderful and you can read it for free.

I had this...




That would shit me right up as a nipper what the fuck is that?

holyzombiejesus

I can't really remember having a favourite as such. I can remember being well in to the Mr Men, then Famous Five/ Magic Faraway Tree, then Fighting Fantasy, then James Herbert/ Stephen King.

Been re-reading the Mr Men with my little boy and they're not very good. Not bad exactly but so dated. Not as awful as the Beatrix Potter books though, they're truly vile. I imagine Blyton will be too which is a real shame as the central premise for the Famous Five is brilliant.

kitsofan34


Blinder Data

Terry Pratchett featured a lot, especially the Truckers/Diggers/Wings and Johnny Maxwell books. I haven't read them in an age but I reckon they'd hold up.

Brian Jacques' Redwall series! Woodland animals with swords and shields, battling to the death - there's a mouse called Martin the Warrior who's the coolest dude around. All-time classics that I would recommend for any young reader.

Raymond Briggs' graphic novel The Man left an effect on me. Some grumpy homunculus turns up in a kid's bedroom, makes his life a misery and then buggers off without saying a word, leaving the kid sobbing. Devastating stuff.

Are we talking YA fiction too? Because Melvin Burgess' Junk was great, especially as the opening page featured a couple of teenagers copping off with each other in a car. Exactly what I was looking for as a 12 year old. Skellig was a haunting read too.

Pingers

Ice Station Zebra was a favourite of mine, bet it's shit though. I always used to read James and the Giant Peach when I was ill, so that has a big comfort factor for me.

MiddleRabbit

I used to get the same book out of the library every week when I was a kid and that book was 'Ironhead' by Gerald Rose.  It's about this knobhead knight called Ironhead, who goes around with his gang of other armoured arseholes and they sack cities and burn castles down and have a right good laugh about it.  It's like they're doing it for the sake of it, more than for any material gain.  Anyway, they come across this old woodcutter in a forest and Ironhead's just going to burn his shack down for kicks when the woodcutter says that there's a fortress not far from here that even you won't be able to burn down.  Ironhead laughs at him and says the woodcutter can have his massive sharp axe if he doesn't sack this castle.  The woodcutter's axe is all crumbly and puny.

So off he and his posse ride and hey come across this really strange 'castle' and Ironhead shouts for the occupants to let them in or they'll kill them, even though he's going to kill them all anyway.  Anyway, it turns out that it's an anthill, of course it is, and the ants get in the armour and start biting the bully boy knights and they all take their armour off and run away.  Ironhead takes his armour off and it turns out he's a really scrawny, geeky looking bloke with a moustache.

The woodcutter looks out for smoke for a day or two and then wanders over to where all the armour's been ditched, picks out Ironhead's axe and puts it over his shoulder and walks back home.

The pictures were great.  Naive but spot on.

Apart from that, 'The Shrinking of Treehorn' by Florence Parry Heide, illustrated by Edward Gorey ran it a close second, maybe even first.  It is genuinely fantastic in all respects.  This kid starts getting smaller and his mother's distraught, but only really about what the neighbours are going to say and his father just disapproves of it.  The upshot is that nobody pays any attention to Treehorn and he eventually works it out.  I suppose, in a way, it's a more psychedelic take on 'Not Now, Bernard' by David McKee, who also wrote Mr Benn.  Highly recommended, there's a lot going on in both of those books, like the best kids' book.

It might have been me who recommended The Velveteen Rabbit - a beautiful book.


Blinder Data

Artemis Fowl books by Eoin Colfer. The first one is Die Hard with fairies. Loads of fun.

famethrowa

I reckon Adrian Mole would come pretty close, it was a world I could revisit time and time again, always a pleasure.

One book we had at home and I also loved was a novelization of The Good Life, it was a slim paperback with maybe 4 episodes written into story form. It seemed fantastically well written to my young eyes and quite flowery in its prose (so as to speak). Can't find a single mention of it nowdays of course, anyone recall such a thing?

Chollis

Quote from: Blinder Data on March 02, 2020, 02:58:53 PM
Brian Jacques' Redwall series! Woodland animals with swords and shields, battling to the death - there's a mouse called Martin the Warrior who's the coolest dude around. All-time classics that I would recommend for any young reader.

YES! Somehow forgot these even though I probably read the entire series. I remember the description of the foods being particularly mouth-watering, candied nuts everywhere.

Was also a big fan of the Anthony Horowitz books, particularly the detective ones (Falcon's Malteser, South by South East etc)

Norton Canes

The Giant Under The Snow by John Gordon. Witchcraft, a hidden treasure hoard, and the mummified corpses of Viking raiders coming to life in Norwich.

Sin Agog

I really liked E. Nesbit's Five Children & It series. They were just fun.  Bickering brothers and sisters getting whisked away on little adventures with an alien looking thing. Nesbit was a bisexual who went around giving lectures on why we all needed to be socialists (she founded The Fabian Society).  Of course I liked her.

Inspector Norse

Quote from: Blinder Data on March 02, 2020, 02:58:53 PM
Brian Jacques' Redwall series! Woodland animals with swords and shields, battling to the death - there's a mouse called Martin the Warrior who's the coolest dude around. All-time classics that I would recommend for any young reader.

Yeah, I loved those from the age of about 10-13, then passed them on to my brother, who loved them too. I do distinctly remember though reading one a couple of years later and realising that they did all have the same plot and characters, but they were full of warmth and lovely description anyway.

Quote from: MiddleRabbit on March 02, 2020, 10:06:00 PM'The Shrinking of Treehorn' by Florence Parry Heide, illustrated by Edward Gorey

Jesus, I remember that too. Probably the first time I've thought about it in thirty years though!

Books I liked which were stand-alones, not parts of a series:

The Giant Robot
The Phantom Tollbooth
Conrad the Factory-Made Boy
Fattypuffs and Thinnifers
Bottersnikes and Gumbles
Grimble

Cerys

Quote from: Lisa Jesusandmarychain on March 02, 2020, 07:21:57 AM
The Phantom Tollbooth

This.  I may have loved The Hobbit into a raggedy paperback mess, but the Tollbooth just snuck ahead by virtue of being more easily read twice in one day.

Did anyone else see the cartoon film of Phantom Tollbooth?  I saw that before reading the book.  I liked both versions.

Cerys

Never seen it.  I was introduced to the book by Jackanory.

The Dribblesome Teapot and Other Stories were good.  Daft fairy-tales by the Prof Branestawm man.

Deyv

Quote from: nugget on March 01, 2020, 11:21:35 AM
I'm not sure how well they would hold up now but I remember enjoying the Deptford Mice series of books as a kid.

I can't remember a lot about the stories but I do remember them being surprisingly macabre and violent, with the poor mice often meeting horrific ends, such as being skinned alive. I don't think my mum was aware of that when she bought them for me.

Loved these too. I still have the cassette of Tom Baker reading the Dark Portal. His performance is wonderful, obviously. Also loved the Wyrd Museum trilogy (the last bit with Ted in The Woven Path upset me so much and I hadn't even fallen in love with anyone ever by that age) and the Whitby Witches, though I'm not sure if I finished that one. It really freaked me out.

studpuppet

This was my entire bookshelf at age 12:



Also, a Marks & Spencer James Bond Omnibus of five novels.

I now work in publishing.

Boys' Handbook!?  Sexist filth!  Burn it! 

studpuppet

Quote from: Phoenix Lazarus on March 04, 2020, 11:31:17 AM
Boys' Handbook!?  Sexist filth!  Burn it!

How To Survive taught me the never-to-be-forgotten acronym PFAWF:

Protection
First Aid
AIDS (sic)
Water
Food

Neville Chamberlain

- All the Asterix

- All the Tintin

- I used to enjoy all those books we got in our school reading club, stories about kids who possess magical footballing or snooker powers, that kind of thing. Would love to know what they were called. My proudest purchase from the school book club was The Tripods trilogy.

- Stig of the Dump

- Lots of books with titles like "The Big Book of Facts / Questions and Answers" etc etc

- The Guinness Book of Records (this seems quite Partridge-esque - I can imagine him saying that his favourite book as a kid was the Guinness Book of Records)

Captain Crunch

Quote from: Phoenix Lazarus on March 03, 2020, 05:33:30 PMGrimble

Yes!  The humour of those books is perfect isn't it, not remotely 'kiddy' or patronising.  It's just a shame there wasn't more; 'Grimble at Sea' or 'Grimble on the Orient Express' would have been lovely.

Quote from: WikipediaThe book was read on the BBC children's television show Jackanory and (according to the dust jacket) Freud received 23,500 letters about the work, including 64 letters of complaint from domestic science teachers who thought the book disgraceful.

Endicott

Mention of Jackanory has reminded me of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien. That was a great book.

Quote from: Captain Crunch on March 04, 2020, 06:09:35 PM
Yes!  The humour of those books is perfect isn't it, not remotely 'kiddy' or patronising.

I remember the scene where Grimble reads the headline: I LIED, SAID POLITICIAN, then said that shouldn't be news because it's so normal.

Captain Crunch

I haven't got a copy to hand but I'm sure he reads a cookbook that says 'make shortcrust  pastry in the usual way', he gets angry and throws the book across the room where it lands on the next page that starts '... by mixing butter and flour...'

Keebleman

There were three books I re-read repeatedly as a kid, none of them remotely cool.  Two were by Enid Blyton: Those Dreadful Children (even at 9, I would wince at the prissiness of that title) and Six Bad Boys.  The other was The Man Who Was Magic, a novel by Paul Gallico that was ostensibly for adults but which had so much cartoonish slapstick and galumphing moralizing that it's hard to imagine anyone older than 13 being able to read it through.

What all three had in common was that at the end of each, no matter how often I read them, I would feel a sort of grief.  I couldn't believe that I would never meet those characters again.  I have rarely felt that about any novel I have read since.