RIP Nina Bawden

[garbed_attic]

A couple of days late, but I'd be doing quite a serious disservice to my childhood self if I didn't make this thread, as I loved some of her books dearly. The Peppermint Pig and Carrie's War were probably the first fiction books I read that really evoked a specific past for me - one based around how a place might feel and smell. Straw on the floor. Damp walls. That kinda thing! Squib later really fascinated and scared me and it occupies a tiny dark corner of my mind along with Anne Fine's The Tulip Touch. Anyway, she was one of my favourite authors as a young reader and indeed, I should probably clock her down in the influences thread along with Fine, Dorothy Edwards, Shirley Hughs and other great, female children's fiction writers.

[Kishi the Bad Lampshade]

Not on topic, but there was a poster for The Tulip Touch in our primary school library with the tagline "No-one is born evil. NO-ONE." It terrified me.

[Ginyard]

Not on topic, but there was a poster for The Tulip Touch in our primary school library with the tagline "No-one is born evil. NO-ONE."

That was our primary school motto.

[a big egg]

I used to feel superior to this one girl in my class because she was just like Tulip from The Tulip Touch. It turns out, I learned nothing from that book.

[doppelkorn]

RIP. We did Carrie's War early on in high school, probably year 7.

I know what you mean about evocative writing though. We had a homework exercise that involved writing a passage that evoked all the sensations around eating a particular foodstuff, after the passage in the book where they eat ham sandwiches. I did mine about chip butties, true story.

[Cerys]

Rest in Peace.  You were brilliant.  You will always have a special place in my heart - partly because I got my first ever period moments after finishing the wonderfully bleak Devil by the Sea.

Thankyou, Nina.  Thankyou for my first blob.