My parents are wonderful people but I can't pretend I wasn't raised at least in part by the books I've adored through my life.
The Last Puppy is about a dog that's the last to be born, the last to open his eyes, the last to eat anything, the last to walk, and of course the last to be adopted. He always gets too excited when someone comes to look at him and he runs away or bites their nose. (I've got something in my throat here. Ahem.) But then finally, finally, a little boy adopts him, and when they're on the way home (I'm tearing up...) he looks at the puppy and says, "You know what? You're my first puppy." (BAWL.)
What did this book teach me? Maybe that everything is relative. Maybe that the troubles of other people are incredibly relevant to myself when placed in the correct context. Maybe none of that. But the story stuck with me. I can't shake it. I think every hero I've written since has taken a bit of that puppy's story into their own.
Enter the chapter book! Exit innocence! Take a look at Disneyland Hostage there on the left. Liz Austen is tied up, blindfolded, and being escorted by a scary man (at gunpoint, though that isn't obvious.) So much for "the happiest place on earth." I have family in Anaheim, California, right near Disneyland. The idea that this could happen to me wasn't so far-fetched in my nine-year-old mind. And in this story, Liz Austen kicks ass. She really does. Revelation: adventure stories are fantastic! They're personally relevant! I could kick ass! I recently met Eric Wilson at the Surrey International Writers' Conference and turned into a blushing, grinning fangirl. Sorry, Eric.
And The Incredible Journey, the book on the right. Made into a literal and terrifying Disney film in 1963, and re-made into a goofy and less-believable Disney film in 1993, there's something about these animals' quest that obviously resounds through generations. For me it was about Friendship and Home and Not Giving Up, themes that appear in everything I write. And when old Bodger at last comes over that hill, running despite everything he's been through, it's grief and celebration together in one.
I wanted to post the cover of another book that influenced me: Here she is, Miss Teeny Wonderful by Martyn Godfrey, about a tomboy from outside Edmonton, Alberta, whose mother enters her in a beauty pageant and so she jumps 6 garbage pails with her BMX as her "talent." But entering "Miss Teeny Wonderful" into Google images is a dangerous thing with startling results. And then I found this eulogy because Godfrey died in 2000, so that made me sad. His books were really very fun and a great reminder that it was okay (or maybe even good) to be a tomboy, which (predictably) I was.
When I was about eleven my cousin lent me her copy of Christopher Pike's Remember Me. Pike's early novels are murder mysteries and supernatural thrillers and Eastern philosophies as experienced by sixteen year old girls in California. Remember Me has a young girl, dead, trying to solve her own murder while also figuring out the mysteries of her past. In Fall Into Darkness a girl fakes her own death to frame her best friend, and is murdered by a boy they both trust. And Season of Passage involves vampires on Mars-- yes-- and it was one of the most enchanting, bizarre and memorable stories I'd ever read. Still have ever read. There are many more. I bought and read all of them.
These stories introduced me to the murder mystery and the elaborate plan that goes fatally wrong. Dharma and karma and reincarnation. They taught me that imagination can go much, much further than wherever it has been so far, so don't stop here. Pike's books were the first that made me think, I could do this-- write stories like this. I want to. And that was that.
Next time on "My life in books:" I discover this guy and start sleeping with the lights on.
I'd love to hear about the books that influenced you, when you were too young to know any better.
Some of the stories I loved growing up: All of Dr. Seuss, Alice in Wonderland, Charlotte's Web, the Laura Ingalls Wilder series...just so many.
ReplyDeleteI also loved reading stories of Greek mythology.
Truman Capote's The Grass Harp was book that inspired me to write.
Ahh, Charlotte's Web! I don't know how much I learned from the questions we had to answer at the end of each chapter for school, but "Some Pig" has never left me.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't heard of The Grass Harp. Thanks, I'll look it up.
Great post Jen, looking forward to reading the next.
ReplyDeleteBest book of my formative reading years has to be Treasure Island. Terribly exciting to my seven or eight year old brain and sooo scary in places. I stayed up late reading the copy I borrowed from the bookshelf outside my primary school head-teacher's office. Being able to chose a book from there was a special reward for good reading work in class.
Dan, I'm ashamed to say that Treasure Island is one of those books I feel I should have read, and haven't. Another for my list!
ReplyDeleteIt's so neat to hear about reading rewards in schools. I worked briefly as a primary school librarian, and I loved how excited kids got when I said I'd read & enjoyed a book they were going to read. I wonder if that primary school head teacher got a kick out of the special reward bookshelf, too.
Enid Blyton's Adventure series was tops on my list in elementary school. That's how I learned that there are all kinds of adventures waiting for you if you can just get away from the grown-ups.
ReplyDeleteI also remember Treasure Island from school - with our teacher reading it out loud to the class over the course of a season.
And the best part about having kids is being able to read all those wonderful kids books again - or for the first time.
I *loved* the Beverly Cleary books, especially the Ramona series. I think those were my first real 'chapter books'.
ReplyDeleteI connected with almost all of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. Then turned to the Babysitter's Club and *cough* Sweet Valley High.
Farley Mowat's Lost in the Barrens (Two Against the North)... I can't remember which grade we read it in, but it was one of VERY FEW class book projects that I actually enjoyed.
Deep down, I think my interest in veterinary medicine was spurred by James Herriot.
Hmmm, I remember a certain S. King book that had to be turned over to face down each night. ;)
Vello, do you find that your kids enjoy the same stories you did? I think that would be an amazing thing to experience.
ReplyDeleteAh Nicole, you're giving away my next post... which does indeed begin with a certain book, face down in a drawer. ;)
I also remember a used book sale you & I were at and somehow we found this box of James Harriot books. I hadn't read any yet but you made them sound so very fun. And of course anything with animals in them, and I was there.
Jen, you're making me want to post my own Life in Books story! I love this idea. With all due deference to my school friends and family, books were my very bestest friends of all growing up. Also my earliest memories. I too loved THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY. I didn't see the movie(s) because I wanted to hold my own picture of the story in my head. I think I made the right choice there.
ReplyDeleteI can't really compare my early reading experience to that of my kids - three girls. I didn't grow up in an English speaking home, so didn't discover Dr. Seuss until I found the school library. Aunt Annie's Alligator and No More Elephants were recent favourites.
ReplyDeleteA few years later, the whole family enjoyed read-alouds like Charlotte's Web and Astrid Lindgren's Seacrow Island.
By Beverly Cleary time they were on their own. Summer teen romances - I rolled my eyes and headed the other way.
Now they're in their early 20's and sporadic readers. (More TV in their lives.) Interestingly, I find that *now* I enjoy some of the same books they do. (Philip Pullman comes to mind.)
Claire, please do! I love hearing details about other people's reading lives.
ReplyDeleteAnd about The Incredible Journey, I haven't actually seen the newer film, but the older one makes me cry and cry and cry and cry and... well, unless you like that sort of thing, stick with the book. It's less manipulative.
Hi Jen - sorry it's taken me so long to get around to actually clicking the link to visit your blog! We seem to have both been in a nostalgic mood in our last posts. How bizarre!
ReplyDeleteYou've definitely got me thinking about the books that changed my life...and there are SO, so many of them! I read like a possessed maniac when I was a child, and in my teens.
Eep - The Babysitter's Club! I read so many of those books. To this day, I *still* remember what all the girls looked like...
I'll definitely have to borrow your idea, Jen, and write a "my life in books" post of my own soon!
Welcome, Michelle! I'm fairly sure I borrowed this idea from somewhere else too, but it's very fun.
ReplyDeleteDid you hear that Scholastic are going to revive The Baby-sitter's Club, updating fashions and technology? And the author is writing a prequel.
The 80s will never end. :)
Just as long as they don't revive 'Sweet Valley High.'
ReplyDeleteIronically it was reading one Sweet Valley High book while on vacation at my cousin's which inspired me to starting writing at length - the whole "I can write something better than this trash". I was 12! I still have the original manuscript downstairs.
What sticks out for me, is Charlotte's Web - which I read every year until I left for high school (not sure how old I was when I first read it though.) I voraciously read all the Farway Tree books by Enid Blyton and then moved onto the Fantastic Five (though enjoyed them more on TV than in book - because one of the actors was cute!) There was another book 'The Girl With the Silver Eyes' we I got through Scholastic about a girl who had telekinetic powers. It was a bit of a murder mystery as well.
The one author I couldn't get enough of was Roald Dahl - whose books I read voraciously - one after the other, beginning with Danny the Champion of the World.
One book I've passed on to Dylan is "Wilfred Gordon MacDonald Partridge" the story of a boy and a lady who has lost her memory. It still makes me choke up when I read it. We also have the collected words of Roald Dahl sitting up in the wardrobe - and with Dylan's reading skills, I imagine they wont stay up there for long now.
I only wish my memory for books was better. There seems to be thousands of books which have slipped through the cracks of my memory, leaving just whispers of character, action and imagery behind.
Looking forward to the next installment.
Jodi, I forgot Roald Dahl! He first introduced me to the difference between Canadian and British pronunciation & spelling (Mom vs. Mum, for example.)
ReplyDelete"There seems to be thousands of books which have slipped through the cracks of my memory, leaving just whispers of character, action and imagery behind."
That's it. I couldn't thank every book I should, because so many have just become a part of me and vanished.