Sunday 26 August 2012

FIRST LOVES, OF BOOKS...

One of my many passions is reading... I have loved books and language and words for as long as I can remember, and that is quite a time now.

My mother taught me to read before I started school and I was totally entranced. Books became my companions, my teachers, my means of transporting myself through time, to far off places I could never imagine ever being able to go. They took me into worlds of fantasy, of adventure... I became a part of history and a part of the future. I belonged to anywhere I wanted to.

My first collection of books was, like most children of my era, the Golden Book series. They were first published in 1942 for the princely sum of 2s 6d or 25c. This made them far more accessible than the average children's books which were selling for around a £1 or $2.

My two favourites were Mister Dog and Up in the Attic...


and then I loved Nurse Nancy, which had real bandaids in it. The novelty soon wore off for poor mother who seemed to be forever replacing the bandaids that I had taken out and put on my dolls or my younger brother.




The companion book to Nurse Nancy was Doctor Dan...





Later on, the Giant Golden Book series was released... I don't remember having a lot of these, but I still have my favourite.. Elves and Fairies. To this day, the illustrations still fascinate me, I loved counting the fairies and looking for the elves and the various animals.


Then of course, a few others survive on my shelves today... much read and loved by my children and then my grandchildren...









My childhood memories revolve around my much loved books... no matter what was happening, I was never alone...



8 comments:

  1. What was your favourite childhood book, and did you collect Golden Books?

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  2. When I first read this post I was not able to post a comment as blogspot didn't recognize my wordpress account. But my comment was that I just loved that Mister Dog book cover and the saggy elephant too! The illustrations in these little books were just beautiful. We didn't have that series here to the best of my knowledge. I have no recollection of having books when I was very small, but do remember the comics. When I was a bit bigger I got the whole range - Enid Blyton and Little Women and Jo's Boys and Black Beauty and so on...

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  3. Mister Dog was wonderful, he was the dog that looked after himself... and somehow that appealed to me... I used to copy the illustrations and they helped me to learn to give character to drawings. I have bought quite a lot of the classic children's stories over the years, and I'm so glad I did. Our grandchildren loved watching the movie Treasure Island, but were even more excited to see that Nan had the book and they could enjoy it all over again. They love going through the book treasure chest, which I add to now and then... it is shaped like a treasure chest and they only got to go through it as a treat.

    Thanks for your comments, it's always great to share a love of books.

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  4. wow I had forgotten a lot of those. The saggy baggy elephant and Doctor Dan what memories!

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  5. Glad you enjoyed rekindling the memories, Kerryn...

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  6. Oh... I LUV these Chris especially "The Poky Little Puppy" which I'd completely forgotten about :-) Thanks SO much for the remembering.

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  7. Great to share good memories... why not reread the favourites, we don't need an excuse to go down memory lane. :-)

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  8. Amazing how the covers lane bring back memories.

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