Written by contributor Megan Laing
In the middle of May, I read one of the most popular books by arguably the most popular horror author, Stephen King’s The Shining. And if you now think you accidentally clicked on the wrong article (because The Shining is most definitely not a childhood favourite), I promise that I have a point.
When I put The Shining down, heart racing and nails chewed, I just didn’t see myself diving into anything on my shelves but still had the desire to read. Fearing the onslaught of a reading slump I’d so actively tried to avoid during the first COVID lockdown, I raced downstairs to find an easy fix from my family’s communal bookshelf and it came in the form of Osbert the Avenger by Christopher William Hill. My favourite book when I was eleven years old.
There’s a reason that people revisit their childhood favourites besides having the pants scared off them by Mr King. It’s a form of comfort, similar to the taste of a cheese toastie or the smell of the musty Arctic Monkeys sweatshirt that I really should have thrown away by now. Something about them connotes a sense of safety and security that, every so often, everybody needs.
At this point, I would like to point out that I’m talking specifically about children’s and middle grade works. As an avid YA reader, I get a little irritated about having things like A Court of Thorns and Roses lumped in with books targeted at younger readers, like the Pages and Co. series. This isn’t because one is better than the other, it’s purely because they’re geared towards different age ranges within ‘childrens’ fiction.
Osbert the Avenger, and the ensuing Tales from Schwartzgarten series is, in my opinion, an underrated book and series. It engages a sense of mild morbidity and humour that is quite unusual in a book for this age group, that I enjoyed both when I was younger and now. The plot and characters are definitely ones that speak to adults as well as children. On one hand, it’s a touching story about love, friendship, and the lengths you go for those closest to you. On the other (albeit, more juvenile) hand, it’s a fairly grim tale about a horrible boarding school and a student killing off all their horrible teachers. I have never heard anyone discuss or even mention a book which thoroughly thrilled me at both nine and nineteen years old.
A more recent childhood classic that I’ve enjoyed has been The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The first few chapters, I’ll admit, I found a bit of a slog to get through but I was soon hooked by this heartwarming story about recently orphaned Mary creating her own joy and found family on the Yorkshire Moors. I’ve yet to see the most recent film adaptation, but my seven year old cousin tells me it’s brilliant!
My experience with Alice in Wonderland as an adult was extremely different to my experience with it as a child, though I’m sure this is partly to do with the Disney adaptations. I, rather foolishly, was surprised by the randomness of it all, expecting a more linear plot about Alice, the Queen of Hearts and the setting of Wonderland. The naive Alice’s encounters with a multitude of different creatures range from heartwarming to infuriating to downright bizarre. However, in the grand scheme of things, you find that this doesn’t really matter for two reasons. One, the book is only around 100 pages so the lack of coherent plot is somewhat excusable and two, the story is, as the title suggests, primarily about Alice and the adventures that, ultimately, push her to mature and gather an awareness she hadn’t previously been privy to in her upper-middle class background. Yes, you could argue that Carroll orchestrates this idea of Wonderland as some kind of protest against the classist Victorian England but, even as a quote unquote adult, it’s hard to ignore the charm of this little book.
Children’s books are a special kind of magic, I find. Of course, there is the element of nostalgia which would naturally influence your perspective while reading but you can’t ignore the fact that these books and this entire genre was invented to bring kids a sense of wonder and amazement the real world unfortunately lacks. And, to adults, a sense of comfort and coming home that everybody needs once in a while.
I occasionally reread books from my childhood. There are so many books I haven’t read yet that I haven’t reread anything for a while. But my go-tos are the Dragonriders of Pern series (I don’t think that’s specifically children’s book, but I read them as a child), the Secret of the unicorn Queen series, and the Alanna series.