Think back to the favourite books of your youth. Which ones shaped who you are? Influenced you? Or just impressed you with some particular detail? I thought it would be interesting to go over some of the ones that stand out for me.
My parents were always really indulgent with me where books were concerned. I often came back from trips for groceries with some science-based 79-cent paperback, and whenever those little Scholastic Books order forms arrived in class, I always got to order two or three. A good deal of my allowance went on reading material of one sort or another. I had quite a little library of my own by the time I was eight or nine.
I spent the first twelve years of my life in suburban Halifax, Nova Scotia. After that, we moved to the northwest shores of Lake Ontario, where I lived in various cities. I decided it might be best to divide the books both by theme (fiction vs. science/reality) and period (Nova Scotia vs. Ontario). So these are the books slotted into each cross-section.
Most of these books I actually own. The great majority of them are ones I tracked down over the years on eBay or Amazon and picked up mainly for reasons of nostalgia. The upshot of that is I was able to scan the covers and give this little presentation a splash of colour. Now, to quote The Friendly Giant, "Are you ready? Here's my castle!..."
Crosspatch
Crosspatch was a very early book in my collection; really, the first one I remember. I was two or three when I got this book; it tells the story of a lion cub in a zoo who's so thoroughly unpleasant that visitors begin avoiding his cage, leading him to become very lonely. He learns his lesson and becomes frolicsome and fun to watch and quickly attracts a large following of friends. It's an easy enough lesson for even a child of that age to take onboard. But the thing I remember most was a broad two-page spread that depicted a large panorama of the zoo, showing many animals in their habitats, featuring a tall flamingo and clusters of colourful balloons that fascinated me and became seared in my imagination... sufficiently so that I went looking for the book again many years later and gave it a home on my shelf.
The Witch's Catalog
The Witch's Catalog was one of those Scholastic Books I mentioned. I think I was in grade three when I ordered it (this is not that original copy, though). It was written by Norman Bridwell, and was part of his series of books about a friendly witch who served as a sort of fairy godmother to a couple of kids and their friends. If I remember correctly, he was also the author of the Clifford the Big Red Dog series.
It's worth noting here that while this was a surprisingly popular book among my crowd at the time, it's truly become a collector's item in the intervening decades. When I went looking for it, I had to look long and hard to find a copy affordable enough to be justified as a boon purchase. Copies of this book are often offered north of a hundred bucks; sometimes more.
I may have blogged about this particular book previously. It occupies a very special, very particular place in my life and my psyche. The book catalogs a variety of magical items that any red-blooded kid would give his or her eyeteeth to get hold of. A portable faucet with an endless supply of pop. A balloon that keeps monsters and bullies at bay. Invisibility-granting fabrics. Things like that.
But what makes it special to me is that it represents the moment in my life where I was right on the bubble of having to decide, for myself, if these things formed an actual part of reality or not. There was an order form in the back, and I was back and forth in my mind about whether or not filling it out and following its instructions would result in me acquiring the things I wanted to order. No money was required; you were to fill out the form, rub it with bat fat and flea's tears, and then hide it in the hollow of a tree at midnight under a full moon or something like that. I remember that what unravelled the whole thing for me, right on down to finally making me realize that magic must not be real, was that I couldn't imagine where you would get bat fat and flea tears. It strikes me now as funny that I could accept all the wildest claims of the book only for what tripped it all up for me to be the tiniest, least significant details at the last hurdle. But I guess I was who I was the following year in grade four because of that, and ever since.
It also occurs to me now, looking around at anti-vaxxers, MAGA hat wearers, and Brexit voters, that some grown-up people are still looking for the bat fat and flea tears to rub on the order form.
Tom Eaton's Book of Marvels
Another Scholastic Book, but not one I ordered myself. I bought this at a rummage sale in my school one Saturday when I was in grade five or six. The humour in this little tome is actually rather sophisticated for a kids' book. For instance, it includes a rather cynical send-up of The Waltons, a show I was very familiar with. It also featured a very broad interpretation of Archie comics, set in a page-by-page contrast with an average teenager's boring real existence.
I loved the art style and I still find the humour engaging. I gather Tom Eaton, who passed away just a few years ago, had an extensive career writing and illustrating Boys' Life magazine. Personally, I think he could have done just fine with Mad or Cracked. He was that good. I suppose the crucial takeaway I have from this book, though, that I still carry with me today as practical advice, was from a set of updated Aesop's fables, where the moral of one story was "You can't please some people, and after a certain point, you shouldn't try."
Arrow Book of Ghost Stories
A got this book in a trade with a friend, if I remember correctly. It was an anthology of creepy ghost stories. There were two that really stand out in my mind. One was about a "teeny-tiny" woman who finds a "teeny-tiny" bone that she takes to her teeny-tiny home to make her teeny-tiny soup, etc., etc. During the night she is haunted by an ever-closer voice demanding "Give me back my bone!" It ends with her just yelling "Take it!"; nothing really happens to her. But it was so creepily written, ramping up the suspense in an air of isolation, that it genuinely scared me, and it was a kind of guilty pleasure to dare myself to read it from time to time and risk the bad dreams. The other was about a genial 19-century ghost who befriends two boys. A murder victim, he asks the boys to dig up his bones and rebury them in a church yard so that he can rest properly. The boys do so, and it's implied at the end of the story that he becomes quite a good friend to have moving forward. It was an unusual but oddly happy ghost story and I think it made an impression on me for that reason. I certainly enjoyed re-reading it when I got hold of another copy many years later.
Ghosts Who Went to School
Another rummage-sale pick-up, or perhaps a trade; I'm not sure anymore. In any case... this is a fun story, but I think what really sold me on it was its illustrations. I simply loved the art style, and I still do. It tells the story of a family of ghosts, quietly haunting their abandoned house after having died quite some time before... turn of the last century, I think; the story is set circa 1960. The two boys get bored and decided to start going out in the world, culminating in them materializing and beginning to attend classes at the local elementary school as a pair of ordinary kids. The part I remember that kind of shook me up was one of the boys, Mortimer, privately demonstrating to one of his new friends that he actually is a ghost by appearing to the boy "in his bones", which was illustrated with a grinning skeleton appearing before a kid with his hair raised stock straight up. There's a sequel to this book, illustrated by the same artist, that I'd dearly love to get but it's considerably rarer and hideously expensive. Any copy you're likely to find is priced into three figures. Alas.
The Riddle of Raven Hollow
Funny to say, I never actually owned this book as a kid; at least, not at the time. This book was in our school library, and I pretty much had it out on permanent loan for years; renewing it again and again. This book was the one that made me want to become a writer.
It's the story of a boy named Bart who lives in Nebraska with his widowed mother and older sister. Bart was 12 or 13, a few years older than I was at the time, and he had a paper route in order to help his family make ends meet. In the course of his rounds, he begins seeing odd goings-on in the early morning, culminating in him meeting a mysterious, belligerent boy who, in the fullness of time, turns out to be a girl who is hiding out because her grandfather has been kidnapped (if I remember correctly). There's actual existential danger for these kids in the story, and I recall being totally impressed that kids could actually get caught up in situations that might see them murdered just like any adult. Makes you feel like part of the club once you understand that kind of thing. I was infatuated with Bart and I made up a couple of boy detectives of my own and started writing stories about them. I don't think I ever finished any of them, but I thoroughly enjoyed coming up with ideas and taking them as far as imagination at the time would permit me. I was lucky enough to have a couple of teachers who were willing to read them and gave me considerable encouragement, and my heart and warm thoughts still go out to them. I really ought to read this book again.
So, that's it for the fiction portion of our show. Tune in next time when we move on to blinding you with science!
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