Some Favorite Childhood Books

Charlie Lovett's Escaping Dreamland had a great deal to do with the books we read in childhood that helped shape the people we are today. Reading that book made me think of my own childhood favorites, and my thoughts have been percolating away ever since so I thought I'd go down to my keeper shelves and bring back a few of those favorites that I've hung on to. Now it's time to share them with you. Perhaps seeing some of my favorites will bring back memories of your own. I know you've got them!

I actually remember the three little books that were the first ones I read all by myself, but I graduated very quickly to chapter books, so I won't include those three here. Besides, I couldn't find any pictures of the covers to show you. (Does that mean I'm getting old? Naaaaah!)

The first author whose books I read voraciously was Thornton W. Burgess. Most of his books were library books, but I do have a couple of my own.

Even as a young child, I knew that animals did not wear clothes and that they did not speak any language that you and I could understand, but Burgess had a knack for telling stories, and he imparted so much knowledge about the animals his tales were about!

I showed an interest in my grandmother's glorious flowerbeds from an early age, and she was only too eager to fan the flames, even going so far as to choose a book by a favorite author.

Just the sight of my grandmother's handwriting brings back so many memories!

Another early favorite book. Hitty was a doll, and the story is told in her voice. Mom would read her adventures to me, and I was very proud when I could finally read them for myself!

My grandparents weren't the only ones who encouraged my love of reading. Mom's handwriting takes me down Memory Lane, too.

I think Hitty was the first book that made me realize that inanimate objects could have stories, that almost all things have some sort of history, and because I read Hitty, I became interested in the stories objects could tell.

My next obsession was Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series. For me, these were fantastic stories that fostered a love of history and biography.

Illustrations can be so important in children's books. I've included many from my favorite childhood books, but I do remember being proud of the fact that the Little House books didn't have quite so many, and that meant that I was really growing up!

But deep down, my favorite kind of books were books about animals, especially horses.

I absolutely loved Wesley Dennis' illustrations for Marguerite Henry's books!

C. W. Anderson's Blaze series was another favorite. I read a lot of books from the 1920s through the 1940s at the library because it took my mother time before there was a library board in our village that actually believed in spending money on books.

As far as horse books go, Walter Farley's books were my favorite. I'd read the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew (mostly The Hardy Boys), but I found myself returning over and over again to the adventures of the Black Stallion.

Another series I was obsessed with was the Childhood of Famous Americans series. I had to search high and low for the blue covers that I remembered as a child.

The other thing I remember so well about this series is its silhouette illustrations. I read every single book in this series that Mom bought for the library. The range of the biographies was impressive, but I was thrilled to see that diversity has finally given so much more depth to this series that's still going strong.

Well, those are my favorite books from my childhood. Now the question is... what are some of yours? Inquiring minds would love to know!

A Wilder Rose by Susan Wittig Albert

First Line: With an audible sigh, Rose Lane rolled the letter out of her Underwood typewriter and signed it  --Much love as always, Rose.

In 1928, Rose Wilder Lane packed her belongings and left Albania-- a place she loved-- to return to the Missouri Ozarks to check on her aging parents. Her father, Almanzo Wilder, was 71; her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder, was 61. They needed help, and Rose felt obligated to stay and get things straightened out. But when the Crash occurred Rose's investments were wiped out, and there was no longer much money to be made writing magazine articles. This was when her mother Laura started writing about her pioneer childhood, and a collaboration was formed that has bewitched thousands upon thousands of readers to this day.

A Wilder Rose is written from Rose's point of view. She's a world traveler, a journalist, and a highly paid writer for all the best magazines of the day. Growing up poor, always having to "make do," being ridiculed at school-- all this and more made Rose want to be more, to do more, and she did. When she returns to the Ozarks and becomes trapped by lack of money, her pain is palpable as she tries desperately to gather up the funds needed for both her parents and herself to have the lives they deserve.

I can see some readers not liking this book because Albert doesn't write the fairy tale that they have grown to love. Laura isn't the adorable little Half Pint in this book; she's an older woman who's experienced many hardships and heartbreaks, and she's much more real as a result. Laura Ingalls Wilder was not an easy woman to live with, and the stories she wrote about her childhood were far from being publishable. Rose was the true writer in the family, and she knew what needed to be done to a manuscript to make it marketable. Countless battles of will occurred with the birth of each of the Little House books, and the entire process is fascinating to read.

Albert also does a masterful job of portraying the period itself: how the stock market crash affected people, what life was like during the Dust Bowl. The political and social conflicts of the time come to life. I was amazed at how similar those conflicts are to the ones we are experiencing today.

Susan Wittig Albert walks a fine line in A Wilder Rose, and she does it very successfully. While the Laura presented here isn't the lovable little tyke of the books so many people like me grew up reading and loving, the portrait of the older Laura is a realistic and utterly believable one. However, the author shines at letting us see the real Rose Wilder Lane and hear her voice. Rose's story is one that forcibly struck home with me. It was expected that Rose would give up her life, give up the person she was, give up so many of the things she loved to do, to go home and take care of her parents as their health declined. The exact same thing was expected of me when my beloved grandfather's health declined. I understood her love for her parents, her feelings of guilt and of being ripped in two.

A Wilder Rose succeeds beautifully on so many levels: as a social history of the times, as the story of the collaboration of two dissimilar women to create one of the most beloved series of books in America, and as the story of a woman trying to uphold her familial obligations while being true to herself. It's a book that I found hard to put down, and it's a book that's made me see that Rose Wilder Lane deserves to be given credit for all the work she did in creating those little houses.

A Wilder Rose: Rose Wilder Lane, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Their Little Houses 

by Susan Wittig Albert

ISBN: 9780989203500

Persevero Press © 2013

Paperback, 288 pages

Rating: A

Source: the author

The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure

Title: The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie
Author: Wendy McClure
ISBN: 9781594487804
Publisher: Riverhead, 2011
Hardcover, 352 pages
Genre: Memoirs
Rating: B+
Source: LibraryThing Early Reviewer program

First Line: I was born in 1867 in a log cabin in Wisconsin and maybe you were, too.

Thus begins Wendy McClure's memoir of her attempt to relive her obsession with a series of children's books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. As a child, she loved the Little House books and dreamed of showing Laura the modern world. As an adult, she begins researching online, obtaining books written about the author and her family, and making pilgrimages to many of the Little House sites. Having missed the television series starring Michael Landon as a child, she watches all the episodes and finds other films based on the much-loved books.

McClure has a witty turn of phrase, as when describing Laura's arch enemy Nellie Oleson (who was actually a composite of three people) as "some kind of blond Frankenstein assembled from assorted bitch parts," and her list of things she learned from buying a dash churn on eBay is laugh-out-loud funny. She didn't stop with learning how to churn butter; she also bought an antique coffee grinder, ground seed wheat, and made bread just like Laura and her family did in The Long Winter. Throughout it all, she had the support of her husband, Chris, and that makes him a pretty special guy.

It's not necessary to be a Little House fan to enjoy this book, which is by turns thoughtful and funny. The book has a lot to say about how we react to momentous events in our lives as well as the power of obsession. However, as an older fan who read all the Little House books in hardcover and imagined herself in Laura's world, I think The Wilder Life will have special meaning for fans. As I turned the pages of McClure's books, I found myself remembering my own Little House days and what an impact those books had on my own life.

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Review-- West from Home

Title: West from Home: Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder, San Francisco 1915
Editor: Roger Lea MacBride
ISBN: 0064400816/ Harper & Row, 1974
Genre: Letters
Rating: A

First Line: Dearest Mama Bess-- I simply can't stand being so homesick for you any more.

When I was six, my mother handed me Little House in the Big Woods, and I never looked back. I still love Laura Ingalls Wilder's tales of her childhood and still get the giggles when I think of the mouse giving Pa a bald spot. When I ran across this book at Paperback Swap, I thought it was time for a Half Pint Fix.

Laura's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, became a journalist and moved to California. Rose became very homesick for her mother and finally saved up the money for Laura to board a train and come for a visit. Laura's visit coincided with San Francisco's World's Fair celebrating the opening of the Panama Canal. This book contains the letters Laura wrote home to her husband, Almanzo during her stay.

I loved this book for its glimpse into a San Francisco that had just rebuilt itself after the 1906 earthquake, and for its insights into Laura the adventurer, Laura the woman who was thinking about starting to write, Laura the mother, and Laura the wife who never stopped worrying about her husband alone on their farm in Missouri. This is a book for all those, like me, who have fond memories of Little Houses.