 Memory Lane |
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In my list of favorite books from childhood, there were so many that I left out.  I read a couple of Judie Angell's books over and over. I checked them out of the library constantly and bought my own copies in the past couple of years. I really liked Secret Selves and loved Ronnie and Rosey to a ridiculous degree. They're both out of print now, but I bought a used paperback of Secret Selves and a hardcover of Ronnie and Rosey from Bibliofind a few years ago. Upon rereading it, Ronnie and Rosey wasn't as magical to me as it was when I was little, but I still love it now just because of how much I loved it then.  I also would check out the books of Barbara Girion over and over. I have a copy of Misty and Me, about a girl and her beagle, but I never owned any of the others. I know I read A Handful of Stars, about a high schooler with epilepsy, many times.  I read Say Goodnight, Gracie approximately ten thousand times when I was in early high school. I loved my ninth grade English teacher more than any English teacher before or since, and she would have the young adult librarian from the public library come in a few times a year with a big bag of books to recommend to us. And once she brought this one, and I was so excited that I started squirming in my seat, because I already had it and I felt like we were sharing this great secret discovery. That is how big of a nerd I was. It's about an actress, Morgan, and her best friend, Jimmy, a dancer, who dies suddenly, and how she deals with losing him. It's full of their memories and it's got a great adult character in it, her aunt, a psychiatrist, who helps her. I loved imagining Jimmy dancing like Fred Astaire. I cannot count the times this book made me sob into my pillow. It's really moving, but not in an overwrought way. More in that Morgan is trying to be stoic but motherfuck, she misses her friend, and what a waste that he died kind of a way. 
 Also around the age of thirteen or so, I became obsessed with the books of Paul Zindel. I have like three different cover versions of The Pigman that I've bought at used book sales, just because. I think I have like eight of his books, but The Pigman and The Pigman's Legacy and A Begonia for Miss Applebaum, especially because it was set in New York, are my favorite.  Daphne's Book broke my heart on a regular basis. Daphne and Jessica are assigned as partners on a book writing project. Jessica is the writer and Daphne was the artist. Daphne is this mysterious girl whom everyone makes fun of, and Jessica does NOT want to be her partner. But of course, she gets to know Daphne and realizes what an amazing person she is and what a hard life she has. This is a lovely, lyrical book.  I've already talked about how much I loved Ellen Emerson White, and I've added scans of the covers of her books to that entry, because I wanted to show what the original covers looked like and because I am a dork.  I, Trissy is the first book I can remember reading that was set up like the narrator's diary, but it was as if she were typing her diary on a typewriter her dad gave her after her parents split up that she immediately identified as a bribe for her affection. I thought this book was the most awesome thing. The print looks like it was actually typed on her typewriter, typos and all. She writes stories and hateful treatises about her family members and all about the stupid things she does and the trouble she gets into. Trissy Jane Beers had balls, and I wanted to be just like her.  I've already gone on and on about Look Through My Window. For God's sake, if you're a fan of children's literature at all and you have not read Look Through My Window, you are missing out. I also loved another book by Jean Little called Mine for Keeps.  I had a soft spot for books involving regular kids and celebrities. Like You Never Can Tell, about Kate, whose favorite soap opera actor starts attending her high school and she gets to know him and has to reconcile her feelings for his character with what he's really like. That book was like one of my greatest fantasies come true, which should not come as any kind of a surprise. It would have been like if Ben Covington or Daniel Desario or Tim Canterbury's portrayer had walked into my math class. Or back then, I guess it would have been if River Phoenix or Wil Wheaton or one of the Coreys (shut up) had shown up at my school. (I stupidly brought a lot of my books to my classroom to make a little library, and I think one of my students kept this one, and I am still pissed about it.)  I also loved The Friendship Pact, which was along the same lines, but it was about two best friends who find out that the singer/actor they're obsessed with is coming to town and they vow to meet him together, and hijinks ensue. I probably read every single Paula Danziger book, and I liked The Pistachio Prescription and Can You Sue Your Parents for Malpractice? well enough, but I never reread them regularly like I did many of her others.  The Divorce Express and It's an Aardvark Eat Turtle World were two favorites, the stories of Phoebe and Rosie, who become best friends whose parents get married. It's all about how they deal with their parents' divorces and then marriage to each other and how they deal with becoming a part of the same household. I think when you're little, the idea of moving in with your best friend permanently is so appealing that I was bound to love these books.  Who didn't like The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, about Marcy, who loves her new teacher and hates her dad and wants to write and cannot abide gym class? I did. I especially liked how the kids band together to save their teacher from being fired.  But I loved the sequel, There's a Bat in Bunk Five. I think I still have sections of that book memorized. In this one, Marcy goes to camp. And if there was anything I loved reading about as a kid, it was camp. And it wasn't a normal camp, it was an arts camp, and it was run by, of all people, her beloved teacher, who still had plenty to teach Marcy about life and love and the world. And Marcy's the counselor for all of these precocious girls and it's all just great.  I wrote an eighth grade paper on This Place Has No Atmosphere, which continued my then obsession with space. It's about a girl whose family is one who gets to move to the moon for a year in the first colony to go there. The girl is really pissed off about it, but she ends up organizing a play on the moon. I remember thinking that this book was extremely funny and was jealous that in the future there were high school classes like "Build Your Own Synthesizer."  I think of all of Danziger's books, though, I loved Remember Me to Harold Square most of all. Kendra and her brother O.K. live in New York, and the son of their parents' friends comes to stay with them for the summer because I think his dad is sick. Anyway, his name is Frank. And Frank and Kendra and O.K.'s parents set up a massive scavenger hunt for them to do that summer so they won't just be sitting around being lazy slackers. And so they do it, this scavenger hunt, all over New York, and they are funny and cute and like all of Danziger's characters go nuts over puns, and as a kid, reading a non-cheesy romance about smart, punny kids exploring New York for the summer was like heaven on a page. I read this one over and over and over. I remember finding out years later that there was a sequel, and I started it, but it wasn't the same, and I put it down and refused to believe that it existed, because I wanted the characters to be suspended in time where I had left them in New York, where I had never been, but which I fell in love with in part because of they way it was depicted through their eyes. Shelley just reminded me of a book called Buck that we loved when were kids. She exclaimed, "Buck was The O.C.!" And it was, really. Buck was about some guy who moved in with a family and all we can remember is that the author got it published by winning some kind of young adult fiction contest. Anyway, the cover had a good looking blond guy on it and was kind of rusty in color, like the sun was setting or something. Does anyone remember this book? The guy Buck moves in with really likes him at first and is glad to have sort of a brother but then he gets mad because everyone likes Buck more than they like him. I remember some kind of emotional scene between them under the Christmas tree. It would be like if Seth Cohen suddenly started hating Ryan Atwood. Come on, people. Surely we did not imagine this book! Never mind: I found it! I found Buck. I did NOT remember that Buck was a male prostitute! I am ordering a copy right this minute. Edited to add: I got Buck. I started rereading it. It is bad. Very, very bad. And this is decidedly not the cover I remember. This one pretty much screams male prostitute. 
 This is really not even skimming the surface. I haven't even talked about Judy Blume or Lois Lowry or Cynthia Voigt or Madeleine L'Engle, whose books still fill my shelves, and what each of their books meant to me. These are just some books that I'm remembering today. It's so weird to look back and note that so many of them feature young characters who were artistic in some way, which I certainly enjoyed fancying myself, or cool teachers, which I certainly wanted to be. I wonder if I would be a different person today if I hadn't read some of these books. Probably not, but I like knowing that little bits of each of them are stuck in my mind and that parts of each character are parts of who I wanted to grow up to be. About this time in ...
© Copyright 2004 elb |
7.7.04: Edited to add pictures of Buck. (Scroll to bottom) |
