O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! [sh]e chortled in [her] joy*

My day was made frabjous by a professor canceling my afternoon class. For which I hadn't done the reading yet. And he pushed the reading back to next week. Calooh! Callay! That was my only campus obligation after 9 am, so I'm back in my home city already, earlier than I have been in WEEKS. 

I'm not sure if I'll actually gain any work time in the end, since I'm procrastinating like mad, but eh, at least it's a nice little mental break.

And in mostly unrelated commentary, I just have to point out that for years I baffled NLLDH by quoting the title of this post, until we figured out that he had NEVER READ ALICE IN WONDERLAND. I mean, really?? And the more we explored this, the more we realized he never read most of what were my childhood classics. For instance, he has never so much as cracked any of the Little House series. (Heresy!) Okay, maybe those are too "girly." Whatever. Anyway, we never came up with any major classic he'd read as a child that I hadn't, so I won that cultural competition. (This happens only rarely.)

What about you? Are there major childhood classics that everyone else but you seems to have read? I'm sure you people can come up with lots that I haven't read, to make NLLDH feel better.

 

*And yes, I did indicate the alterations in this quote according to Bluebook rules, outing myself as a genuine law review nerd.

Comments

[Dr. Moonbeam]

I've never read Catcher in the Rye! I'm not sure if that's a childhood classic, though, strictly speaking.

[richard]

Anything by Beatrice Potter. I don't know why, but I associate her books with perfume-dowsed beige candles wrapped in lace and sprigs of bittersweet. Just the mention of her name makes my eyes water and I start to sneeze.

Little House books are NOT girly! I still re-read them and I am not a girl (not the last time I checked, anyway). They're popular history books with a good narrative and a strong protagonist.

[Paige]

I still haven't read The Wind in the Willows.

I know, I know.

[Notorious Ph.D.]

I have never read a single one of the Narnia books. And I am a medievalist.

[Horace]

I was raised in a fundamentalist household, so I had not read many classics designed for kids under 10. A lot of bible stories, though. I knew those inside out. Having children has been a second education, and a mostly delightful one. I mean, I could do without the depictions of Native Americans in the Little House books, and the gender roles are pretty devastating in Breatrix Potter's (and a lot of other) stuff. And even Babar doesn't hold up well to a basic postcolonial ethic. Sigh.

But the sheer delight still available in all of these books has led to a great deal of really wonderful reading with my kids. And a LOT of explaining.

[Janice]

Mike's never read Charlotte's Web. All three of the women in the family stared at him, aghast.

There aren't many kids books that I didn't read. Although I came to Tintin and Asterix fairly late in life. But I loathe pretty much all the Victorian and Edwardian books for kids, if that helps?

[Clancy]

Where the Wild Things Are
The Wind in the Willows
any of the Anne of Green Gables series

those are just off the top of my head. I read so much as a kid that I basically only stopped reading to sleep, but I didn't cover everything. I read a lot of Ramona Quimby, Sweet Valley High, Judy Blume, stuff like that...not really literature, though I know that's a contested term, of course.

[Laura]

Tom Sawyer, Catch 22, Catcher in the Rye: I was pissed that they all had boys as main characters. I did finally read Huck Finn in grad school and I think I'd like these others, but meh, who has time for it now.

I was an avid reader, too. Ended up working in the library in middle school so that I could get more access to books.

[loyal reader]

Saw the movie of "Golden Compass," thought it was a pointnless rip off of NARNIA, and vowed never to read "Dark Materials" series.

[Belle]

None of the above. Alice, Charlotte, the whole bunch. I did read all the Nancy Drew the library had. I've also avoided the movies that resulted or were inspired by those books. I did see what might have been a BBC/CBC/PBS series on Anne of Green Gables. I think.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Okay, I've never read Wind in the Willows, either! Or Catch-22 (does that count as kid's lit? I have no idea!).

And when I say lit, I pretty much mean "printed work" - I don't mean to imply any value judgment! I read a lot of Judy Blume (some of which is TOTALLY classic). And I read a LOT of Trixie Beldens (god, they're pretty awful!).

Notorious, you HAVE to read the Narnia books!! (okay, there are very problematic things about them. The bad guys are middle East-Arab polytheists. The gender roles kind of suck. And the Christian allegory whacks you over the head - at least, if you know anything about Christianity, which I didn't when I first read them, so I didn't figure it out till the last book. But I still love them.)

Loyal reader, the Dark Materials books are SPECTACULAR, and absolutely NOT a Narnia rip off. At ALL. Granted, the movie's not that great. But the books are WONDERFUL. (Okay, the third volume isn't that successful - can't quite pull off the ending, I think. But they're certainly trying to do something fascinating!)

Horace, yes, the Native American stuff in the Little House books is awful. I think I get around that in my head by looking at them as a historian, so I can read that as a primary source revealing how people thought at the time the books were written (not purveying any kind of truth), and I really have always approached them not as a model for anything but as a window into what the world was like for those people at that time (at least as remembered 50 years later and filtered through heavy editing...). But yeah, the Native American stuff is awful (and it would require a LOT of explaining to kids). I think there's a teeny bit of redemption in that Pa and Laura clearly feel quite positively toward Indians, and disagree with Ma, but it's still all one big horrible mess since there are plenty of problems with Pa and Laura's more "positive" attitude, too.

And gender roles in so MANY of the classics are problematic (since they've been around for a while).

As for Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn: I doubt I'd have sought those out, but we were assigned to read them in school, so couldn't get away from them. Ditto Catcher in the Rye (which I don't like). I think we were assigned Charlotte's Web, too (which doesn't actually have a female protagonist; just a female prop to the male protagonist, Wilbur). I can't think if we got assigned anything to read in school that had a female protagonist, come to think of it! (Oh, wait, Little Women! But of course, I grew up in what was essentially the Little Women theme park, so...)

I only read one or two of the Anne of Green Gables books - for some reason, they really didn't grab me.

We did read a lot of Beatrix Potter, though, I think because they were popular at the time (I think there were a lot of lovely little editions for kids that came out when I was little), and also probably because my mom's English. I don't even remember most of the text at all (a little about Peter Cottontail, I think), I just remember the illustrations, which I loved. (Though they are very Victorian.)

I think I did go through a Victorian kid literature phase though - I read a lot of E. Nesbit at one point. Again, I liked the illustrations (and ditto for Alice in Wonderland). From a bit later era, I also read a lot of Enid Blyton (who is VERY problematic).

[Sam]

I too have never read or seen Alice in Wonderland...

[susan]

Never read wind in the willows. Or Paradise Lost, which isn't a children's classic, but is certainly a classic among folks with English PhDs.

[Rose]

The school and public librarians knew me very well. I read The Hobbit in 4rd grade and The Lord of the Rings in 4th & 5th grade - Narnia too. I picked out a book from a classic book series and then read the rest of the series listed on the back. Stuff like Ivanhoe, Alice in Wonderland, the White Company, Wind in the Willows, White Fang, Call of the Wild, The Yearling, the Jungle Book, the whole Leatherstocking saga, etc.

I sobbed so hysterically when I finished Where the Red Fern Grows that my mother came running into the room, thinking I'd broken a limb or something. I will never ever watch the movie version! Old Yeller was on TV a few weeks ago and I watched it again, even though I knew I shouldn’t – had to put ice packs on my eyes they were so tear-swollen. Never went in for the really girly books like the Secret Garden, though I read some Nancy Drew.

Definitely want my son to read a lot of those.

[joy]

Count me in as another voracious child reader who never read Alice in Wonderland. I also never finished A Wrinkle in Time.

I loved the Little House series, Anne of Green Gables (I still reread them), Caddie Woodlawn, all the Louisa Mae Alcott books, the Chronicles of Narnia (one of the few fantastical books that I enjoyed--Tolkien, L'Engle, etc never did it for me), the Secret Garden, the Betsy, Tacy, Tib books. Another children's series that I adored (both because the books themselves were wonderful but also because it was such fun to read books set only a few miles from my house) were Anne Pellowski's books about four generations of Polish-American girls growing up on a farm in Wisconsin, based on her own family.

Thanks, New Kid! I was in a rotten mood because I didn't get into a clinic I wanted, but it's been quite cheering to think of all these books I've loved over the years.

[Susan]

Not Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn, Catcher in the Rye (the boys books). I didn't read Little Women until I was over 40 -- I thought I was too grown up for it, since I was reading Austen when I was 11. Anne of Green Gables books never came my way. When we went on vacation, the libraries always had scads of the old "Little Maid of Old (Virginia/New York/etc)" and "Dutch Twins" "French Twins" etc. Loved 'em. I read every biography in my elementary school library. History was my destiny.

I also was bored by the Hobbit, so never did the Lord of the Rings. I have read Narnia several times. The allegory, once you are a grown up, is not subtle, but they are great stories. But the rest, yes. Also many of the Oz books, though some were too scary.