BOOKS FROM CHILDHOOD THAT MEANT A LOT
This morning I thought of some books that were important to me as a child. I mentioned Plucky Little Patsy on the web site. I don't think I mentioned Clematis or A Tree for Peter.
I identified so much with Clematis. There was a frontispiece with her in school looking out the window. The illustration could have been called The Dreamer or the Longing for Something. Clematis was a sweet girl, an orphan, of course, and she just didn't see the world the way she was supposed to. She understood things in a different way. Of course, there was a very wish-fulfilled ending.
Another book I had forgotten about is A Tree of Peter by Kate Seredy. It had beautiful illustrations. It took place in a shantytown. I don't remember it exactly, but I think now it was a very spiritual book, though at the time I just knew it as a beautiful story. Of course, Peter and his mother had nothing. Peter very much wanted a Christmas tree. Somehow he meets a man he calls King Peter. As I remember, no one else thought King Peter was real. And yet, at the ending, there is a magnficent lit Christmas tree in the center of Shantytown. I think now that King Peter must have been Christ.
Anyway, what books from your childhood influenced you? I would love to read about you.
Love and blessings,
Gloria
BOOKS FROM CHILDHOOD THAT MEANT A LOT
hi Gloria
which one do like?
As moderator of this part I thank you for your post with clematis...!!!
As soon as I was able to read I liked to read fairy-tales and myths
I got as a christmas present - when I was 6 - two wonderful tale-books with paintings - I still have and I still like to read sometimes
with Russian tales
I lived in these tales and myths while reading
and there are books - Karl May - who never was in America
nor in Persia or Arabia - but his books (nearly 100) I ate!!!!! and while reading those I sat in a tree outside in the garden - not to be seen by others or found for any work - and I was in Kurdistan and with the Apachees and the Navajos and...
great idea to ask for books of childhood
Books from childhood
When I was a child, just like Veronika I loved to read fairy-tales. Actually I lived in them. I adored the Russian tales and devoured Hans Christian Andersen's stories (The Ugly Duckling, The mermaid). But my favourite one wasn't one of the best known. It was the one that tells about eleven swans. Does anyone remember or know it?
Shortly: It's about a princess and her eleven brothers. The wicked mother-in-law transforms the princess' brothers into swans and throws the princess out from the castle. The princess learns that there's a way to save her brothers, which is to weave eleven cloaks of a certain kind of reed that grows only near a cave. But she cannot say a word until all the eleven cloaks are ready. She goes to live in the cave and with her bleeding hands weaves day and night. Of course, a prince arrives and falls in love with her, and takes her to his castle. But as she cannot speak and only goes on weaving the reed cloaks, people think that she's a witch and they want to send her to the stake. Everything is ready and they are taking her to the execution place, but she just goes on weaving even on the cart that's taking her there. Everything seems to be lost, when suddenly eleven swans land on the cart and she covers them with the eleven cloaks. And now she can finally speak. HAPPY END!
I still get moved when I think about this story. Oh, dear, I just realized that I have eleven brothers and sisters. I never thought about that. And in one of His messages God says that we should be like a 'hollow reed' for Him to pour His Love to everyone on Earth through us.
I'm a little upset about this and I have to meditate on it.
Paula :roll:
Response to VeroniKA and Paula!
Oh, dear VeroniKA, I choose the second photo of a clematis as the most beautiful. The first one, however, is more tender and more of how I used to feel, smaller, overlooked.
When I taught school, I used to give my children a writing assignment, and that was to think of a flower they felt like, and write about it why they chose that flower. What they wrote was very revealing. I do not feel like the Clematis in the storybook any longer. Actually, the healing of that composition was not in the flower chosen. It was in why the flower was chosen that revealed so much. I used to do the writing I assigned my children as well. One time I was a daisy, another a rose, or I could be a hyacinth again and again, and my reasons each time could be different and tell another story or aspect of me.
Paula, I also loved fairy tales. I love them all! They are universal and come in every language and from every country. I loved Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Persian. Polish, etc. fairy tales, the true unadulterated tales, not the watered-down prettied-up ones that you find in children's books today. Today it seems that children are "protected" from fairy tales.
But fairy tales are so healing and wonderful. I remember the refrain of one Grimm Fairy Tale: "The wolf is dead! The wolf is dead!" A truly happy ending.
Many years ago I trained as a Waldorf School Teacher. Original fairy tales were part of the curriculum. When my daughter was little, she and her friends and I would act them out a lot. They are the subconscious, I think, and all that was hidden there came out and could be looked at and made peace with.
Incidentally, my parents came from Russia, so I was always particularly interested in the Russian tales, but all countries seem to have a versions of the same stories.
Wow, Paula, a story of eleven princesses, and you were one of eleven children! Amazing!
You know how in fairy tales, it's the youngest son or youngest daughter who is good-hearted and gets the prize whereas the older ones lose? There is a Heavenletter in which God speaks of fairy tales. As I remember the youngest child represented the innocence of the heart, the older ones the intellect, I think. I'll have to ask Kirt, Heaven's webmaster, if he can locate that Heavenletter.
Well, anyway, I was the youngest of five, and I always felt glad and relieved to be the youngest and favored by fairy tales. But even as a young child, I wondered how children who were not the youngest felt when they read such fairy tales, and I was glad for me but sad for them.
With love and blessings,
Gloria
BOOKS FROM CHILDHOOD THAT MEANT A LOT
I liked the Dr. Seuss books especially Green Eggs and Ham and Hop On Pop , Cinderella, Snow White, Briar Rabbit, Jack and the beanstalk, Sleeping beauty. When I was a little older: Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Little House on the Prairie, Encyclopedia Brown, Charlottes Web. : )
Dawn, you make me think of other books from childhood!
These books from childhood that I want to mention are really from my daughter's childhood.
Winnie the Pooh was a great favorite! I still have the book with my daughter's drawings on it!
And later the Narnia Chronicles.
I always gave her books. What a wonderful lasting thing to give! I myself couldn't have lived without books, I don't think. My daughter certainly loved them, but I learned in later years that she was really disappointed when I gave her books. She wanted go-go boots and other such things, and I didn't know.
Thanks, Dawn, for sharing.
Love, Gloria