The Felixstowe Book Festival committee members recall the early stories that turned them into lifelong readers. We’d love to hear about yours, too, in the comments below!
Meg Reid
Minnow On The Say by A Philippa Pearce, illustrated by Edward Ardizzone.
This is a favourite book from my childhood and beyond. David finds Minnow, a canoe, on the River Say behind his garden. Disobeying his parents, he sets off in it to find its owner. This leads him to Adam, who lives with his aunt and grandfather in a dilapidated old house. When the boys find a clue, they take Minnow down the river on a treasure hunt. It’s an exciting and believable adventure story, as much about the boys’ friendship as what they discover. This summer I read it to my two youngest granddaughters, and they couldn’t wait for the next visit to find out what happened next.
Louise Millar
Grimm’s Fairytales by the Brothers Grimm
I can still remember opening the Christmas present from my Glaswegian grandmother, Kathleen, and seeing this magical book appear. Kathleen was a wonderful natural storyteller. We’d often curl up in her huge 1930s armchairs on a rainy day, the electric fire on, as she made up story after story about knights and castles and queens and faraway lands. This book was the perfect place for me, as a child, to explore further that world of fantasy she’d inspired in my imagination, and also, through the book’s dark fables, start gently to understand the perils of the world that lay beyond the innocence of childhood. I read it so many times, the cover broke, but it still sits on my bookshelf, one of my most precious possessions.
Stephanie Mackentyre
The Famous Five Collection by Enid Blyton
The vivid pictures Blyton painted in her Famous Five Collection instilled in me as a child a passion for reading which has never left. I still have one collection, which tells the tales of Julian, Dick, Anne, George and their dog Timmy’s adventures around Kirrin Island and Smuggler’s Top. In my mind, I can still see each of the characters so clearly. I always imagined myself as George, the tomboy, always fearless (which I certainly wasn’t as a child!) with her faithful border collie by her side. It took me 50 years, but I finally got to own a border collie myself. I smiled that day, thinking that I had finally morphed into George.
Kerry Addison
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr
This is one of the first books I remember reading as a child that I actually enjoyed. It’s the first of Judith Carr’s Out Of The Hitler time trilogy, and tells the story of Anna, whose wealthy Jewish family is forced to leave Berlin when Adolf Hitler is elected. I borrowed it from my local library when I was a primary school, and finally able to choose for myself. It was such a change from the enforced school library numbered reading scheme, with its dry abridged versions of Charles Dickens and other classics. Today, I still love reading – historical fiction, biographies and war history – and this book is as relevant now as when first published over 50 years ago.
These are our favourite childhood books – please tell us yours!
