Hi, I'm Pippa Jay, author of scifi and supernatural stories with a romantic soul. Picking a favourite childrens' book is hard. As a youngster, the likes of Famous Five, Secret Seven, and an unending stream of pony books were my favourites. But I guess the first book that made a real impact on me and that ultimately influenced my writing style, was
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin. Dark, angsty, with a tortured hero, written in an almost poetic style and full of big, long words to stuff my vocabulary with. It was the first book I was set as English reading at secondary school (age 11-16), and my first real departure from pony stories. I count myself extremely lucky that throughout secondary I got a library of books that really resonated with me) although at that age I would pretty much read everything and anything).
A Wizard of Earthsea converted me to fantasy and lead to David Eddings, Tolkien, and Terry Brooks. (Then a certain Tatooine farmboy led me to scifi, which still remains my favourite genre of speculative fiction, but that's another story.) To this day, it's still a favourite I go back to for a comfort read, though I'm now on my third paperback copy of it due to the previous ones falling apart from long use.
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| school version |
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| my current version |
But I was never able to get my kids interested in the Earthsea books. Or Terry Pratchett. My older boy has outdone me by managing to read Tolkien's
The Simarillion, a feat beyond me even though I read
The Lord of the Rings AND all the appendices. However, if you were looking for something more modern for your child, my two boy were huge fans of the
How to Train Your Dragon series of books by Cressida Cowell, while my daughter opted for Darren Shan books (although those are rather on the dark side and more young adult).
These days my kids tend to pick books from the films they see, which I guess is a change in culture from the days when I would pick a book from the book store shelves, but as long as they read, I'm happy. Enjoy!
4 comments:
"As long as they read, I'm happy." I totally agree with you Pippa. Being read to was something my son, grands and great grands enjoy(ed) but reading on their own - not so much. Hoping my youngest great grand becomes a great reader (he just turned 3). His dad's a voracious reader but his mom (my grand) has dyslexia so reading is not fun or relaxing.
Great that your kids enjoy reading, Pippa.
The only little kids I have now are grandchildren and so far the school aged ones all love to read. Even the boys who enjoy their video games , also love to read. Great post.
I'm impressed that you chose to read Leguin so young. She is not an easy read, even today. Your comment about choosing books from movies is one I've seen as well. Though our boys read all of the Harry Potter books when they were coming out--way before the movies.
If movies help children read, I'm all in. The best part is you can say if you liked Star Wars, you may also like X book which hasn't yet been made into a movie but has the same kind of background and excitement.
Judith - I was talking to my books about a couple of books I used to read to them when they were little. They both remembered the stories very clearly although older boy did comment they were very childish. I pointed out he was young at the time and I didn't expect him to read them now, lol. But those moments have obviously stuck with them, which is a good thing that they will hopefully do with their children.
Diana - yeah, I don't mind mine playing their computer games if they're reading occasionally too. Can't get away from modern media!
Maggie - oh, we were set it at school, but I dare say I would have picked it up myself around then being as I was into my high fantasy at the time. My eldest is actually a nightmare with movie books - if she reads the books first all she can do is pick holes in the films for missing bits out, lol. But whatever keeps them reading, even if I get earache from her complaints.
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