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!
