At Booking Through Thursday, Deb asks:
What is the first book you remember reading? What about the first that made you really love reading?
When we were young children my siblings and I shared a room, and each night after tucking us into bed one of our parents would sit down and read aloud to us for ten or fifteen minutes. This continued for a few years after I had started school and so I have no recollection of the first book I read. Stories wove themselves into my consciousness and into my heart from the earliest age.
What I do recall are my favourites among the fairy tales. These were stories written and illustrated by Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish authors and artists, and some of the books had been handed down from my grandparents. Among the latter, I especially loved the fairy tales of Zacharias Topelius (Finland), such as Björken och stjärnan (The birch and the star), in which two children separated from their parents by war try to find their way back home from a foreign country, and Adalminas pärla (Adalmina’s pearl), in which a haughty young princess learns that nothing is more beautiful than a humble heart.
Another classic was Elsa Beskow, in whose world pine cones, flowers, and mushrooms walked and talked. Tomte-figures and trolls abound in Nordic folk tales, and John Bauer’s illustrations of the latter are indelibly imprinted on the minds of generations of Scandinavians.
Finally, I have to mention the Swedish icon, Astrid Lindgren, whose books about the mischievous yet well-meaning Emil of Lönneberga (Emil i Lönneberga) I adored. These were also adapted for TV ( for an episode with subtitles, see, for example, Emil And The Soup Tureen). My mother later confessed that she and my father could never resist sneakily continuing to read any new Emil books after we children had fallen asleep. Every so often, they would be forced to bite into their pillows to prevent their laughter from waking us up!
Which childhood books do you recall with fondness? Feel free to share the link to your own Booking Through Thursday post!
