Books that moved you as a child

[Orang Utan]

...or as a young adult.

There has been discussion about this on a professional email list I frequent and my first thought was Russell Hoban's A Mouse & His Child. I could not remember any of the plot but just the thought of the title brought almost physical feeling of sadness and tenderness and, I don't know, bittersweetness, so I downloaded it and BANG! it hit me again. It's about a toy clockwork mouse and his son, joined together by design, who are bought from a shop and eventually thrown away, after which they go on adventures, chased by an evil rat.
The writing is beautiful and the illustrations even more so.
This image has never left me:

It's just a lovely depiction of the love between a father and a son, which moved me very much as a child as my father almost certainly read it to me, and now, for very different reasons, it is equally moving (the illustration and the story). I'm glad I reacquainted myself with it.

Charlotte's Web also destroyed me.

What books moved you as a kid?

 

[story]

The Red Pony by Steinbeck.

ETA and Charlotte's Web too, of course.

I'm sure there's more. I'll come back to this maybe.

 

[weltweit]

The old man and the sea.

Except my English Literature teacher decided the old man's love for the child was latent paedophilia which I disagreed with vehemently despite not at the time really knowing what it was!

 

[weltweit]

Will you consider Grapic novels, like "Flight 714"

 

[DotCommunist]

 

[dessiato]

For me it was A Farewell to Arms when I was 14. I found it in a bin in the art room at school, took it and read it. I love it and have read it many times since I found it. It also helped me discover Hemingway and develop a love for literature.

 

[JimW]

Red Shift by Alan Garner

 

[girasol]

Little Prince.

 

[Orang Utan]

Don't just list them! Say why!

 

[Orang Utan]

Will you consider Grapic novels, like "Flight 714"

Is a graphic novel not a book?

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

Elidor, by Alan Garner is to this day still one of the scariest books I've read. We got to read it in primary five or six. The shadow-people in the attic brrr

 

[DotCommunist]

re: Machine Gunners- theres a lot in there about poverty, defeating a bully, divorce from a kids perspective, and society in war. Resonated.

 

[DotCommunist]

Oh and most of Brian Jaques 'Redwall' books had me grit-in-eye at points as a kid. Salamandastron is the one I still remember to this day. Armoured badgers, doomed last stands, humble nobodies finding true paths, community love. etc.


try also: Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler. Almost a social realist kitchen sink kids book looking back on it.

 

[May Kasahara]

The Wind On The Moon. I had already been completely drawn into the adventures of Dinah and Dorinda, their freedom and fearlessness (particularly love the fact that they get turned into animals and then spend a day learning how to doss around like cats ). It's such a lovely, unworthy book, just about two siblings having fun...and then one of the main characters dies in a heroic self-sacrificial fashion. I HOWLED. I probably still would now.

Also always cried at the death of Aslan. They were just so mean to him beforehand.

 

[weltweit]

Is a graphic novel not a book?

It was great, my first exposure to AK47s and Aircraft Hi-Jacking ..

 

[Orang Utan]

re: Machine Gunners- theres a lot in there about poverty, defeating a bully, divorce from a kids perspective, and society in war. Resonated.

I love that book. The tv series was great too. 'WHERE YOU GOING NOW?'

 

[May Kasahara]

Futuretrack 5 and Julie of the Wolves are two whose endings introduced me to the concept that being a grown up sometimes means choosing the shitty unromantic path.

 

[Orang Utan]

Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler. Almost a social realist kitchen sink kids book looking back on it.

By Gene Kemp.

Great twist!

 

[boohoo]

The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde - got a little obsessed by swallows - it's a sad love story.

 

[ShiftyBagLady]

The Selfish Giant and Under the Hawthorne Tree had real emotional impacts on me as a child. I can't quite explain why the Selfish Giant did, it was probably just a moving sentiment, however Under the Hawthorne tree is about a family during the Irish famine and I read it shortly after one of the times we moved back to Ireland and it is a tragic and moving story but it made me connect with that part of Irish history that I hadn't been told very much about. I was also coming under a fair bit of anti-English abuse (I am Irish but had been living in England for a few years and had an English accent -when I lived in England I got anti-irish stuff nd our house was frequently raided by police :roll eyes: ) so it helped me to intellectually and emotionally connect with that resentment. There's also an infant death which made me weep as I was coming to terms with the death of my sister as well. So it touched me in many different ways and made me realise how powerful a book can be; when you read the right book at the right time it can be a transformative thing and that book really did move me

 

[story]

Don't just list them! Say why!

Okay.

The Red Pony because it was about the powerlessness of being a child, even though our (their) emotions are apparently stronger, truer and and purer than those of adults. That love cannot save the day.

Charlotte's Web: I suppose that's the same reason. Love does not prevail.

I absolutely adored The Loneliness of the Long Distant Runner at 13. It nearly made me re-think my abandonment of cross country running. I'd duck into the hideous mausoleum that was rotting near the route we had to take and sneak a crafty fag and walk back in the to meet the red-limbed gasping goodies. It was meaningful to me because it was about the resilience of the individual in the face of the institution.

Kes. I could barely finish it, it was so heartbreaking. Again, the pointlessness of loving and hoping.

 

[fen_boy]

 

[Poot]

try also: Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler. Almost a social realist kitchen sink kids book looking back on it.

I just read that to my son. With voices obvs. It was just as good as I remembered and he loved it.

 

[DotCommunist]

The Wind On The Moon. I had already been completely drawn into the adventures of Dinah and Dorinda, their freedom and fearlessness (particularly love the fact that they get turned into animals and then spend a day learning how to doss around like cats ). It's such a lovely, unworthy book, just about two siblings having fun...and then one of the main characters dies in a heroic self-sacrificial fashion. I HOWLED. I probably still would now.

Also always cried at the death of Aslan. They were just so mean to him beforehand.

being raised in a strict christian household totally spoilered Aslans Resurrection for me.

 

[DotCommunist]

And if anyone thinks the newish Narnia films are dire then I dare you to seek out the 90s BBC adapt of Lion, Witch &


its beyond shit

 

[Santino]

Futuretrack 5 and Julie of the Wolves are two whose endings introduced me to the concept that being a grown up sometimes means choosing the shitty unromantic path.

I loved Futuretrack 5! Never knowingly met anyone else who's read it.

 

[Santino]

And if anyone thinks the newish Narnia films are dire then I dare you to seek out the 90s BBC adapt of Lion, Witch &


its beyond shit

I once had to sit through 3 straight hours of it while babysitting a 5 year-old.

 

[wayward bob]

 

[DotCommunist]

I once had to sit through 3 straight hours of it while babysitting a 5 year-old.

I can still hear the way Lucy squeals 'aslan!' to this day.

 

[InfoBurner]

After these, I went through my goth phase, never been happier