Books that hold up and books that don't

Some friends and I were talking about re-reading books we had loved as children, and how some hold up and some don't. For me, LITTLE WOMEN really held up -- but someone else found all the mother's lectures and Louisa May Alcott's own preachiness really annoying. I did, too, but I still love the book anyhow and suspect that as a child, I ignored those parts the way I ignored much of what the adults in my life said.

Some books that did hold up for me:
The Secret Garden -- I may even love this MORE now, even though I never could get as interested in Colin as I was in Mary, AND liked her better before she became nice
The Hobbit -- especially the scene with the trolls,and when they are first riding into Rivendell
very old MADs, from the late 1950s and early 1960s--they still make me laugh out loud
fairy tales
nursery rhymes
the d'Aulaires Abraham Lincoln
--to name a random few. I could go on and on, but what's going to be most interesting about this post is what other people think.

I also reread a Giant Golden book called ASTRONOMY and could see why I liked it so much, but as an adult, I didn't read every word. Maybe as a kid I didn't either! I was sad, though, to see something I don't know if I noticed as a child: that the scientists and astronauts were always men of European ancestry -- and that even the children doing simple experiments were white boys. People -- men and women -- with dark skins appeared in skin-tight outfits stretching their arms to the moon. Once a woman in a neat suit, hat, and gloves looked at a meteorite with her children. The text talked about MEN going into space someday.

If I get impatient with PC things, I will remember this book and its not-so-subtle message. I hope I ignored it the way I ignored the preachiness in LITTLE WOMEN but I wonder....

What didn't hold up:

Alice in Wonderland -- this wasn't one of my FAVORITE books as a kid, but I did like it a lot. I thought Alice was really smart and both loved and admired the way she always tried to figure everything out. When I reread it as an adult, I realized with dismay that that was supposed to be funny! I also found the book too boring to finish.

Then there were some classics that I could never get into as a child and can't now--like Carl Sandburg's short stories for kids. One was in a beloved, literally loved-to-pieces anthology illustrated by Garth Williams called THE TALL BOOK OF MAKE BELIEVE (this story was NOT by Carl Sandburg -- it's "The Very Mischief"):
Although I read everything else in that book over and over and over, I could never finish the Carl Sandburg story. It just seemed pointless and kind of stupid -- the kind of silliness some adults think children like. I also hated (and still hate) Aesop's Fables.

What about you? What has held up? What hasn't?

I'm especially curious about all the great children's books I've read for the first time as an adult, because I just don't know what I would have thought of them as a child.

(I am only listing authors who are dead in keeping with our blog's unofficial policy of not discussing work by living authors....not that we have ever even really talked about this, we just don't seem to do it.)

Sob inducers

A while ago Josie Levitt posted about crying in public over a book on the Publisher's Weekly Shelf Talker blog. I'm proud to say that she was sobbing over one of the books I edited, Sorta Like a Rock Star by Matthew Quick, a book I had also sobbed over in public the first time I read it.

Sorta Like a Rock Star is one of two books that I've edited in my career that have made me more than just cry--they've made me sob. Actual, stomach-heaving sobs. Not just moved, not just having tears well up in my eyes, but really cry. The other book was Rubber Houses by Ellen Yeomans.

I was remembering some of the books I sobbed over as a kid. The ones that stick out in my mind are My Brother Sam is Dead, Where the Red Fern Grows, Charlotte's Web, Summer of My German Soldier, and A Taste of Blackberries. I remember the sobbing, the streaming tears, the nose blowing and crumpled tissues. I remember feeling simultaneously anguished and reborn when I finished the books. God, I loved that feeling. A big cry feels good, particularly if it's not my own life's tragedies that I'm crying at.

As I always tell agents and announce at writer's conferences, I'm a sucker for books that make me cry. I just finished reading a wonderful book, One Crazy Summer by Rita Garcia-Williams. And yes, I had tears streaming down my face while on the train--although no actually sobbing this time, probably because they were tears of joy, rather than agony. But if you want sobbing, The Book Thief is your book.

I marvel at the skill of these authors to write such real characters, so real that I suffer true pain at the loss that the characters suffer, or pain when I lose them altogether. That's something.

What are some of your favorite sob inducers?

Ebooks couldn't

Our local bookstore (Bank Square books) has a big table of ARCs -- lots of places (A Libris, for one) sell these, even though it's illegal. At OUR bookstore, you donate a dollar per book and it all goes to our local library,which spends the money on new books. They've collected, and spent, over $200 so far.

I love this idea! Partly because of that, and partly because I am a hopeless addict when it comes to book-buying, I got:*

even though I'm moving on Tuesday and have already moved 20 boxes of books to my new apartment. As I was lugging them up the stairs, the thought did occurr to me that if I had a digital library I wouldn't have to be doing this....but I LIKE my books. In fact, I love many of them. They are my friends. I've had some since I was 4 -- and read some so many times that they are falling apart.

Some contain messages from people I love: my parents used to always write things in the books they gave us for Christmas. Toys were from Santa, but books were signed with love from Mommy (or Mummy in England!) and Daddy; or, sometimes, just one of them. A few years ago I read this in Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare--
"Dearest Libby,

We hope these plots will enrich your appreciation of Shakespeare's expression when you read him.

A very happy Christmas

Mommy & Daddy"

I have very few things (2 letters and 1 postcard) addressed to me in my father's handwriting, and this was like getting a real message from him, all these years after he died.

Another inscription makes me smile -- a childish hand has written:

"To dear Susan Koponen, with love from Grandma."

The real inscription (probably to me or one of my other sisters) has been erased. I have the book now because none of my siblings wanted it -- or any of our childhood books. So I suppose there will always be people who think of books as clutter and don't want them around, but I'll never be one of them.

I may buy ebooks to read on trips, but I won't abandon my old friends or stop buying new ones.

Have fun at ALA, everyone!
_______________________________________
*The Book of Dragons (because I love E. Nesbit -- AND, this clever volume is 2 books in one: the other side has The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald)
*Scones and Sensibility, because of the Jane Austen connectin
* The Fairy Godmother Academy, because the heroine is Finnish, like my father and half of me