I read with interest the Here in the Bonny Glen’s post on Noel Perrin’s book A Child’s Delight about bringing back nearly-forgotten classics into a child’s reading library. The Common Room gives a slightly longer list of some of the books covered, as well as more background as to how the book came to be. Both blogs talk with great enthusiasm about books I have never heard of and now feel I must investigate for myself as much as for my children. We have made inroads into Hugh Lofting, Margery Sharp and E. Nesbit over the last couple of years – and we mean to read Mary Norton’s The Borrowers before we go and see a stage adaptation of it in January – but there are many others there to add to the “to read” list.
Revisiting favorites from my own childhood is one of the things I love about reading with my children and by reading them together, I get to share in their enthusiasm for them too – hence Dr Doolittle and others, like The Secret Garden - but there are also books that I wish I’d read and somehow never got round to – thus we have all followed the adventures of Five Children and It and its sequel The Phoenix and the Carpet in the same state of unknowing.
At present, we are reading Russel Hoban’s The Mouse and his Child, (more…)