Memories of your first novel

Which other authors do you enjoy? Discuss them here.
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Daisy
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Re: Memories of your first novel

Post by Daisy »

I can't remember the first full length book I read but it could well have been "the Secret Island" followed by some of the early Fives books, the Find-Outers and the early Barney books. Other authors I read at that time were Kathleen Fidler (the Brydon series) Gaye Knowles (the Islanders series) and some of the early Chalet books by Elinor Brent-Dyer all of which were borrowed from the library. I enjoyed "Heidi" too, by Johanna Spyri but wasn't so keen on the following two by Charles Tritten.
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Re: Memories of your first novel

Post by Darrell71 »

I really don't remember. But it might've been Five on a Treasure Island or The Secret Room or any other.

Btw Daisy, Heidi is a great book and I love the atmosphere and mountainous feel. I haven't read the following two. What did you think of the movie?
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Re: Memories of your first novel

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

I've seen several film/TV adaptations of Heidi but the only one that has stuck in my mind is the 1978 TV series - a Swiss/German production which was dubbed into English. The story was beautifully told (though I think the later episodes departed from the book) and the scenery was breathtaking. I've since been to Switzerland and loved it.

Daisy, I've read Johanna Sypri's book many times but, like you, I was never keen on Charles Tritten's sequels. Heidi Grows Up was okay as far as I remember, though somewhat dull, but I found Heidi's Children very frightening as a child. I remember it featured a girl called Marta (one of Heidi's children, perhaps?) who struck me as morose and rather spooky. There was a scene where she was staring up at the clouds and thought they looked like fingers, and she imagined a giant hand coming down to grab her. The episode was linked to someone's death. When I was six or seven I read that passage out in the garden and it made me shiver. I looked up at the clouds and they suddenly seemed horribly menacing, just as described in the book. I hurried into the house and didn't go out in the garden again that day!
"Heyho for a starry night and a heathery bed!" - Jack, The Secret Island.

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Re: Memories of your first novel

Post by Daisy »

I can't remember that cloud incident Anita but I was considerably older than seven when I read the books so it probably didn't have such an impact!
I rarely watch films Sunskriti, so am sure I haven't seen "Heidi" although I do remember a TV adaptation which differed so much from my imagined ideas that I didn't really enjoy it very much.
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Re: Memories of your first novel

Post by Chrissie777 »

Robert Houghton wrote:I always used to feel the same about The Famous Five until I read them all in chronological order last year. I agree they aren't the best Blyton series, but I love the sunny holiday atmosphere, the feeling of freedom and the fun of the plots. I tend to look on the other series like Adventure and Barney mysteries as being quite serious, but the Famous Five as just being good fun! :-)

Well, I love the underground passages, islands, castles. All that enhanced my imagination. Since I was a child I wanted to see more of England, because of these wonderful books.
For me EB was the first author (until I discovered Norman Dale) who wrote about underground passages and castles etc. So this was different than the other less adventurous children's books that I used to read until 1965.

Same here, I read the FF in the wrong order (I think nobody cared way back then if there was a certain order to books, moreover the German publishers either didn't translate all sequels or when they did, they often did not make their little readers aware of the fact that there were other sequels and which was the right order...Hodder & Stoughton did a great job in every hardcover copy that I purchased in the past of letting the reader know about the chronological order), but once I had found the last missing FF sequel with Soper illustrations on a flea market, I read them all in chronological order for the first time in the 1980's (and enjoyed it a lot :)).
Nowadays I only read my favorite FF sequels and skip the ones that I don't care for.

It would be very hard for me to say which EB series I prefer more. Maybe the Adventure series a bit more than the FF, because the character development simply is stronger and the baddies are more scary. The books have on an average 100 extra pages compared with the FF, so that makes a big difference, of course. EB was able to go into more detail in the Adventure series books compared with her FF series.
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Re: Memories of your first novel

Post by Rebeccadanielle »

My first novel was a book about an elf. The book had belonged to my mum when she was a kid, it had very large print and some simple illustrations in it. I was reading it at 6 with her to help with my reading as I found the ladybird Peter and Jane books terribly boring and easy. Mum had listened to me read aloud a Peter and Jane book and decided that since I had to read aloud to her each night I may as well have a book with some sort of plot and could find enjoyable. I had always assumed it was an Enid Blyton book but a few years ago I came across it again and realised that her name is not there at all, I have no idea who wrote the book. I did start reading Enid Blyton straight away which is probably why I confused the book. My first Enid Blyton novels were the Faraway Tree ones.
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Re: Memories of your first novel

Post by Courtenay »

The Faraway Tree books are the first novels I can definitely remember reading (along with Mum — we would usually alternate reading a chapter each and she would help me with any words I didn't know). But I definitely knew about Enid Blyton even before that — I had Noddy from an early age and of course the Famous Five were on the telly! :wink: I think the next Blyton novel I had after the Faraway Tree series was The Wishing-Chair Again (I didn't read the first book until a few years later when I borrowed it from my cousin), closely followed by The Treasure Hunters, which was my sister's favourite and soon one of mine as well.

The first non-Blyton novel I can remember — though there were probably others that didn't stay with me — was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which Mum and I read when I was five. I usually liked fantasy stories the best — ones about magic and mythical creatures and other worlds where things happen that simply don't in our world — so between Enid Blyton and C.S. Lewis and Tolkien a bit later, there was plenty to get me hooked on reading!
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Re: Memories of your first novel

Post by Machupicchu14 »

I have also seen many movie adaptations of Heidi, but I also can't really remember them, which is a great pity. I remember at the time I also read the Secret of Garden, an extraordinary book.
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Re: Memories of your first novel

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

I agree that The Secret Garden is extraordinary and I also enjoyed A Little Princess by the same author.

For some reason I loved the everyday ordinariness of the Peter and Jane books, Rebecca! In the early titles the children don't do anything more exciting than buy sweets, stroke horses at the farm, play on the beach and go to the fair. However, the pictures are so detailed and attractive (especially in the older editions) that they make up for the lack of story! There is more drama in the later Peter and Jane titles, but as a small child I left the series halfway through and switched to fairy-tales and Enid Blyton so I didn't get as far as 10a Adventure on the Island or 10b Adventure at the Castle.
"Heyho for a starry night and a heathery bed!" - Jack, The Secret Island.

"There is no bond like the bond of having read and liked the same books."
- E. Nesbit, The Wonderful Garden.


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Re: Memories of your first novel

Post by Courtenay »

We never had any Peter and Jane books, but in my parents' day there were the John and Betty books, at least in Australia. Mum and Dad read them to us when we were very little too. The first one, helpfully titled John and Betty, was along the lines of:

This is John. This is Betty.
John can jump. Betty can jump too.

(Etc.) 8)

But the more advanced books about them — Playmates and Holidays — had quite a bit more in the way of plot and were just about novellas, so perhaps they could almost count as "my first novel"! I can't remember much about either of them, except that at the end of Playmates there was a beautiful colour illustration of the family gathered around a huge Christmas tree, which was my favourite part.

Oh look, here they are! :D https://victoriancollections.net.au/ite ... 10a840f248" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

(Incidentally, "Victorian" here refers to the State of Victoria, not to the era in which my parents went to school. :wink: )
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Re: Memories of your first novel

Post by Rob Houghton »

I didn't realise you were THAT old Courtenay! ;-)
'Oh voice of Spring of Youth
hearts mad delight,
Sing on, sing on, and when the sun is gone
I'll warm me with your echoes
through the night.'

(E. Blyton, Sunday Times, 1951)



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Re: Memories of your first novel

Post by Courtenay »

:roll: :P :wink:
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Re: Memories of your first novel

Post by Chrissie777 »

Anita Bensoussane wrote:For some reason I loved the everyday ordinariness of the Peter and Jane books, Rebecca! In the early titles the children don't do anything more exciting than buy sweets, stroke horses at the farm, play on the beach and go to the fair. However, the pictures are so detailed and attractive (especially in the older editions) that they make up for the lack of story!
For the same reason I loved the Milly-Molly-Mandy books by Brisley which I read in two German translations from Franz Schneider Verlag some 53+ years ago. They had gorgeous illustrations by a German illustrator done in the mid 1950's when the illustrators still created outstanding, beautiful children's books illustrations.
A few years ago when I looked up the MMM books, I discovered that what I read as a child from Milly-Molly-Mandy was just the tip of the iceberg, so I ordered the remaining books in English (they were never translated into German). And as much as I enjoyed the further stories of MMM, I have to admit that I was pretty disappointed with the rather plain Brisley illustrations.
But at least she had created a map of the village which was not included in the two German books.
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Re: Memories of your first novel

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

I also read some of the Milly-Molly-Mandy tales (with the Brisley illustrations) and enjoyed looking at the map of the village. My daughter liked them too when she was little. Although the stories were simple, they were still stories. The Peter and Jane books are "readers" so most of them don't have a coherent story - just snapshots of the children's lives with short sentences like "Peter has a toy and Jane has a toy" (you have to look at the picture to see that Peter has bought a toy digger from the shop and Jane has bought a doll).
"Heyho for a starry night and a heathery bed!" - Jack, The Secret Island.

"There is no bond like the bond of having read and liked the same books."
- E. Nesbit, The Wonderful Garden.


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Re: Memories of your first novel

Post by timv »

I can't remember exactly what order I read the following in, but these were definitely the first novels I read - having already tackled Enid's versions of the 'Brer Rabbit ' short stories. I read the following in a batch when I was eight:

Enid - The Secret of Spiggy Holes . I read this before 'Secret Island', thus I did not understand all the 'back story' about Jack.
The Adventurous Four; The Adventurous Four Again.
Five On A Treasure Island , Five Go Adventuring Again. I read the next few books in more or less chronological order, depending on being able to get hold of them, except Five Go Off To Camp which sounded too scary . ('Knight' editions)
Hurrah For The Circus (read before first book in series - so I did not understand all the back-story.)
Mystery of the Vanished Prince (same problem!)
Six Cousins Again (ditto)

Hugh Lofting - The Voyages Of Dr Dolittle (Puffin edition), then Dr Dolittle's Zoo and Dr Dolittle's Circus. This is an overlooked classic series and a favourite of mine; and the romance of circus life was as strong here as in Enid. He also had sympathetic working-class characters, in an 'ordinary' West Country town in a Victorian setting. I did not notice any alleged 'racism', another reason why this series has had restricted republication from censorious editors. The 'Africans' were a bit stereotyped, but so were a lot of characters - and Lofting campaigned against cruelty to animals, 'sent up' military buffoons fighting senseless wars (as a World War One veteran) and fox-hunting, and had a 'Native American' wise man scientist who knew more than pompous UK academics plus a sharp-witted parrot a bit like Kiki.
Monica Edwards - Punchbowl Harvest; Summer of the Great Secret.
Joanna Spyri - Heidi.
The first 'fantasy novels' I read were JRR Tolkien 'The Hobbit' and Alan Garner 'The Weirdstone of Brisingamen'.
There was also Peter Dickinson (died recently, rather under-rated) and his 'Changes' Trilogy, one of which was serialised in 'Look and Learn' c. 1968.
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