Books We Read (or Were Read) at School

[Moonraker]

I can't remember any of our teachers reading a book to us, but I guess some must have done, especially in the Junior school.

No more can I. Maybe we were more than capable of reading ourselves.

[Bertie]

I don't have many memories of primary school at all. I don't know if it's partly to do with having no minds eye, so I can't 'picture' anything to help recall, but I only have the most minimal memories of that far back.
I think we were possibly read the occasional Roald Dahl book. But maybe that was at home as well - although it was almost exclusively one series of Enid Blyton or another on rotation! I never really read the more 'Fantasy' type children books. So even at three or four I, apparently, just wanted to hear about Famous Five, Find-Outers, etc, rather than anything about Elfs, Giants, or the like. So I'd normally stick to Enid Blyton, but I have vague memories of books like The BFG, Twits, and James and the Giant Peach that I think were from primary school.
I have much better memories from books / plays at secondary school - mostly the likes of Shakespeare, Dickens, Arthur Miller, Jane Austen...

[Debbie]

I used to hate being read to at school because I found it so slow! I would try and get hold of the book so I could read it to myself.

I can only remember two specific books being read at primary school. One was in year 5 (age 9/10) the teacher would read stories from the Winnie the Pooh set.
In year 6, the teacher read to us "Una and the Heaven baby".
I have a strange memory of that book. I remembered the basic story, and a specific scene. The scene I can remember word for word in my teacher's voice. I asked on a forum about this book a few years ago, as I wanted to trace it, and was given two possibilities: That one and "Three girls and a baby". So I bought both. I found the story the teacher had read to us was the first, but the specific scene, which I remembered so well in her voice, was actually from the other book which I had no memory, but must have read separately.

At secondary level we used to read books as a class. I normally finished them that evening. The ones I remember were:
No Boats on Bannermere (Geoffrey Trease)
Cue for Treason (Geoffrey Trease)
Treasure Island
Tom's Midnight Garden
Smith (Leon Garfield)
Moonfleet
Cider with Rosie
To Kill a Mockingbird

[Fiona1986]

On-topic I can clearly remember my teacher in primary 3 reading The Witches to us, but that's the only one I do remember. I can still hear her voice at in the early chapter when the book talks about how witches could be the woman on the bus or your kindly teacher who is reading the book to you at that very moment.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I think we were possibly read the occasional Roald Dahl book.

Roald Dahl was very popular in schools for decades. My teacher read his books to us in the 1970s and my son was given one of his books (Danny, the Champion of the World) as an end-of-year present from his teacher in about 2006. He also had Esio Trot as a reading book in infant school.

I can still hear her voice at in the early chapter when the book talks about how witches could be the woman on the bus or your kindly teacher who is reading the book to you at that very moment.

I bet she enjoyed reading that part!


I read Treasure Island at home with my daughter and son, Debbie. They both loved it, especially my son. My daughter also very much enjoyed Tom's Midnight Garden and To Kill a Mockingbird.

In case anyone is interested, we've got a thread here on 'Books We Read at School':

viewtopic.php?p=189385#p189385

It's a bit different from this thread but if anyone would prefer the two topics to be merged then let me know as I can do that if people want (and modify the title accordingly). Now merged.

[Boatbuilder]

Sounds like a sensible idea, Anita, to merge the two topics. Now merged.

Maybe also re-name it "Books we read, or were read to us, at school".

[Courtenay]

I had the same teacher for two years running in Grades 1 and 2 in primary school, and he would read to us most days. Very often it was Paul Jennings (Aussie writer of wacky and sometimes spooky short stories for kids, tremendously popular back in the late '80s / early '90s; I know some here remember the TV series Round the Twist, which was based on his books), other times it was Roald Dahl. I always enjoyed the way this teacher could put on all kinds of funny voices for the different characters — I particularly loved the way he did Mr and Mrs Twit! But I can't quite remember any other specific stories that we had read to us in the classroom.

We had a couple of sessions in the school library each week and usually the librarian (who varied from year to year) would read us a story. Every year in Australia there's a major competition for the best children's books, the Children's Book Council Book of the Year Awards, with six books shortlisted in each of the categories of picture books, novels for younger readers and novels for older readers — one of them gets the overall winner award and there are two runners-up. Our school library would always get those titles in when the shortlisted books were announced and pretty much every year, we'd have each of the six picture books read to us in the library and we'd vote on which one we thought should be the winner. It was always exciting and interesting to see which books were chosen and which one eventually won — sometimes not the one that was most popular with our class! We had some absolutely brilliant children's authors and illustrators in Australia when I was little and I've always felt we were particularly blessed to grow up with books that are still absolute classics over there. Not having spent much time in Australia for a long time and not having much contact with young children, I'm not sure if we still produce as many great children's books as we used to.

I should add it also helped to have a dad who was a primary school teacher (not at the same school my sister and I went to), and he often brought home books to try out with us before he read them to his class, or shared ones with us that he'd found his class liked! He retired quite young from teaching due to stress problems, but then went to work in the local public libraries (which he still does), so we always had access to plenty of books and grew up pretty much saturated in good literature!

Oh yes, now I'm just having memories of a less pleasant school library experience... my last school covered all ages from preschool to Year 12, and when I was doing my (Aussie equivalent of) A-levels, I spent a lot of time in the library studying, very often when there was a junior school class in the library. Unfortunately the junior school librarian was a lady who had a reeeeeally annoying voice when talking to little kids — the sort of exaggerated, saccharine, downright patronising tone that some grown-ups put on when talking to children. She meant well (and she did talk normally when talking to adults!), but it was quite painful to be trying to study for my exams with her reading a story to the younger kids in the background: "Now this is a story that comes from Denmark. And Denmark is a country a loooong waaay awaaay from here..." I can't really represent it effectively in writing, but hopefully anyone who's heard a grown-up talk like that will get the idea!!!

[Anita Bensoussane]

The voting sounds fun, Courtenay!

I used to enjoy watching Round the Twist with my daughter.

[Courtenay]

Yes, I remember you mentioning watching Round the Twist once before, Anita — I was amazed and delighted that it was screened outside Australia, as I had no idea it was! The first series of it was the best by far; in later ones they used different kids as the main characters, probably because the previous actors had grown up too much, and I seem to recall Paul Jennings eventually left the team and they had to invent their own stories, which weren't nearly as funny as his. I can still easily get the theme song stuck in my head! ("Have you ever... ever felt like this...")

The "voting" for our favourite CBC Picture Book of the Year candidates wasn't ever anything formal, as far as I remember — I think we just stuck our hands up for whichever one we liked the best! I can still remember quite a number of the titles. One of my favourites (though it wasn't the winner or runner-up that year) was The Best Beak in Boonaroo Bay by Narelle Oliver — I suppose it stayed with me because I love birds, and this one wove some nature facts into a fun story (bit like Enid Blyton with Pip!). The story is that a group of seashore birds are arguing about which one has "the best beak", so they agree to hold a competition that involves catching different types of food. Because each bird has a beak specially suited to catching its favourite food — the cormorant has a hooked beak for catching eels, the oystercatcher has a wedge-shaped beak for opening shells, the darter has a sharp beak for spearing fish, and so on — each one wins a particular round... so in the end all the birds have a prize ribbon each, and they have to agree there's no single "best beak" and they stop arguing and live peacefully again!

[Fiona1986]

I loved Round the Twist too and even have it on DVD now though I haven't watched it all.

[GloomyGraham]

The only book I can remember a teacher reading me at school (there must have been others earlier) was when I was maybe 8 years old and had just transferred to a newly built catholic school.

The teacher, Mr Boyle, read us 'Prince Caspian',

He was the first male teacher I'd had though I think I was only in his class for one term.

[RDMorrell]

In my very first year at primary school, I can remember reading some of the Berenstain Bears and Dr Seuss books. In my second year, our teacher read us The Magic Faraway Tree and also a book called The Robber Hotzenplotz. I think she might have also read us The Magic Finger. I enjoyed these well enough, but never liked them enough to get them for myself (although I did borrow The Robber Hotzenplotz from the school library at one stage). Even at the tender age of seven, the fantasy genre wasn't my bag.

My third year at primary school was when I got more into reading in a big way. Although I didn't like my third-year primary teacher very much, one thing she did very well was reading, and she introduced me to some great books, including Winnie the Pooh, Pippi Longstocking and a funny Australian book called Bottersnikes and Gumbles by S.A. Wakefield. I was inspired by her reading to seek these books out in the school library and read them for myself. I don't remember my subsequent primary school teachers reading to us all that much. However, I was influenced by various TV series to read many of Enid's Famous Five books, Richmal Crompton's Just William books, Heidi by Johanna Spyri and Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. My parents eventually bought me my own copies (usually for birthdays and Christmas). One exception was Bottersnikes and Gumbles, which was sadly out of print. (I eventually bought that book and its three sequels on eBay as an adult.)

Some of my favourite books to study in secondary school (and I eventually got my own copies) were The Diary of Anne Frank, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell and Macbeth by William Shakespeare. I quite enjoyed the dark and creepy atmosphere of the latter. I also remember studying John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, and got that along with The Grapes of Wrath later on.

Spent a couple of years in the States and was in Grades 5 and 6 there. However, I don't remember being read to much there, and I didn't much like some of the books we had to study. But I do recall borrowing a lot of Three Investigators books from the library (they had some very nice hardback editions) and sometimes reading them in class instead of the book we were meant to be studying.

[Debbie]

I have a number of 3 Investigator books. My favourite was Screaming Clock.

Round the Twist is always mentioned as one of the best theme tunes when that's been discussed. "Have you ever.. ever felt like this. Have strange things happen... you're going round the twist"
The Australian version of The Tomorrow People in the 90s was brilliant too.

[Anita Bensoussane]

It's interesting to hear about the books you remember from school, Rowan. I enjoyed reading Dr. Seuss books in the book corner at infant school. I found them wonderfully zany and loved the rhymes and rhythms.

I remember my dad reading one of the Berenstain Bears titles to me when I was little - Bears in the Night. It was slightly scary and my dad read it in a spooky voice, which I liked. I'd borrowed it from the library but I bought a copy for my own children when they were small, and they enjoyed it too.

I didn't discover the Three Investigators series until I was an adult, but I read the first 11 or 12 titles and thought they were great (some were better than others, but on the whole I thought the mysteries were cleverly crafted and good fun). Screaming Clock was my favourite too, Debbie!

I haven't seen the Australian version of The Tomorrow People but I liked the British version in the 1970s. The theme music and the images that accompanied it were gorgeously eerie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei7i7RFvrUM

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

and a funny Australian book called Bottersnikes and Gumbles by S.A. Wakefield.

I had that as a Christmas present from my aunt.

The teacher I had at age 8 was pretty hopeless, but I do remember the stories he read us

• The little wooden horse

• Tarka the Otter

• Moonfleet

- which is my favourite book. Not that he made any effort to show us the local connections

I'm sure most teachers read an end of the day story in infant and primary, but those are the ones I remember