Monster Cookies

Books From My Childhood

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

There are books that I remember from my childhood that I wish I could find now, so that I could read them to my children. I never did read all the books that seem to be classics now, like the Beverly Cleary ones or others like that. I didn’t get around to reading any of the Little House on the Prairie series, or the Anne of Green Gables series (though I did love the show and movies of those, respectively).

The books that I remember, that somehow made an impression on me, are nothing special. But I wonder about them now, if the way that I perceived them then is the way I would perceive them now. I wish I could find them, but my search for them has always returned zero results.

Book #1 – The Boy Who Could Make His Mother Stop Yelling
This book was about a little boy who got into a whole bunch of mischief. His mom yelled at him for it too. But then he did something that made her realize he was just a little boy and that she loved him and didn’t want to yell. I owned a copy of this book as a child; either my brother or I scribbled through it, with colours and with a black marker. The illustrations were black and white.

(edited to add: I found this book at my parents’ house!)

Book#2 – The Little Leftover Witch
This book followed the story of a witch who didn’t make it home before Halloween ended. She ended up having to stay with a regular family and live a regular life. It was interesting to see the obstacles she overcame as she tried to fit in in a regular school. It was an easy novel.

Book #3 – The Twisted Room
The Twisted Room was a novel, read to my class by a teacher. I believe I was in grade five or six at the time and I was so intrigued by the book that I could not wait until the next time we would get to hear more. Comparing to other books I’ve read since then, I’d say it had a bit of a V.C. Andrews feel to it – the haunting unease, but not terrifying scary. There were a girl and a boy in the story, I believe, and one of them lived up in an attic in an old house. The other noticed the first from the outside of the home and they built a friendship somehow. The child in the attic may have been a ghost, and there was some sort of discrepancy in time – perhaps the child in the attic lived many decades before the one who saw him/her from outside the home. Intriguing and spellbinding and I remember it to be very well written. This is the one that I wish the most to find. All of my searches return a book entitled, “The Twisted Window,” which it turns out, is not the same story.

Has anyone out there heard of these books? Did you read them in school? What did you think?

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