I haven't posted as much as I would have liked to this month, I've just been extremely busy with university and volunteering. To make up for the lack of blog posts, I am going to do a double post today. As a child I read a lot. I would devour book after book. I remember at primary school we had fortnightly trips to the library which I loved, but it wasn't enough, so my mum would take me to the library every other week as well. Another thing I remember from primary school is that when we had finished a book, we would have to fill out a fun book report sheet and put them in our folders (to try and encourage reading), most of the children in my class would fill out maybe one of these fun report sheets a week but I was nearly filling out one a day! I have always loved to read and still do and I thought that I blog post on what I used to love reading would be perfect!
Early Childhood
My mum would read to both me and my brother every day and night before bed and we both absolutely loved it. When we were really young, the go-to books were almost always the Walt Disney Ladybird Classics (top right). Every single book in that collection was owned by us and had it's own place in our rooms on our bookshelves. Because of this, my parents created a personalised Disney book for me, The Little Mermaid starring myself, Stephanie and Sarah (friends at the time) and Stuart received a Batman version. As I grew older and learned to read myself, I would read the books to my brother and we would make up our own versions of the stories. Winnie the Pooh and Beatrix Potter both had there place in everyone's childhood, for me that place was at my nana's house on her big armchair or in the spare bedroom when I would stay the night. She would read me the stories of Peter Rabbit and Winnie and then I would fall asleep to the accompanying VHS tape. I remember opening the Alice in Wonderland Jigsaw Book one Christmas and instantly going for the pages with the Jigsaws on them and completely forgetting about the story itself. I absolutely loved Barbie when I was little and when my mum gave me the Barbie as Rapunzel book, I carried it almost everywhere with me for around a month, I must have read the book at least twenty times!
Mid Childhood
I could read before I went to school, so when I did go to school and we had fortnightly public library trips, our own school library and bookshelves in each classroom, I absolutely loved it. I had a pretty rough time in primary school so reading became my way to escape. Animal books where a particular favourite and I had plenty of them! The Animal Ark, Puppy Patrol, Twins at St Clare's and Sheltie the Shetland Pony Series kept me occupied for hours at a time, I would finish a story a day with these books and often had audiobooks of them to listen to as well. My Secret Unicorn series was one of my all-time favourites which is why I still own all the books in the series to pass on to a child of mine in the future. One of the things that I loved the most about this series was the fact that the main character who owned a the horse that turned into the unicorn at night was called Lauren. The first time I read Ballet Shoes, I was about 7 and it took me quite a long time to read because the writing was so small and it was a good couple of hundred pages long but when I did eventually finish it, I loved it and became obsessed with Ballet as a result. It quickly became one of my favourite books and still is to this day.
Later Childhood
I found the transition to high school quite difficult so reading was still my way primary way of escape. Television and writing also became ways of escape. Besides Harry Potter, Jacqueline Wilson was a must have for pretty much all pre-teens and teenagers. I own all the Jacqueline Wilson books and would often stay up all night finishing her books. I remember when I bought my first three books of hers in a shop in the local shopping centre; Dustbin Baby, The Illustrated Mum and Secrets, I had saved my money up for three weeks. Those books where quite lengthy but nevertheless finished within five days of purchasing them. The only thing I really liked about high school at first was the size of the library and the variation of books it contained. I started reading different genre's of books including fantasy. The Inheritance Cycle in hardback is one of the best purchases I ever made, the books are amazing and don't really have an age limit. It took me a whole month to read Eragon (the first book in the series) when I was twelve but it was most definitely worth it and certainly didn't put me off reading the other books in the series. I would recommend this series to absolutely anybody even if you might not think it is your preferred type of book. The Darren Shan Series was also a childhood classic for me. Images of me reading these books on a beach in Spain comes to mind and I read six of the twelve books whilst on a family holiday. These books where originally my brothers but he wasn't reading them so I thought I would. They have just the right amount of adventure and horror in them to make them very enjoyable to read and gripping from start to finish. Another genre that I began to read was crime and young adult. Catherine MacPhail books occupied quite a bit of my bookshelf when I was about 13 and I was lucky enough to meet her and for her to sign my favourite book of hers; Roxy's Baby. It has quite a sinister story line involving a pregnant teenager but was gripping from beginning to end and I read the book in one sitting. Quite a lot of the books I read from the ages of 12-14/15 involved teenage pregnancy when I think back, what can I say, I was a unique child.
I hope you have enjoyed the first in hopefully a series of Childhood Favourites blog posts in the future. Thanks for reading and I'll have more blog posts up soon xxx
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