Dodos and daemons: Our favourite children's books
From wizards to The Wind in the Willows, The Skinny’s Books team considers the enduring appeal of children’s literature.
As the literary world celebrates Beatrix Potter’s birth and The BFG hits cinema screens – and as Manchester Children’s Book Festival continues – we thought we’d ask our Books team to reread their favourite books from childhood.
Grab your dinosaur teddy and a bag of lollipops, and take a nostalgia trip with us...
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, by J. K. Rowling (1997)
Harry Potter was probably the definitive childhood book series for my generation and definitely for me. People queued up outside bookstores for it, devoured its hundreds of pages in single sittings, gossiped madly about new twists and swore deathly vengeance upon anyone who spoiled them. Each new entry broke records and stole headlines, a true Beatles-esque phenomenon, a massive monocultural moment where the experience of a random kid in Glasgow briefly synced up with something going on across the world.
Coming back to it now, what hits me most is pretty much the most obvious thing about it – this thing is freakin’ tiny. At the time it was this epic tale where a whole school year unfolded slowly, friendships deepened and the sense of something sinister crept steadily closer from the shadows. Now it’s a titchy thing you could breeze through in an hour or two.
Time moves very differently when you’re a kid and only seems to accelerate as you get older, but there’s also something about the total immersion you can find in a story as a child that makes it feel like a full world of its own, living in its own time. When you recapture that later on, you know you’ve found something special. [Ross McIndoe]
The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame (1908)
An elegant pastoral daydream, can the pleasures of The Wind in the Willows stand up to cynical adult eyes? When the woods get wilder and there are weasels everywhere, are the bright colours of the river bank darkened by a much crueller world?
It’s impossible to deny a scent of classism in the leisurely life of the protagonists (where are the weasels’ motorcars?), not to mention the sunny naiveté of the pre-war world. But I find the beauty and elegance of the book all the more poignant nowadays. It’s fine balm in a weary world, the same Wodehouse sunshine. Of note is Ratty’s reluctance – if not terror – of going to the ‘wide world’ beyond the river bank, and who can blame him really? We can’t get our childhood back among our day-to-day struggles, but there is just momentary comfort to be had in simply messing about in boats. [Sean Hutchings]
Happy Mouseday, by Dick King-Smith (1994)
Children have always been a rebellious breed, and books such as Happy Mouseday from disquiet-peddler Dick King-Smith only encourage an already rampant modern instinct against the status quo. The story looks at the case of Peter, a precocious small human determined to acquire a pet mouse for some undefined end.
Smith’s rabble-rousing protagonist disregards the cautious and perhaps fearful objections of his parents, and purchases the animal with the money they gave him for more wholesome means. Citing a tenuous loophole in the original declaration, the boy keeps the mouse in his treehouse, outside the main familial abode and therefore theoretically outside the bounds of his parents’ moral jurisdiction.
The effects of this seemingly throwaway, Key Stage 1 story are clear: it has bred a whole generation of children dissatisfied with the wisdom of their elders and disrespectful of their rules, and one that can, and will, exploit loopholes to their own rotten gain. It teaches them that they can rename days of the week ‘Mouseday’ willy-nilly, without any consequences to the stock market or bus schedules. [Jenni Ajderian]
Northern Lights, by Phillip Pullman (1995)
Opening this book for the first time in a decade, I was delighted to find a homemade bookmark depicting the novel’s fabled alethiometer, varnished in gold glitter. This alone brought a rush of warm feelings, but rereading Lyra Belacqua’s adventures was just as magical, familiar, and comforting as a powder of fresh snow.
Rarely is a fantasy novel so full of delicious ambiguity. The writing is gently poetic, and perfectly paced; the heroine is just as savvy and precocious as I remember, while a genuine sense of otherworldliness seeps from every chapter. What struck me the most is how boldly Pullman attacks organised religion without dampening discussions of the soul.
What does it mean, for instance, if someone’s daemon is the same sex as they are (an exceedingly rare thing, apparently)? This book was my first exposure to serious theological questions. It made an impact on me then, and it still does, with mysteries that beg to be talked about. [Joshua Potts]
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams (1979)
As the country disintegrates into Brexit and tears, there’s no better time to revisit Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The earth gets destroyed to make way for a new intergalactic bypass in the first few pages, which seems fair and almost comforting in the current political climate.
Returning to a book I read and loved as a 12 year old, I thought the jokes might be a little old, or the story too clunky for refined graduate tastes. I was wrong. It’s just as relatable now as it was when I was a teenager, perfectly capturing that feeling of helplessness in a world that suddenly got a whole lot bigger. It’s a book about carrying on regardless, of accepting all the unfair and improbable shit that life throws at you. Adams’ prose style is at once silly and subtle, expansive and extremely parochial.
The passages where he really lets his mind run free are the best – giving random objects deep thoughts, leaping into great freefalls of free-association, arriving at a pathetic anti-climax with a wry smile and a fully realised sense of mischief. It’s a short, dazzling, hilarious book, and even better for being swallowed whole as an adult, with so much more experience of lesser writers. [Galen O’Hanlon]
Dodos Are Forever, by Dick King-Smith (1989)
Something really interesting happens when you return to a book that you read as a child. It’s a very corporeal kind of nostalgia where you suddenly find yourself transported to your past, but with a foreboding knowledge of your future – and of the book’s ending.
Reading Dodos Are Forever by Dick King-Smith again as an adult I can admit that this is not a well-crafted tale. I must also confess that I was unable to refrain from imposing my own personal agendas on the images of the dodos’ plight, as I instantly equated it with Trumpism and Europhobia. But despite this, there’s a timeless innocence and beauty between the lines that cannot be tarnished.
The beautiful partnership of colourful characters and the black and white illustrations of David Parkins has always lingered with me. It creates a truly beautiful sentiment that appeals not only to the child I was, but to the adult I am. It’s this notion that, although the dodo is extinct, in many ways everything is forever. While it must be at least 15 years since I first read this book, I find myself still adamant that dodos are forever; something I know will still be true in another 15. [Rosie Barron]
Manchester Children’s Book Festival 2016 runs until 3 July