A children’s books special today, featuring Frances Hodgson Burnett and Philippa Pearce. Not in person, you understand.
In the first half of the episode, we discuss whether it’s better to read children’s books as children or as adults (especially if we ended up missing those particular books as children). We enjoy ranging over the different children’s books we’ve enjoyed at different times – and would love to hear your thoughts.
In the second half, we look at two garden-focused children’s books – Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce and The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was great fun to read them – thanks Lauren for the suggestion!
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(Quick note: I say in the episode that I never met someone who loved reading until I went to university – I meant anybody my age! I did meet some older people who loved reading :) )
The books and authors we mention are:
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson
The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson
So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson
Tea With Walter du la Mare by Russell Brain
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Enid Blyton
Jennings series by Anthony Buckeridge
Jacqueline Wilson
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers
The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
Lady Daisy by Dick King-Smith (not Anne Fine!)
Little Women by Lousia M. Alcott
Mallory Towers series by Enid Blyton
The Naughtiest Girl in the School by Enid Blyton
The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks
William series by Richmal Crompton
Goosebumps series by R.L. Stine
Baby-Sitters Club series by Ann M. Martin
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Judy Blume
The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Moondial by Helen Cresswell
Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery
Beauty by Robin McKinley
Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley
Redwall by Brian Jacques
The Time Garden by Edward Eager
Linnets and Valerians by Elizabeth Goudge
Dealing with Dragons by Patricia Wrede
Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones
Charlotte Bronte
A Dog So Small by Philippa Pearce
The Priory by Dorothy Whipple
Housebound by Winifred Peck
I must admit that I read a lot of ‘children’s’ books in my 20s (from Garner to Lively to loads more) and absolutely loved them, so I don’t know that it necessarily matters. I may have got more from them then than when I was younger. I wonder if I could read them now – but then again, I read “The Runaways” by Elizabeth Goudge within the last few years and loved it! And I could probably read anything by Diana Wynne Jones (who I rate much more highly than J.K. Rowling – shhhhh……)
I agree! I am coming up on 30, but I have loved reading children’s books in my 20s that I never knew about as a child, and I expect that to continue my whole life. :) I read Tom’s Midnight Garden for this episode. I had never heard of it before, and I loved it! Thanks for the rec.
I think I would have chosen reading children’s books as an adult because I’ve had so many good experiences with discovering children’s books and finding them just as good as a lot of adult books. The process of discovering them itself has been so fun! Some of my recently-discovered favorite children’s authors are Elizabeth Enright and Gary Schmidt, one classic and one modern.
Thanks for this episode. A great listen!
Diana Wynne Jones was brilliant! Dogsbody was one of my favorites as a child, I read it over and over. I was so delighted to discover Howl’s Moving Castle as an adult, and I’ve since read nearly all her books.
Great podcast! And I know what you mean about picturing the TV version as you read the book — once I’ve seen a TV or movie adaptation of a book, it’s hard for me to picture it any other way (i.e., Harry Potter). For me the book that I assumed I would know was The Wizard of Oz. I never read the original even though I went on to read the entire series afterward — I assumed I knew the first book well enough from the movie so I never bothered. Years later I read the original to my children and was struck by how different the book is. (In particular, the flying monkeys are NOT the witch’s minions, they just owe her a favor).
I’ve also just started reading So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed and it’s very good, and I want to read The Men Who Stare at Goats because it just sounds so bizarre. (After I finish rereading both The Secret Garden and Tom’s Midnight Garden.)
Also I forgot that one of my favorite childhood books was Mandy by Julie Edwards, also about an orphan that discovers a garden. In retrospect it’s really just another version of The Secret Garden but without the consumption.
I still reread many of my favorite children’s books, though as you point out, some don’t stand the test of time. The ones I really loved tend to be books that do hold up over time, though. I also read children’s and YA books as an adult; again, not all of them hold up, but some are clearly going to become classics. I was an adult when the Harry Potter books came out, and I have loved those. My (now adult) daughter introduced me to The Penderwicks, which is charming and will probably hold up pretty well. When she was growing up, I read some of the other books that she was reading as well, so we could talk about them, and I’ve read books I missed when I was growing up, and books that weren’t yet written. Of course, I read adult books too, and enjoy them. But regarding children’s books, I tend to agree with C.S. Lewis that “A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest” and with Madeleine L’Engle that sometimes you can write about something for children that is, in its way, too difficult or challenging for adults. (She said that about A Wrinkle in Time.) My own personal reading credo is that if a book is good, and well-written, then it’s a good book regardless of the age it was ostensibly written for.
I absolutely love The Penderwicks books! I just found out today that the last Penderwicks book comes out in May. It’s called, appropriately, ‘The Penderwicks At Last’. Yay!!
Oh, lovely! I just added it to my to-read list.
Who wrote the Penderwicks books, please? They have never come in my way.
Jeanne Birdsall wrote The Penderwicks books. I hope you love them!
This was an especially wonderful episode for me because I adore both books. My parents gave me The Secret Garden for Christmas when I was ten. It absorbed me completely — oddly, perhaps, because I was a kid growing up in a tract home in Silicon Valley who had never seen a place remotely like Misselthwaite Manor. But I do think it’s where my love of books set in big English houses was born (and where my love of gardens was born).
Years later — around age thirteen? — I read Tom’s Midnight Garden. I adored it. Just last year, in fact, I read it aloud with my older son (then ten years old). He loved it too and kept begging for another chapter each night. Music to a bookish mom’s ears!
Thanks for your podcast, Simon. I discovered it last year and it brings so much delight to my commute. I’m constantly updating my “To Read” list.
Simon, I also read Jennings! Although, I much preferred Crompton’s ‘Just William’ series, which, at their best, are still unbeatable.
What a wonderful podcast….I’ve just listened to it for the first time, although I’ve been reading Stuck in a Book on and off for the last 10 years. I loved ‘Tom’s Midnight Garden’; it haunted me, as the best children’s books should.
I loved reading children’s books as an adult or older teenager. One of my most magical literary experiences was because of school time-tabling. During my AS Levels, I had two weeks of study leave after my exams had finished (!), and I spent the whole time reading Susan Cooper’s ‘the Dark is Rising’ series. Not enough people have read them….in my mind, they are the perfect children’s fantasy series, weaving arthurian and ancient Welsh myth with 1970s Britain. Brilliant.
I don’t know if this was the experience of other readers, but reading Agatha Christie was a very formative part of my childhood. I read the first one (‘Murder at the Vicarage’) and second (‘Death on the Nile’) when I was 11 or 12. I then read ‘Crooked House’ and was a little scared….but my teenage years were dominated by reading nearly all of her crime novels.
Thought the discussion on Enid Blyton was hilarious. They too permeated my consciousness, and were the first proper books I ever read on my own. Has anyone read ‘The Adventurous Four’? Simon, I think we’ve discussed this before. It’s a Blyton set during the war (and published in 1941 during the desperate early part of the conflict) and concerns four children who stumble across a secret Nazi submarine base after being lost at sea. It’s genuinely scary compared to most Blytons and ends with the children (some of whom are in tears at this point) hearing the guns of the Royal Navy as they blast the Germans out of their base. It’s a very arresting set piece to end the book with and I will never forget it! I think it’s one of her better adventure stories and one of the few set in ‘real’ history. An interesting curio.
I’ve just been re-reading, as an adult (early 30s) the Biggles books, which I was addicted to as a child. They are not brilliantly written and the prose can be toe curdlingly dated, but the plots hold up very well. I still love them, especially the ones published before and during World War Two. I devoured them as a young boy.
One genre of children’s fiction that I’ve also re-read and loved as an adult is the mid-20th Century children’s historical fiction. Rosemary Sutcliffe (esp. her ‘Eagle of the Ninth’ series) and Henry Treece (esp. his ‘Viking Saga’) were brilliant then and are brilliant now. Historically, they are very accurate and do not shy away from complex and difficult themes. Although written for children then, I think many adults would love them now.
Hello
Great episode thank you! Just to recommend The Painted Garden – Noel Streatfeild’s story about making a film of The Secret Garden in America. It has a disgruntled heroine playing Mary – and transforming along the way – so would recommend it to Secret Garden fans.
Also if you like Tom’s Midnight Garden (who doesn’t?!) then The Minnow on the Say by Philippa Pearce is also very good.
Came across your podcast when looking up information about the Secret Garden.
I haven’t read it, but Tom’s Midnight Garden was one of my favourite books as a child. I had wondered if they were similar. I have been listening to Harry Potter on Audibles with my daughter (just the first few books which are less scary as she is still young) and planning to read Tom’s Midnight Garden to her. Maybe we will try The Secret Garden and some others too.
I found Simon’s comments about kids and gardens quite amusing. We live in Australia and have pet chickens and a veggie patch, and I spend quite a lot of time outside with my daughter. She does know the names of a lot of flowers, insects, birds and a lot of random facts about wildlife. There are always things to discover in the garden… we have a lot of lizards and when flowers bloom she gets excited. She has started scout which also teach a lot about the Aussie bush so I think there would be a lot of kids as equally fascinated by nature. Its not so weird. haha
There was also a book I loved as a kid called the Wicked, Wicked Ladies in the Haunted House. haha I have been keeping my eyes open for it at the opshop and I do wonder if I read it again if I would enjoy it like I did as a kid…?
Anyhoo thanks for listen and the recommendations!
Thanks so much, Emily!