Showing posts with label Children's Classics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Children's Classics. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Book Review - Johanna Spyri's Heidi

Heidi by Johanna Spyri
Published by: Everyman's Library
Publication Date: 1880
Format: Hardcover, 384 Pages
To Buy

Before my mom moved into a nursing home for some reason she became a little orphan obsessed, Anne of Green Gables, Heidi... many of our Children's Classics pulled off our library shelves and read and oddly reshelved all dealing with orphans. The reshelving is actually how I found out what she was reading. My mom was a wicked fast reader so I often didn't know what she was reading at any given time as a book could be picked up and completed in an afternoon and if I hadn't checked on her in awhile, well, the book was already done and dusted when I checked in on her. I have actually not read Heidi, I know, an oversight on my part but in fairness the beautiful Everyman's Library Children's Classics edition was just published last fall and I picked it up when at a Joe Hill event in Milwaukee. But I was mildly obsessed with Heidi when younger because I was a TV addict and the old movie stations would air it a lot. I'm not sure if it was the original Shirley Temple version or the later sixties version, I just remember being obsessed with the Alps and the gorgeous house. When I was little I often didn't care about story, it was all about setting for me. Could I lose myself in the sets and the place? Well yes I did. Perhaps that's why to this day I think the settings in books are so important, and give me a big country house any day and I'll be happy! 

Friday, November 6, 2020

Book Review - J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
Published by: Everyman's Library
Publication Date: 1911
Format: Hardcover, 240 Pages
To Buy

When my mom was little Peter Pan was her favorite Disney movie. I have spent more time that I can count having to listen to innumerable stories about being taken to Disney films when I was little and freaking out so bad that I had to be taken home. In an ironic twist of fate my brother would do this to me with The Jungle Book and I never knew the ending until it was re-released into theaters when I was a teenager. There was literally only five minutes left! HE COULD HAVE WAITED! Usually my mom took out these stories as amusing anecdotes, after all she'd seen all the films when she was younger so my losing it on seeing the mice in Cinderella was funny. But she was different about Peter Pan. I remember when it was re-released as we took our seats at Westgate with her sister and niece she looked at me and told me point blank, there would be no "Cinderella" freak out. No matter what happened we were staying. While the movie isn't close to my favorite Disney movie it did spawn a love of the book in me. One year for Christmas my parents got me and my brother a HUGE set of Children's Classics and the plan was to have nightly readings in the library. This actually happened once, perhaps twice. But I do know that the only book we read was Peter Pan. I was the one reading it aloud at the beginning and I don't know at what point I became so involved in the story that I didn't notice that my audience had left but leave they did. But I didn't leave that big uncomfortable pink wingback chair until I finished the book. I think that was the first book I binged in one sitting.     

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