Homecoming, by Cynthia Voight

Before I tell you about this book, let me say that finding the cover that I remember it having (the pinkish one that I posted up there) was a giant pain.  I even re-bought this book recently at the goodwill and it had this cover, but the one that I found every time I searched was this:

Isn’t that kind of way cool and trendy looking?  They did the whole series with these kind of covers.  If I were a kid, I’d go totally crazy for these books. Again.

Anyway.

I loved this book.  I think that there were three or four in the series about this family and I know that I read all of them, but I must have read this first one 20 times, no exaggeration.  I think that the first couple of times that I read it, I was probably too young to really “get” it and it is one of the first books that I remember that kept revealing new stuff to me as I continued to read it.

Dicey is just a young teen (maybe 14 or so?) when her totally unstable mother up and leaves Dicey and her three younger siblings at a shopping mall.  She just goes in, leaves the kids in the car and never comes back.  When they realize what has happened and that they are solo now, Dicey totally steps up and starts taking care of her younger siblings.  She gets into her head that they need to head north, where they have some relatives, so she leads these kids on this journey.  They have 10 or 15 bucks and they just do what they need to do.  They sleep and camp in random places, eat random food and just make it day-to-day.

What I remember mostly was that Dicey was in-freaking-credible.  Seriously, one of the best young adult heroines that I’ve come across even to this day.  I just remember being totally struck on how strong and good that she was.  She just got up every day and cheered up her siblings.  She didn’t know where their next meal was going to come from, but she didn’t let anything slow her down or make her second guess.  Even when she got to her relative’s house and they, um, were not what she expected, she didn’t crumble.  She was just awesome.

After thinking about this book and looking at the covers I’ve gotten myself all excited.  I wouldn’t be surprised if I pick this one up soon for a re-read.  It’s that good.

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Winnie-The-Pooh, by A.A. Milne

In my book, you kinda can’t go wrong with Winnie-The-Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit and ol’ Christopher Robin.  I remember reading this when I was younger and thinking, even then, that it was maybe the cutest thing ever written.  When Winnie-The-Pooh dressed up as a rain cloud, I’m pretty sure a collective “aww!” spread throughout the whole world.  Cutest frigging thing ever.

So I liked Winnie-The-Pooh, I do admit that.  However, at some point, my aunt and uncle must have seen me reading this book and decided that it was my obsession.  Every year from the time I was pretty young until I was way, way too old I got little Winnie-The-Pooh things.  If I remember correctly, they were even getting me Winnie-The-Pooh watches and figurines until well into high school… maybe after.  I just didn’t have the heart to tell them that while I enjoyed a good Heffalump story, it was by no means my favorite thing of all time.

This is the book that comes on the iPad, so recently I’ve revisited a little bit and I have to say, it is just as good as an adult.  This is one of the books that I really cannot wait to read out loud to my kiddies.

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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl

After reading and being absolutely obsessed with Matilda in elementary school, I made quick work of Roald Dahl’s other books.  I am fairly certain that I read all of them and can’t think of one that disappointed.  His kind of dark humor and belief that kids are smarter than we give them credit for won my heart then and make them stick in my head now.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was pretty much perfection in my opinion.  Snotty kids, clueless parents, a factory (if you know me, you know I have a think for factories…), tons and tons of candy,  tiny worker men?  Perfect.

This led to a total with the original movie when I was younger and unlike a lot of people, I loved the Johnny Depp one too.  The Gene Wilder one is probably in my top 10  movies, but I thought that the Johnny Depp one was probably closer to the movie and made me laugh out loud. A lot.

When I was in high school, I was at a friend’s house on the afternoon of trick-or-treat.  We were just sitting on the patio talking and saw a perfect little oompa loompa riding a bike down the street.  I freaked totally out and told Emily to go in and get a camera while I chased this kid down.  He panicked, as I’m sure I looked like a crazy person.  He rode his bike faster than I could run, so we got in the car and chased him down.  This sounds so crazy now, but at the time it was totally logical.  Anyway, when we “caught” him, we just took a few pictures with him and told him what a perfect oompa loompa he was.  The pictures turned out great, so I framed one and put it in my room, such is my love for Willy Wonka.

Probably a full year or two later, my younger brother had a friend over and they walked past my room.  His friend turned to him and said, “Dalton, why does your sister have a picture of me up in her room?”  Hilarious.  It was the little oompa loompa kid and I had successfully freaked him totally out… again.

All this to say that my love for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory actually turned me into a creeper. I love it.

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Oh, The Places You’ll Go, by Dr. Seuss

I kind of have a thing for Dr. Seuss.  I love his whimsical character and fun rhymes and all the stuff that everyone in America loves about him.  This was never really one of my favorite books- I just thought it was kind of cheesy.

Let me tell you a story:  for my high school graduation, our “guest speaker” was listed as a girl who had graduated from our high school maybe 7 or 8 years earlier, something like that.  We all thought it seemed kind of strange, but figured that maybe she had done something really cool and really had something of importance to say. I am not kidding when I say that during the ceremony, when it was her turn to speak, she got up and said, “Hi, I’m so and so.  I graduated from this same high school and thought it was great.  I’ve brought some words of wisdom from someone much wiser than myself today, so I’ll just let him speak,”  and proceeded to literally read this entire book cover to cover.  She even held up the pictures for the audience like she was reading to a small first grade class instead of a whole auditorium full of people.

I wish that someone had been filming the reactions of my graduating class.  We were all just looking at each other like, “Is this for real?”  Oh, and it was.  She finished the book, closed it, and said “Thank you very much! Good luck to the graduating class.  May you go many places,” or something cheesy like that.

It was hilarious. When I get together with people that I graduated with, it is still something that we laugh about, just because it was so bizarre.  So this book that was always pretty cheesy to me became even cheesier, to the point of being delightful.  It makes me laugh to this day.

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The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton

So, I loved this book when I was growing up.  I read it when I was pretty young and saw the movie and thought that it was all pretty great.  Then, in maybe 6th or 7th grade (I really have no idea) we read it as a class and I learned that not only was S.E. Hinton a woman (I had just assumed that a man wrote this book), but she wrote this when she was 16 years old.  At the time, I really wanted to become an author and this was more encouragement to me than I can even tell you.  It made me love it even more.

I loved their names: Ponyboy, Soda Pop, Dallas, Two-Bit… how can you get any cooler than that?

Seriously though, the issues touched on here: life, death, classes, friendship… it’s all deep stuff that’s just done in this really great way.  It’s all about teenagers and written by a teenager, so I think that it touches on how these issues are perceived by teens in a real way.  I think that that is why a book with, let’s be honest, not a whole lot of literary-merit has had such staying power.  Seriously, great stuff.  The “nothing gold can stay” bit? Classic.

And I know I’m supposed to be talking about the book, but the movie? Awesome.  Rob Lowe, Emilo Estevez, Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze, Diane Lane…. how can you beat that?  I’m of the opinion that not a whole lot of good came out of the 80’s, but this is everything that is great about the 80’s.  Awesome.

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The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales, by Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm

I don’t know where we got it, probably from a garage sale or a thrift store or something, but when I was growing up we had this giant copy of Grimm’s Fairytales.  It didn’t have pictures, but some of the letters were done in this fancy script.  Mom read to me every night before bed and we ended up back on these all the time.

Maybe I was just a morbid kid, but I remember just loving the fact that all of these were so bloody and crazy.  Cinderella’s sister cutting of her heel to fit it in the glass slipper is one of those images that made me squeal and has stuck with me my whole life.  I also remember that in The Frog Prince, he turns into a prince after the crazy, lonely princess throws him into the wall.  No kissing for her! I loved going through school knowing the “real” story behind these fairytales that we were reading.  Let me reiterate: I was totally morbid.

There were also a ton of other stories in there that never quite made it big.  I remember one about a little girl who was mean and nasty to her parents. She got sick and died.  When they tried to bury her, her arm would not go below the dirt so someone hopped in and beat her until it stopped coming up again. Wha!? I had totally forgotten about that until I watched Carrie recently and noticed the parallel. So creepy and strange.

I also remember one where a fisherman catches a fish who grants wishes and his wife keeps getting greedier and greedier with her wishes until they are left with nothing.  I don’t know why, but I requested this one over and over and over.

I wonder if parents still read these to kids?

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Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls

I know that I’ve told you guys before that I learned to read pretty young and that the town I’m from had the crappiest library of all time.  I ran out of books to read there all of the time and even as a kid would get so frustrated.  The children’s librarian’s name was Mary and she was this hilarious woman who was truly passionate about kids reading.  She would set books aside for me all the time and hand me an armload of books every time I came in.  One time, this book made it into my pile from Mary.  She told me that it was one of her favorite books and she wanted to know what I thought.

I was maybe 8 or 9.  I got into it immediately, and I just remember getting to the end and flat out ugly-crying.  I could not believe how sad it was.  This was a time in my life that was kinda rough- parents divorcing, lots of big changes- and my emotions were totally screwy.  I remember reading it again right away just because that cry at the end was so incredibly satisfying. I remember reporting back to Mary and telling her that this was one of my favorite books too and she was satisfied.

Over the next few years, I probably checked this book out once or twice a year and read it.  I loved the story and the pups- Big Dan and Little Ann- and the boy and their adventures, but to be perfectly honest, I was mostly addicted for the deep emotions that it brought out in me.  It got to the point that I could just think about it and tear up.  That may sound like a negative, but sometimes a good cry is just about all you need.

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The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis

I guess that I could have just put up the whole Narnia series, but I probably read this one the most, so I’ll go with just this one.

I remember reading this as a kid and just soaking in it.  I read it first probably in 3rd or 4th grade and went on to read the rest of the series and just fall in love.

Of course, Lucy and her siblings were what made the story fun and relatable, but what made this story come alive was just the fantasy of it all!  The mythical creatures, a bad witch, a good lion, sneaking through the wardrobe door… what could possibly be more magical than that?

When I was younger, I am positive that I missed the Christian allegory going on here, but I’ve read the series several more times and I just love the idea of Aslan as this God-figure.  One part in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe that I think it particularly great is when Lucy asks Mr. Beaver if Aslan is safe.  Mr. Beaver responds, “Safe? Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn’t safe! But he’s good.  He’s the King, I tell you!”  If I ever get another tattoo, I think it will incorporate this idea in some way. Beautiful.

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Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott

I struggled with whether or not this should be included as a “flashback,” mostly because I make it a habit to read this one just about every time I fall into a book rut.  I do count this, though, as one of the books that really made me fall in love with reading, so I think that it is perfect flashback material.

I grew up with an older brother and a younger brother.  I love them both dearly, but have always dreamed of what it would have been like to grow up with sisters.  In my dreams, my sisters are the March girls.  Also, in my dreams, I am Jo.  I just absolutely loved their plays and their creativity and their get-through-it-ness during tough times.  I loved how they encouraged each other and were just good sisters.  This, for whatever reason, still makes me a little teary eyed to think about. I just love it.

Reading it as and adult, I see things that I completely missed as a kid: the undercurrent of “the goal of a woman’s life is to marry” and how they totally ignore the effect that the Civil War would have had on a family of the time.  But this is a flashback, so there.  When I was a kid, I really just saw this innocence and a family that was fully functional, which mine was not.

I remember reading this one over and over and over when I was growing up.  The story never got old for me. Since then I’ve read a few “spin-offs” of the book, and have to say that March by Geraldine Brooks is truly a great book, and I’m not just saying that because I’m a Little Women fan. It’s good stuff.

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Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, by Bill Martin Jr.

For Flashback Friday this week, I’m taking it way back.

My parents were always really good about reading to me.  I was probably 4 or so when I realized that the letters on the page made sounds.  I got it right off.  That was it for me.  It’s been a life-long love affair with reading.

I have this memory of going into kindergarden and talking about all the letters.  We must have read this book out loud a thousand times.  To this very day, I can still quote it, word for word. “A told B and B told C, I’ll meet you at the top of the coconut tree!” I could go on and on.  I remember the other kids in my class getting just as excited about books and about reading as I was and I felt like I was in absolute heaven.

I always loved how this book gave the letters little personalities.  If you know me, you know that I assign personalities to pretty much every inanimate object in the world, so the idea of “k” just being a little tag-along and of the uppercase letters being the parents? I love that.

I know when my younger brother was learning to read, I resurrected this book from our giant pile of kids’ books and read it to him relentlessly.  I don’t think that he ever loved it like I did, but I’m sure that he could quote it to you to this day.

To participate in Flashback Friday, head over here to get the info on what’s going on.  After posting your flashback, come back here and comment with a link to your blog so everyone can enjoy!