October RandomCAT - When I Was A Child

My mother died last year and earlier this year my parents' home was sold, meaning the dispersal of a lot of childhood memories. I'm having general end-of-an-era and cutting-of-ties thoughts, so my challenge to you this month is remembering childhood.

For this challenge you might want to:

revisit a favourite book from your childhood
read a biography of an author you enjoyed as a child
read a book set somewhere you lived as a child.

These are just suggestions, so the connection with your childhood and what age still counts as you being a child is up to you.

Do use the wiki if you wish.

Love this prompt. I always love rereading childhood favourites and am currently reading through Narnia again. So I'm sure it will be one of the Narnia books.

I understand the end-of-an-era feeling. My mother moved from her home this year to live closer to my sister, as she still wants to be independent but keeps falling and needing more assistance. We went through her home, and she sold everything we did not wish to take. So many memories while doing that.

I will read Mr. Monk Goes To Germany this month. We lived in Germany several times when I was a child, and the German items are what I chose to keep from Mom's house.

I grew up in the 1950s and 60s and being a Canadian, I wanted to read a book by a Canadian author. I have chosen a book about sisters in Western Canada entitled Those Girls by Chevy Stevens. My sister and I got up to plenty of adventures causing my parents to often sigh, "Those Girls!!"

I started a Narnia reread some time ago, too, so this is the perfect prompt to continue with that. The next book for me is Prince Caspian.

These books were my favorites before I discovered Tolkien.

I love this! I grew up in a small town in Saskatchewan, so there's not a whole lot set there, but maybe I'll find something else set in Sask... unless I think of something more creative than the setting.

I don't reread very often, but in recent years, I have reread a few books from when I was a kid, so that is possible.

ETA: >4 DeltaQueen50: Oh, I like the decade idea. For me, that might be something set in the '80s... Hmm...

I, too, remember when we sold our family home after my mother's death. It took some time to get over. It's gone now--the new owners tore down the old frame house and built a new very large one on the property.

When I was about 12 my mother gave me her copy of Jane Eyre, one of her favorite books. It was the first "adult" book that I read. I still have that copy but, like our old frame house, it's a little worse for wear. I re-read it every few years, so for this month's challenge I plan to listen to Jane Eyre on audiobook.

I was a big fan of Enid Blyton when I was growing up in the UK. I remembered that I still have a copy of The Ship of Adventure that will be my choice.

When I was a child my first friend was a dog, Queen. She was a lemon and white pointer. One of the earliest photos taken after I could stand shows me standing alongside her and hanging on. To celebrate the joy of dog friendship in my childhood, I'm going to read one of James Herriot's books of dog stories.

What a great idea for this challenge! I enjoy reading children’s books. I still own many of my favorite books from childhood. Checking my shelves!

ETA—I will be reading Mary Poppins which was also a favorite movie when I was a child. I still own a copy of the book with the movie cover showing Julie Andrews.

My mother also passed away last year, Robert, at the age of 91. She was the "last" of my parents, outlived all my aunts and uncles, etc. It is the end of an era for me. My sister and I were responsible for the clearing of her estate and it literally took days upon days to sort through tubs of pictures and closets of mementos. I still have about a dozen of my childhood books, some are 65 years of age. I will probably read some stories from Shirley Temple's Storybook, which is an anthology of stories that Shirley favored, either fables or fairy tales. Or I might read Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren.

That’s a lovely idea, Robert. I’ll make up my mind when I visit my sister next month...she’s kept the home movies my dad made.

I think I might take this opportunity to revisit an old favorite. Perhaps Diana Wynne Jones or Robin McKinley. Or maybe even a Danish or Swedish author like Astrid Lindgren or Ole Lund Kirkegaard

>13 amberwitch: I like your taste. I might read a Diana Wynne Jones book also.

I'd like to read a children's book set in Edinburgh but can't think of very many I actually read in my childhood. Frances Mary Hendry or Eileen Dunlop might be contenders but I think they were all library books, or almost all. A Flute in Mayferry Street is one I'd like to revisit.

>14 kicking_k: I remember reading The high house, by Honor Arundel as a kid and really liking it. I think that takes place in Edinburgh. That would also be a contender - I wonder if I still have it somewhere.

>15 amberwitch: Oh yes! Definitely set in Edinburgh. Oddly, my mother once worked with Honor Arundel at a summer job when she was young, I think at the Festival office (it is a pen name, but it wasn't a secret who she was...)

My mother belonged to the Book of the Month Club and I have her books that are still in her secretary cabinet. I will read one of them.

When I was young, I really didn't read many children's books--I kind of jumped straight from chapter books into Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys and then adult books--but I did love a short series called Animal Rescue Farm by Sharon M. Hart. I recently got my hands on used copies of the series, so I think I'll read one of those.

COMPLETED
Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett and
The Island of Adventure by Enid Blyton.

Both authors have links to Beaconsfield, the town where I lived till I was eight. Terry Pratchett was born there and Enid Blyton lived there from 1938 to her death in 1968, so in theory I could have met her but alas I didn't.

Double post, sorry

Reread a childhood favorite,Bonadea, a magical story set in Finland in the 1880’s.

One of my favourite authors as a child was E. Nesbit.

COMPLETED Five Children and It and The Enchanted Castle.

I particularly remember "The Enchanted Castle". I took it to school to read in quiet reading time and I took the word 'quiet' very seriously. Unfortunately, I found one scene in the book very, very funny and was desperately trying to stifle what would have otherwise been great guffaws of laughter. Seeing me with my head down on my desk and my whole body shaking, the poor teacher thought I was crying and must have been suspecting all sorts of dreadful scenarios. I eventually managed to convey that I was laughing, not crying, and she asked what was so funny, but of course I was still so overcome that I was quite incapable of speech. My sense of humour must have changed in the 60 years since, so although I found it mildly amusing it wasn't real laugh out loud funny.

>22 Robertgreaves: What a great story!

When I was a kid we would have a family game night on a regular basis, so I read Around the World in Eighty Games by Marcus du Sautoy. It was not as fun as I was hoping it would be.

When I was a tween, some of the first adult books I read were historical sagas my mother would bring home from the library by authors like Belva Plain, so I reread Crescent City. It didn't entirely hold up, not least because it felt like there were huge time jumps and telling rather than showing to get through a trilogy's worth of story in a single volume, but it held my interest.

I've read James Herriot's Favorite Dog Stories. My first friend was a beautiful pointer named Queen and there have been many loving dog friends since then.

The November thread is up: https://www.librarything.com/topic/374634.

I have completed my read of Those Girls by Chevy Stevens. Oher than the Canadian setting and that it was about sisters, this book had very little to do with my childhood.

>28 DeltaQueen50: LOL! That's probably a good thing for that book! ;-)

>29 LibraryCin: LOL - That's for sure!

Just a heads-up that I have created the 2026 Category Challenge group: https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/24919/2026-Category-Challenge. Stop by to get a head start on planning next year's challenge!

(Cross-posted to a bunch of threads; sorry if you see this a thousand times!)

I am still trying to finish Mary Poppins which I don’t like nearly as much as I remember it. Mary is not a very nice person! Maybe I am remembering how much I liked the film starring Julie Andrews and Dick Ban Dyke. I can still sing the songs from the film and they have been rolling around in my head.

I have just ordered Winter's Mischief by Marjorie Hill Allee, a novel based on the boarding high school which I attended. I haven't read it for many years -- probably not since before I went to high school. My sister roomed with a relative (granddaughter, grandniece?) of the author.

Mr. Monk Goes To Germany by Lee Goldberg ★★★★½

Adrian Monk has actually been doing well lately. He's solving murders as fast as they come, and heÂ's been noticeably less compulsive. Monk knows he owes it all to his therapist, Dr. Kroger. So when Kroger attends a conference in Germany, Monk hits the skids, reverting to his OCD habits full-time. Desperate, Monk follows his shrink to Germany. And that's when he sees the man across a crowded town square. A man with six fingers. Monk knows it could be the man responsible for his wife's death.

This book made me nostalgic for the TV show (one of my all-time favorites). Very true to the series and the characters. I will be finding the rest of these books.

I chose this book because I lived in Germany while growing up.

Germany: A Panorama in Color by John Dornberg ★★★★

This hardcover book features 90 color pictures by German photographers. This book, part of the Panorama in Color Series by the World Tourism Organization Staff, offers a visual journey through Europe, specifically Germany, capturing the essence of the country in stunning detail.

While it is an older book (1969), the pictures are beautiful and made me nostalgic for the years I lived in Germany. A second read for this month.

I grew up in French so I missed this classic as a child. I'm gald I read it as an adult to be able to decipher the different messages hidden within.
The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley

>38 Cecilturtle: Growing up in French may have saved you the nightmares I had.

That book was read to my grade 1 class when I was five years old. The thought of little boys being sent up chimneys to clean them still haunts me. That the fire was lit if the boy didn't work fast enough made it even worse. I had no idea of the size of Victorian chimneys, but I doubt it would have made much difference to the horror level. Thankfully, the rest of the book has fizzled in my memory over the many years since, but that scene is still fresh.

I was going to read an Enid Blyton book, one of my favourite childhood authors. Instead I chose Crooked House by Agatha Christie, another favourite author I started reading when I was around eleven. It seems I've read everything she wrote, and reread most of them too over the last few decades but this is still a lovely treat.

>39 VivienneR: I feel you, Vivienne! I feel the same way about Charlie and The Chocolate Factory - that was my introduction to children's books when I arrived in North America and I was traumatised. Babar was more up my alley, lol!

Thank you all who participated. Back to adulting now.

>41 Cecilturtle: Charles Kingsley was a Victorian clergyman who believed the only way to get kids to behave was to scare them half to death.

I'm a fan of Roald Dahl but have to admit Charlie and the Chocolate Factory could have been co-written by Kingsley.

Christie's Crooked House was excellent and oddly appropriate for this challenge.

I was only looking something up in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, but then I sat down and re-read it completely. As a child, I loved books set in English boarding schools, especially the Malory Towers series, so this was right up my alley when it first came out. It’s still charming.

>32 LadyoftheLodge: I think the musical is better than the book. The theatre department at our university performed Mary Poppins. It was fun to watch. I read the books years ago and had much the same feeling you did about it. Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke made the show!