Basic Reading: Home Brew

 

Basic reading. A memory collection of books, comics, and magazines I read from elementary (McQueeney) through middle school (Briesemeister). Ranging from very simple to what I would describe as ‘cusp books’, that would lead to more adult reading. They will come in batches; some are representative parts of series. Some we had; some we saw in libraries. Most have appeared on the blog before, but I think arranged here by category and time they can be more illuminating of certain aspects of my childhood.

I’m calling this batch of books Home Brew because most of them were more popular culture than anything originating in school or library reading. We had that Grimm’s Fairy Tales beyond kid memory, and its weird imagery and odd tales (no three bears or red riding hood here!) was a big ingredient in the Brew. The Secret of Crossbone Hill (a summer camping read) was bought at the same place that we got Planet of the Apes, I think, a little ‘army surplus store’ if my memory is correct. That book in profile is Reader’s Digest’s Stories for Young Readers, a great book I perused at Aunt Melva and Uncle Monroe’s house. Pop brought home that black edition of The Hunchback of Notre Dame from the dump. King Arthur, Jaws, and vampires were all subjects of special interest through the Briesemeister years as we set out feelers into the broader culture.  

Basic Reading: The McQueeney Era

Basic reading. A memory collection of books, comics, and magazines I read from elementary (McQueeney) through middle school (Briesemeister). Ranging from very simple to what I would describe as ‘cusp books’, that would lead to more adult reading. They will come in batches; some are representative parts of series. Some we had; some we saw in libraries. Most have appeared on the blog before, but I think arranged here by category and time they can be more illuminating of certain aspects of my childhood.

Some books that I would place in the McQueeney (grade school) era. I Know a Story is an early reader that I always remembered for ‘The Straw Ox’. Donald Duck Sees South America was in great demand for checking out from the school library because it came from the Disney studios (you can follow the great influence Disney had on us by looking at these posts; I never really realized how great and indeed almost insidious it was until now). Carbonel the King of Cats became one of my personal classics. The Seven Voyages of Sinbad, with its new cover, was obviously connected to the new Ray Harryhausen movie (Golden Voyage, I think). The Phantom Tollbooth was growing towards modern classic status; I recall an abstract from it in our Fourth Grade English book with rather ‘psychedelic’ illustrations. We got The Witch House years later, but it was full of the spooky tales we might have read at the time.

As I’ve said before, many of these have been posted before and more thoroughly considered for their influence. Search the Niche to find out more! 

Basic Reading: Fourth Grade Upgrade

 

Basic reading. A memory collection of books, comics, and magazines I read from elementary (McQueeney) through middle school (Briesemeister). Ranging from very simple to what I would describe as ‘cusp books’, that would lead to more adult reading. They will come in batches; some are representative parts of series. Some we had; some we saw in libraries. Most have appeared on the blog before, but I think arranged here by category and time they can be more illuminating of certain aspects of my childhood.

I have spoken elsewhere of how the Fourth Grade was a sort of Renaissance of Reading for me. Though starting to fall behind in Math, I saw how I could still be brainy in English, and I began cultivating a bookish persona, probably partly in an effort to impress our new teacher, Mrs. Bratton, who was my ‘Mrs. Othmar’. This was quite easy because I really enjoyed reading anyway. I began concentrating on the ‘chapter books’ that were now more available to me.

This was the grand time of Roald Dahl, where Mrs. Bratton read us James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In the class library I read Detectives in Togas and Childcraft Volume 2: Storytelling and Other Poems (1954) with its wonderful illustrations, many by the Disney Studio. I read The Nip and Tuck War, and “I set out to prove at the time that the story of Nip and the story of Mowgli bore more than a passing resemblance to one another. It's the first instance of literary criticism I ever essayed.” To stretch my literary bona fides I ordered The Three Musketeers and Journey to the Center of the Earth.

I indulged in the science fiction of the Sprockets books, Matthew Looney books, and the Mushroom Planet books. I read the never-forgotten if not-too-precisely remembered Cinders. And the next year in Fifth Grade I found Blanche Winder’s Stories of King Arthur, my first plunge into the Matter of Britain. All these books and others shown here are written about in more detail elsewhere in the Niche. 

Basic Reading: The Hidden Life of Animals

 

Basic reading. A memory collection of books, comics, and magazines I read from elementary (McQueeney) through middle school (Briesemeister). Ranging from very simple to what I would describe as ‘cusp books’, that would lead to more adult reading. They will come in batches; some are representative parts of series. Some we had; some we saw in libraries. Most have appeared on the blog before, but I think arranged here by category and time they can be more illuminating of certain aspects of my childhood.

To revert to the subject of animal books when we were kids, there was more than one genre to be considered. Besides the ‘scientific’ books, there was a subgenre that I can only describe as the ‘exotic pets’ books. In stories like Owls in the Family or Little Rascal or The Biggest Bear, kids would take in wild animals as pets and learn life lessons as they had to deal with the unusual circumstances and adventures that arose. Usually the lesson learned was ‘you have to let them go.’

Just as appealing (if not more so to me) was the subgenre of ‘the secret life of animals’, which inched closer to fantasy if never quite having any magic as an explanation. Here, animals had their own speech and thoughts, and a culture that just flew under the radar of ordinary humans. In this subgenre animals rarely (if ever) wore clothes, and certainly not in front of groups of grown-ups. They did things that people would interpret as ‘irrational behavior.’ Examples of this genre would be One Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Cricket in Times Square, and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.  The Thornton W. Burgess books, like Unc’ Billy Possum, were certainly a early examples of this, which expounded animal facts and whimsy in equal doses. I think this subgenre was especially appealing because of the parallel to actual children’s culture, which seemed to fly under the adults’ radar as well; adults would often treat kids as second-class citizens, not fully human yet.

Our Omi (grandmother) had a bird book we enjoyed whenever we visited. Of course, we have no memory of the actual title, but I recently came across a book that is giving me very strong vibes as to its art style and font. It is called Our Amazing Birds, by Robert S. Lemmon and illustrated by Don R. Eckelberry. It doesn’t quite have the dimensions I remember, however. Tantalizing.