Because it is a quotation that I use so often I forget that some of the readers of this blog might not realise the significance when I used it yesterday. Some time ago I posted the following on Eagleton Notes:
I thought that CJ had blogged about this some time ago but it appears to have been a passing reference in a post on books of childhood. Anyway when achieving something members of our family invariably say “ ‘I did it, I jumped the fence!’ cried Trotty”. This was from a book entitled Farm Babies. I for one loved the Trotty story and the one about the duckling but most of all I loved the illustrations. I still do!
Even the inside covers were brilliantly illustrated.
Posts
I think it's wonderful how very strongly we become attached to the illustrations of our childhood books. I did too! And it all gets all tangled up in smells and foods and voices, and looking up all the time. And the walks were so long, and so hot, and your feet got so sore! Distances and time stretched onward forever... In my house, our hall was sooo long! (it passed two doors on the left - my parents' and my sister's room, and three on the right - the loo, the bathroom, and the linen cupboard. Yet the lounge door at the end seemed half a mile away!
ReplyDeleteWe used to play cricket in the hall to the back kitchen in my grandmother's house. It was long but I wonder how long it really was.
DeleteLooks just like the kind of book I would have loved as a child, too.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favourites was Hänschen im Blaubeerwald. Nothing like those books to fire a kid's imagination, is there!
I re-read it a couple of years ago and still enjoyed it in a quiet retrospective way. Stories seemed to be more gentle then.
DeleteI reviewed children's books for many years, till just recently. The books that the children loved best were just as (or more) likely to be mass produced ones from the stationers as the "children's literature" that came flooding into the house. I doubt the creators of "Farm Babies" aimed for immortality and fame, yet I am sure this charming little book would still connect today with small children.
ReplyDeleteI used to wonder why some publishers seemed so out of touch in this lethally competitive market. Must be a "grown up" thing :D
I came across a picture book I'd loved in childhood recently. I hadn't seen it since I was 6 or so. It was a weird feeling because all the pictures were VERY familiar, as if I'd seen them yesterday - and yet I had no conscious memory of them till I'd seen them.
I had forgotten about this but now that I see it again I remember seeing it before (on your other blog)... So cute; and above all it's wonderful when one is still able to recall that feeling about learning or achieving something, many years from childhood.
ReplyDeletethank you, kind sir, for the explanation! I love the illustrations. Farm Babies looks familiar; maybe I bought it for a grandchild. not sure...
ReplyDeleteYou're right - I did blog it in 2009 -
ReplyDeletehttp://memoriamea.blogspot.com/2009/01/i-did-it.html