Hey dedicated readers!
I would like you to leave comments describing your favourite toys and/or books when you were growing up. Include stories about them if you can; I would love to hear them. Here are a couple of mine to get you thinking:
My Little Pony: Oh my. I was a fiend for these cute little plastic ponies from the age of seven until I outgrew them around puberty. All of my closest friends had them and we used to bring them everywhere. We made crazy houses for them out of random pieces of wood, shells, junk, and beach finds. We made up elaborate stories for them (barbie was usually the bad guy!), we made them clothes out of scraps, and traded them. I still get a really strong pull when I see them at garage sales and in fact bought one for Rowan last summer before she was born. It's Firefly, a pink baby pegasus with blue hair and a lightning bolt on her bum, for anybody who knows their Ponies.
Roald Dahl: As an older kid I loved Roald Dahl and read every book of his I could get my hands on. I still have all of mine and I read them so much that the covers are falling off. I think I may have got my first one from my Aunt Janice - The BFG and The Witches were definitely favourites. They have to be illustrated by Quentin Blake to have the full effect, though!
Heather recently gave me an anthology of Dahl's adult writings, which are really deliciously dark and twisted. Much like his kids' books.
I can't remember very many books I specifically liked as a younger child, probably because I loved to read absolutely *everything*.
Oh, I just remembered an important one. The Rats of NIMH. As fantastic as this book is, it has sad connections for me because the library at my elementary school in NB bought the picture book version as a sort of tribute-memorium after my brother Aaron died. I think it might have had an inscription in it, but I can't remember. I wonder what it would have said.
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6 comments:
If we are talking about early childhood, I had two favourite toys in particular (although I was definitely into My Little Pony later). I loved "Weebles" (they wobble but they don't fall over), and I had a Winnie-the-Pooh set of them. I also loved "Woodseys". The Woodseys were a family of toy squirrels. You could put your fingers into their arms (like finger puppets), but they stood up, and squeaked when you squeezed them. They had a house that was a log, with furniture. I also had the grandparent squirrel house which was a general store made out of a birch stump, and the Uncle squirrel who was a pilot, and had a plane and a hangar.
As for books, I had so many it's hard to choose! For French books, I really loved the "J'aime lire" series when I was little. For English books, I had all the Tales of the Green Forest.
Hmm... let's see, early childhood. Books were big, especially fairy tales. I had a couple of favorite stuffed animals. I did play with dolls with my sister including Barbie, and that was fun because of the silly stories we'd make up. I played with Lego with my brother. I also liked puzzles and did them with my siblings. We also had a "tickle trunk" full of random old clothes of my parents, old blankets, and costume parts. We'd not only use them to dress up and sometimes put on plays for my parents, but the cloth comes in handy for other games (blindfolds, restraints, building fortresses out of furniture).
Woodseys sound like something I would have liked, but I've never heard of them... Hmm. I googled them and found an old ebay auction with photos: Woodsies. They look so fun! I totally would have played with these.
We had great fun dressing up too; my friend's mom used to help out elderly folks and they would give her all these funky old clothes to take home. I had almost forgotten. I think most of our Halloween costumes were cobbled together from those tickle trunk things.
::books::
The Velveteen Rabbit, the whole Beatrix Potter collection, anything by Roald Dahl (like Sarah, The BFG, and The Witches were two favorites, but I also remember reading parts of James and the Giant Peach to Thomas, and I loved his short stories like The Paper Bag Princess and Thomas’ Snowsuit).
.:.creative..:
I loved Lego, MagnaDoodle, Play Dough, scratch n’ sniff stickers, and good ol' crayons (I used to draw on everything, sadly even some books of Sarah's and my mother’s walls).
.::things that go vrroooom!..:
Dinky cars (all makes and models). Once I got a bit older and got bored of playing with cars, I started giving them paint jobs with a rainbow of nail polishes. I mean, what else was I going to use it for, my nails? Yuk!
.::plastic toys:..
- Fisher Price’s ‘Little People’ (especially the ‘Jumbo Little People’) - they had solid columnar bases with roly-poly characters of all ages and sizes. Their bases would fit into stands and vehicles, etc.
- Fisher Price model kitchen and grocery store play sets (my friends had them, I didn’t).
- Cabbage Patch Kids (oh dear Angela, my little tanned baby).
- My Little Pony (my big sister got me hooked. She always had such great stories to tell about them!).
- Skip-its, and those planetary pogo-like things…
:.:just imagine::.
I have very fond memories of playing in the castle that Fred built with our cousins, as well as sleeping in it. It was a house within a room within a house – what dreams are made of!
actually, I think Paperbag Princess and Thomas' Snowsuit are actually Robert Munch and not Roald Dahl.
ah, the Magnadoodle! that thing was great until somebody stepped on it.
Oh! I almost forgot! I LOVED Litebrite. (does anybody else remember this toy, or am I totally dating myself?) I used to make my own designs using black construction paper. I wonder if they still sell these?
oops! I had a feeling after I posted it that maybe Dahl wasn't the creator of those lovely little short stories... Thanks Sarah.
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