Favourite Junior book!

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alanultron5
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Favourite Junior book!

Post by alanultron5 »

Please post your favourite books you read as a youngster - any topic is fine. My own personal favourite came about via a 1966 `Jackanory` story titled "The Forgotten Door" (Read by actress Betty McDowall) This story so intrigued me that I managed to get my local Library to get a copy! I truly loved it!! Was written (In 1965) by Alexander Key- who later wrote "Escape From Witch Mountain" (Later a feature film)

The "Forgotten Door" concerns an alien (Jon) who somehow falls through a `Door` leading from his world to Earth! Though human looking- he does find humanity very strange indeed! Book concerns his quest to re-find the `door` back to his world.
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Re: Favourite Junior book!

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alanultron5 wrote:Please post your favourite books you read as a youngster - any topic is fine.
Pretty well all the books I read as a Primary School pupil, Alan, once I was old enough to join Lancaster Junior Library, are among my favourites. These would certainly include the many tales about Little Grey Rabbit, Fuzzypeg, and their friends, the first few Billy Bunter novels, the He Went With... series (Marco Polo/ Magellan etc.) by Louise Andrews Kent, the stories about the exploits of the Hardy Boys and Chet Morton, not forgetting their girlfriends, by Franklin W. Dixon (a pseudonym provided by the Stratemeyer Syndicate), and lots and lots of Enid Blyton's outpourings. However, my absolute favourite, which I still reread every few years, was Jim Davis by John Masefield. If I had ever seen myself as a novelist for children, I would have turned to it for inspiration. Moreover I will never forget that it was from that book that I learned the word keepsake. Not that I've had all that many opportunities to use it though!!!!!

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philcom55
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Re: Favourite Junior book!

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For some reason a book called 'Angus the Tartan Partan' sticks in my mind - though I haven't seen it for more than half a century! :)

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Re: Favourite Junior book!

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Back in 1966/67 for about a whole school term I kept a school book called "Britains's Wonderland Of Nature" in my desk. It was published in 1936. When I left the school in 1967 aged eleven I sneaked the book out with me in a box. I still have the book today. The funny thing is that a couple of years ago I came across another copy in the flea market and bought it. I wondered if I should return the original to the school but I figured it would probably just die a slow and agonising death and it was better off being preserved for posterity by me. I have always been fascinated by insects and must have read the chapter on ants a doxen times at school.

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Re: Favourite Junior book!

Post by alanultron5 »

Sounds fascinating Steve! I once had a School copy of `Alice in Wonderland` also 1967 like you. but I eventually returned it in about 1973 when I was working! They were just glad to get it back- said no more!
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Re: Favourite Junior book!

Post by stevezodiac »

I looked on google and found my book is quite easy to come by. It was published in 1934 not 1936. My school has open days on Wednesday mornings - I haven't been back there since I left and would love to walk up the staircases again and go into the hall where we had our dinner.

The country dancing I could have done without though. Heel toe, heel toe. What was that all about?

I doubt if today's kids would appreciate the old book with black and white photos.

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Re: Favourite Junior book!

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stevezodiac wrote:Back in 1966/67 for about a whole school term I kept a school book called "Britains's Wonderland Of Nature" in my desk. It was published in 1936. When I left the school in 1967 aged eleven I sneaked the book out with me in a box. I still have the book today.
I did something similar, Steve, while still at Primary School, probably at the age of nine. I 'borrowed' a book from Lancaster Junior Library, hid it under my bed, and read it time and time again. They would never let you borrow more than one book at a time so if you desperately wanted to borrow two it was a case of 'necessity is the mother of invention', so second book inside shirt. I always intended to return it, which I did just as surreptitiously as I had removed it, but not for many a month. Frankly I simply didn't really want to let go of it. Quite why my mother never found it there I will never know. Maybe she did and decided not to confront me, or maybe she didn't dust under the bed too regularly. The book was a children's football novel called Clive, Centre-Forward by C.H. Croft, illustrations by one C.E. Montford, with 118 pages of fairly large print, and a series of comprehension questions at the end, at the rate of three for each of the 24 chapters. The Clive in question was Clive Fairfax, and the team he supported was Melchester Rovers, and they were in the Second Division. Clive was thirteen when the story opened, quite a bit older by the time he played as an amateur for Pressdale City, and then for England against Scotland on Melchester Rovers' ground. About five years ago I saw a copy on a book dealer's shelf in one of the buildings at the Antiques Centre at Hemswell Cliff, which is roughly half way between Lincoln and Gainsborough. He was asking £20 for it. I asked if I could inspect it, decided it was a copy of the one I had 'borrowed' all those years ago, and contrary to my normal procedure I didn't haggle over the price. Clive went home with me quite legally that day. He is still here.

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philcom55
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Re: Favourite Junior book!

Post by philcom55 »

Given that Roy of the Rovers also played for Melchester Rovers it sounds to me as though his creator Frank Pepper must have been a fan of the same book Phoenix!

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Re: Favourite Junior book!

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philcom55 wrote:Given that Roy of the Rovers also played for Melchester Rovers it sounds to me as though his creator Frank Pepper must have been a fan of the same book Phoenix!
I think that's quite likely, Phil, but perhaps not exclusively so, although Melchester would seem to be a logical adaptation of Manchester. I have another football novel for boys, Hamilton Of The 'Ringers', by Ernest Taylor, which was first published in 1946, as opposed to Clive, Centre-Forward, which first saw the light of day in 1937, and with 187 pages much longer and clearly more expansive than the latter. The centre-forward hero/protagonist was Andy Hamilton, his team was Belchester Rovers. Andy was also awarded his England cap for their annual match against the 'auld enemy', that match played at Hampden Park.

Right, I have nothing more to add as I must now get back to my ongoing preparation for my book on Thomsons' eleven story papers for girls between the ages of 9/10 and 12/13, one section of which will contain the starting and ending issue numbers and dates of every serial therein with a brief synopsis (probably two lines rather than the three I used in This Was The Wizard). I do have a title for this book but I am not yet ready to disclose it. Ray Moore knows it, as we do chat on the phone periodically, but he won't be disclosing it either.

For those members who might be interested in the matter, the story papers, in order of first appearance, are Bunty, Judy, Diana, Mandy, Debbie, Spellbound, Emma, Tracy, Suzy, Nikki, and M&J. I have most of their issues and a membership ticket for the British Library for those I don't have.

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Re: Favourite Junior book!

Post by philcom55 »

I think Melchester was also a major town in Thomas Hardy's Wessex!

Incidentally, I can understand why you haven't included Thomson's Romance titles like Romeo and Jackie since they belong to a different genre and were mainly aimed at an older age group, but did you consider Thomson's late 1980s girls' comic Hi!? I only own a couple of issues but I seem to remember that it carried one or two strips of the traditional 'Bunty' type alongside a load of photo strips and features.
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Re: Favourite Junior book!

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philcom55 wrote:I think Melchester was also a major town in Thomas Hardy's Wessex!
That's interesting, Phil. Which novel was it in?
philcom55 wrote:did you consider Thomson's late 1980s girls' comic Hi!?
No I didn't, Phil. In fact I've never even seen one although I have seen a number of adverts for it in other girls' papers. I'll Google the title later this evening. However, I'm not that keen on adding to my reading schedule, particularly a title that sounds as if it has more non-fiction than fiction, as I would classify that as a magazine. Diana just escapes that categorisation because the transfer of emphasis from serials to features occurred very late in her run. There is, of course, another factor to be considered. There were 831 summaries of serials in This Was The Wizard covering just over a hundred pages of three-line summaries. Bunty alone ran for roughly the same number of years, and as the vast majority of her serials are shorter than the average serial in The Wizard, I will inevitably need more pages, especially as I do also intend to present the heading block illustrations as I did in This Was The Wizard. They are not absolutely essential but I feel that they do add an extra element of nostalgia for the reader. Where the number of serials in the other ten titles are concerned, Judy and Mandy will demand the most space so, given that there are eight other titles to include, I may be well advised to write all the summaries in just two lines. I'm still in guessing mode but I suspect that this book might well run to over 300 pages, especially as in the Introduction I will be looking at Bunty's precursors, which will not only include Girls' Crystal, School Friend and Girl but also a multitude of novels written specifically for girls between Little Women and titles written in 1957, in order to attempt to assess their influence on the writers of Bunty et al. If my current thinking about the detailed presentation of the serials persists I could well be approaching the issue by using categories such as School, Adventure, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Animals, Historical, Futuristic, Ballet, WW2, Mystery, Wild West and suchlike. I'm well aware that it is a demanding plan but at least it gets me up in the morning feeling enthusiastic. :D

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Re: Favourite Junior book!

Post by philcom55 »

I'm pretty sure Melchester is mentioned in a number of Hardy's novels as a fictional stand-in for Salisbury; I think parts of Jude The Obscure take place there for example.

Your new book certainly seems like a herculean undertaking Derek. As far as Hi! is concerned it's probably enough of a hybrid between comic and magazine to leave out of your main text. Unlike Jackie, however, it does seem to be aimed at a similar age group to Bunty and M&J (albeit with rather more of an emphasis on boyfriends), and the inclusion of some contemporary school stories might at least make it worth considering for a brief mention at the end. If it's any help here are a couple of pages from two strips that appear in no.13.
Image

Image

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Re: Favourite Junior book!

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Thanks for posting those pages, Phil. Not all that inspiring are they?

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Re: Favourite Junior book!

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philcom55 wrote:Your new book certainly seems like a herculean undertaking Derek
I have no illusions about the time it will take to write it, Phil. However, apart from the reduction of three lines to two for each serial, there will be one other difference from This Was The Wizard. I will not be including the names of the artists of the many serials due to the fact that I don't have the ability to recognise their work, and because it would be too much to ask anyone else to give them to me. I do have a complete list of the artists of the Bunty stories, which was sent to me sometime last year by David Roach at a time when my concept of the book was limited to the serials in Bunty, but I will just have to omit them as I don't have the names of the artists for the serials in the other ten titles as well.

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Re: Favourite Junior book!

Post by philcom55 »

Phoenix wrote:Thanks for posting those pages, Phil. Not all that inspiring are they?
I agree. To some extent, however, I think they are interesting in that they reflect the extent to which television soaps were replacing traditional comic stories in the affections of the target audience. (The same issue also features three photo strips by the way)
Last edited by philcom55 on 22 Mar 2017, 12:34, edited 1 time in total.

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