Where are the Snowy Owls of Yesteryear?

[steepholm]

In my first Children's Fiction class of the year I always ask the students to talk about a book that was important to them in childhood. This time, for the first time in a dozen years, not one of the 18 mentioned Harry Potter. The HP generation appears to have passed. No one sat a-tremble on the eve of their 11th birthday to see if an owl would bring them the anticipated letter to Hogwarts. (They ought of course have been waiting to discover whether they were an Old One, which is much cooler.)

There was only one mention each of Dahl (The BFG) and Blyton, specifically Malory Towers. Jacqueline Wilson held up well, though, breasting the tape with Percy the Park Keeper.

Comments

[sovay]

a book that was important to them in childhood.

I have trouble answering that question in the singular. I posted at inordinate length about it in 2006. And still forgot to include Eleanor Cameron's Mr. Bass's Planetoid (1958)!

(They ought of course have been waiting to discover whether they were an Old One, which is much cooler.)

My parents gave me The Dark Is Rising for my eleventh birthday.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

My parents gave me The Dark Is Rising for my eleventh birthday.

I admire them!