I'm home and, after a couple of days catching up, I'm actually feeling alive again and raring to go.
Over the last couple of weeks bloggers have mentioned books from their childhood, games and Heron even mentioned what I took to be his Tree Elf. I don't have a tree elf but I mentioned that I do have a Pixie called Pip. So I thought this was probably a good time to introduce you. Of course some of you may already know Pip and may have learned some of the same things that I learned as a tiny child when reading about him. Indeed someone on the radio whilst I was travelling mentioned that she recalled how Blackbirds got their orange beaks through reading The Adventures of Pip by Enid Blyton first published in 1949 when I was just 5 years old.
As a result of reading these very short stories (30 in total in a book of about 180 pages with lots of illustrations) I learned all about hermit crabs, why lizards lost their tails, chestnut tree buds are covered in glue, that male sparrows have black bibs, how toads defend themselves, how caddis larvae stop tadpoles from eating them, what happens when the oak tree comes out before the ash and vice versa (not that I knew then what vice versa meant), the injustice of the naming of the 'slow worm', about cuckoos, the difference between butterflies and moths and oh so many more things. What was so brilliant about that book was that it taught me so much and, because it was in small chapters made reading interesting too.
I shall doubtless do another post on my childhood books but in the meantime I shall re-read The Adventures of Pip.
0 Comments