At the end of our trip to Olomouc in the Czech Republic last month, a new friend gave me a cookbook. I was thrilled! Inside were recipes for many of the foods we'd been enjoying on the trip.
Eli and I decided to host a "Czech Gummy Party" to share some of the treats we brought home. And we decided to bake Bábovka, a marble cake that we enjoyed many times on the trip.
When we visited people's homes for a meal, not only did we make new friends and eat many yummy things, but people also often gave Eli candy. Eli decided to save it all and take it home to share with friends. He divided everything so everyone would have a chance to try the treats. The hosts who shared their home with us gave us cookies, and we shared those too.
The big white gummies with the funny faces are called "Milk Ghosts."
Everybody loved the treats! The gummies were brought home were softer and more flavorful than United States versions. The big hit was the "Milk Ghosts."
In addition to the treats, we put out games that we brought back with us. The favorite was the "Hopping Hat" game when you use a flipper to launch small cone-shaped hats to try to land in a rack to collect points. But a wooden block puzzle that someone gave Eli was also a big hit as was the Dobble game (matching pictures) and a wooden egg-stacking game. (There are five eggs but the most anyone could successfully stack was three.)
At a toy shop in Olomouc, we found bags of small glow in the dark plastic links that can be snapped together. Both the kids and the grownups loved making long chains.
A good time was had by all and everyone learned more about the Czech Republic. Eli gave everyone a shiny crown coin to take home.
To our Czech friends... We miss you! Thank you so much for the treats and games!
My husband's job running camps for older kids means that summer travel is out for him. And he's often so busy that we barely see him. So in 2015 when it came time for an annual family reunion, I decided to make the trip with my son Eli. From Georgia to North Carolina with a kiddo was easier than I thought it would be. And it was so much fun! The next year, in 2016, we drove way up to Boston to see family, visiting with friends along the way. In 2017, we made another trip, this time all the way up to Maine. Now that we had wanderlust for sure and a little practice, we decided to go farther. How much farther? It seems like more fun not to tell in advance. Just follow along here if you'd like to see.
Our first stop was the 1904 statue of Vulcan, the ancient god of fire and metal, high on a hill above Birmingham, Alabama. Fifty feet tall, it is the largest cast iron statue in the world and celebrates the area's history of metal production.
After our overnight trip to Callaway Gardens, we had a night at home and then headed south for Brian's second work trip -- Jekyll Island.
My first home was one of the islands on the Georgia coast. It was pure bliss to be in the region again after five long years without seeing it. As soon as I smelled the damp air and saw the morning sun rising over the live oaks, I got teary.
Spanish moss hanging from branches...
Fallen live oak leaves lend the air a scent like tea and they are stiff enough that they rattle on the ground when the wind blows.
The palmetto fronds also rattle in the sea breeze...
And I was lucky indeed because March is my favorite month for the Golden Isles -- cool nights but warm days, few bugs, and the azaleas blooming.
And the Cherokee roses...
The biggest joy, though, was sharing it all with my boy.
Eli and I joined Brian on two of his work trips last week. So lovely for us to get away as a family.
Arriving at Callaway Gardens on a stormy edge-of-spring evening...
The Happy Hotel Wiggles...
Standing atop Pine Mountain...
And the pure bliss of supper at the Country Store Restaurant... (The wonderful fried chicken tasted just like my mom's. Twenty years after she died, it was something else to have that taste again! I had all sorts of flashbacks of her 1970s kitchen.)
Brian presented at a conference in South Georgia earlier this week. Although it was a quick trip, Eli and I joined him just for fun. On the way home, we stopped in at Senoia, Georgia. Fans of the television show The Walking Dead will recognize this little town as the fictional Woodbury. (Click HERE for the show's official website.)
As soon as we headed up Main Street, all started to look very familiar. (And, yes, Cindy...Norman Reedus does walk these streets!)
Here's a fake bank and book store, both created just for filming. The windows are either replaced with opaque dark glass or covered with black plastic. You can't see in at all.
We talked to some of the residents and they seem to enjoy the hoopla that goes with filming. Apparently there is quite the juggling act to film quickly and then allow folks in to still use the downtown businesses. The shops have to close while the cameras roll, but between the film crews, the film-day rubberneckers, and the increased tourists, business is doing well in the town. Everybody said the show's actors are personable too. (The town hall, by the way, is set back from Main Street and appears to be a set built in an empty lot.)
There have been quite a few movies and television shows filmed in Senoia. (Click HERE to see the Internet Movie Database.) I was excited to see the Travis-McDaniel house, which served as the Threadgoode house in the 1991 film Fried Green Tomatoes. (Love that movie!)
Adventurers get hungry, so we stopped at the local treat shop.
Guess what we found inside? No. Not zombies (thank goodness...that quickly gets even messier than a four year-old with a chocolate ice cream cone). We found the bicycle from Mary Poppins!
Introduction, links to the series, and the booklist.. (Bookmark this page to check for new posts and updates)
Above is the Oxford pub where writers C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien used to meet up to discuss writing and life. They dubbed it "The Bird and Baby."
I adore reading, and few books are as dear as the ones I fell in love with during childhood. Upon learning to make characters, setting, and plot come to life in one's own head -- the magic of imagination kicking in -- a kid is never quite the same again. Children's stories give us our first peeks into others' inner lives, teaching us lessons we never had to suffer through and helping us develop empathy.
I'd like to argue that the children's stories we loved shouldn't be left behind when we grow up. It is a lovely thing to be able to share old favorites with the kids who come into our lives, but those books have value for us too. It is a joy to get to take those fun journeys with beloved characters all over again. We remember our beginnings. And a well-written children's book reminds us that we are coming of age in varied ways throughout our lives.
So why British books? Many of the books near the top of my childhood favorites list hail from British authors, which has admittedly turned me into an Anglophile. Also, almost all of my ancestors are from the British Isles; a literary time-line doesn't have to go back very far before I'm essentially reading family history. But those reasons aren't the most compelling. What truly draws me in is the gifts that come with reading original works from a long-lived people, tracing history and culture but also a literary tradition. I would argue that the children's literary tradition in the British Isles is just as rich and valuable as the larger tradition that brought us Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Woolf, Browning, the Bronte sisters, Eliot, Kipling, Forster, Lawrence, and Auden, to name a few. And for those who love a good fantasy story, there is a lovely path to follow from ancient Beowulf to Harry Potter and beyond. Writers such as Sir Thomas Malory, John Bunyan, George McDonald, Edith Nesbit, J.R.R. Tolkien, Lucy Boston, and C.S. Lewis dipped into British history and folklore to create stories that fire the imagination while exploring the human soul.
As much as I love C.S. Lewis' Narnia books and similar still-popular books, I won't explore those in this series -- at least not yet. What fascinates me is that there are older books that are slowly falling deeper into obscurity, yet they are wonderful reading adventures. These were often the books that the great writers of the last century read when they were growing up and they still have the power to delight, inform, and inspire. And what fun it is to sniff them out and share them here!
Enjoy!
Above is a detail from the Peter Pan sculpture in Kensington Gardens (London). Author James Barrie commissioned it. When it was done, he then had workers install it in the Gardens in the dark so it would seem to the children of London that the artwork appeared magically overnight.
Boston, The Green Knowe Series -- In these six novels, children living in an English manor house almost a millennium old travel up and down in time to meet each other and have adventures. Genres: Action/Adventure, Low Fantasy.
Boston, The Sea Egg -- Brothers Toby and Joe are on holiday on the Cornish coast when they come across a mysterious rock that looks like an oversized egg. Sure enough, it hatches! Genres: Action/Adventure, Low Fantasy
Boston, Nothing Said -- Libby leaves the city behind to stay with a family friend in the countryside and soon finds herself in a beautiful, compelling world of meadows, woods, gardens, and rivers. Genres: Nature Fiction
Hull and Whitlock, The Far-Distant Oxus – Three English school children have adventures in the Exmoor countryside while their parents are away. They ride horses across windswept moors, camp out under the stars, and build a raft to journey to the sea, but there are many other adventures to be had too. (This is a wonderful gift book if you have a horse-loving kid in your life.) Genre: Action/Adventure.
Jerome, Three Men in a Boat – In this humor story for adults, three young men and a rambunctious dog set off to explore the Thames between London and Oxford -- often with disastrous results. Genres: Action/Adventure, Humor, Travelogue.
Lucas, The Slowcoach – An anonymous stranger sends a family a horse-drawn Gypsy caravan. Off the kids go to explore the historic spots and back roads of their native England… Genres: Action/Adventure, Travelogue.
Ransome, Swallows & Amazons Series -- This series of twelve adventure books take place in the 1930s and offer everything from shipwrecks and pirates to ice sleds and gold mines. Genres: Action/Adventure.
Uttley, A Traveller in Time – A visit to her ancestors’ Derbyshire farm turns into a time travel adventure for Penelope. Soon she learns secrets that may just be her family’s undoing. Genres: Low Fantasy.
Companion Posts:
How the Heather Looks – This is the book that inspired the British Reading Adventure project. Come along for the ride as a family in the 1950s goes looking for traces of children’s stories of yesteryear. (The blog post about this book also explains more about our family project to read classic children's books and then someday explore the settings in person.)
Children’s Literature Cookbooks – Read classic children’s books and then head to the kitchen to whip up the same treats you read about. This is a great way to bring books alive for kids!
Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer – Jane Brocket’s books peep into British children’s literature, giving ideas for fun things to do and cook.
The British Reading Adventure List:
If your library doesn't have these books, try interlibrary loan or online used booksellers.
Fiction for the Very Young Edith Blyton -- The Noddy series L. Leslie Brooke -- Ring o’ Roses, Johnny Crow’s Garden, Golden Goose Book, The Roundabout Turn Randolph Caldecott John Cunliffe – The Postman Pat stories Joseph Jacobs – English Fairy Tales A. A. Milne – The Winnie the Pooh books Beatrix Potter – The Fairy Caravan, etc. Robert Louis Stevenson – A Child’s Garden of Verses
Children’s Fiction (Also see the list of Carnegie Medal winners and the New York Review Children's Collection.) Eleanor Atkinson – Greyfriars Bobby Reverend W. Awdry – Thomas the Tank Engine James Barrie – Peter Pan Enid Blyton – The Circus of Adventure, The Folk of the Faraway Tree, etc. Mr Galliano’s Circus, The Secret of Spriggy Holes, The Treasure Hunters Famous Five series, Malory Tower series, Twins at St Clare’s series Michael Bond – Paddington Bear stories L. M. Boston – The Children of Green Knowe series, Nothing Said Pamela Brown -- A Swish of the Curtain Frances Hodgson Burnett – Little Lord Fauntleroy, A Little Princess, The Secret Garden Lewis Carroll – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass Pauline Clarke – The Return of the Twelves Roald Dahl – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, etc. Mrs. (Juliana) Ewing – The Story of a Short Life, Jackanapes Ruby Ferguson – Children at the Shop, Jill books, Lady Rose and Mrs. Memmary Eve Garnett – The Family from One End Street Kenneth Grahame – Wind in the Willows, Reluctant Dragon, etc. Elizabeth Janet Gray – Adam of the Road Katherine Hull and Pamela Whitlock – The Far-Distant Oxus, Escape to Persia, The Oxus in Summer, and Crowns Rudyard Kipling – Stalky & Co, Puck of Pook’s Hill, Rewards and Fairies, etc. C. S. Lewis – Narnia series, etc. Hilda Lewis – The Ship that Flew E. V. Lucas – The Slowcoach Hugh Lofting – Dr. Doolittle series Captain Marryat – Children of the New Forest George Macdonald – The Princess and the Goblin Gavin Maxwell – Ring of Bright Water, The Otter’s Tale E. Nesbit – The Railway Children, etc. Mary Norton – The Magic Bedknob, the Borrowers series Philippa Pearce – Tom’s Midnight Garden M. Pardoe – The Far Island, Bunkle series, Argle’s Mist (Celtic Britain), Argle’s Causeway (Norman England) Howard Pyle – Robin Hood, Otto of the Silver Hand Arthur Ransome – Swallows & Amazons, Swallowdale, The Child’s Book of the Seasons, etc. J. K. Rowling – The Harry Potter stories Margery Sharp – The Rescuers, etc. Robert Louis Stevenson – Treasure Island, Kidnapped, etc. Noel Streatfeild -- Circus Shoes, Tennis Shoes, Ballet Shoes, Traveling Shoes, etc. Rosemary Sutcliffe – The Shield Ring, etc. P. L. Travers – Mary Poppins series, Gingerbread Shop, etc. Alison Uttley – A Traveler in Time, Little Grey Rabbit Henry Williamson – Tarka the Otter
Young Adult and Adult Fiction Alfred, Lord Tennyson – Idylls of the King Richard Adams – Watership Down Jane Austen – Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion Richard Doddridge Blackmore – Lorna Doone Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre, Villette Emily Bronte – Wuthering Heights John Bunyan – Pilgrim’s Progress Geoffrey Chaucer – The Canterbury Tales Daniel Dafoe – Moll Flanders Charles Dickens – The Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, etc. Daphne du Maurier – Rebecca, Jamaica Inn, etc. Robert Browning – “Childe Rowland to the Dark Tower Came” George Eliot – Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch Eric Ennion – House on the Shore E. M. Forster – A Passage to India, Where Angels Fear to Tread, A Room with a View, Howard’s End, Maurice, The Longest Journey Elizabeth Gaskell – Cranford, North and South, Mary Barton, etc. Thomas Hardy – Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Far from the Maddening Crowd Christina Hole – English Folk Heroes Robert Hunt – Popular Romances of the West of England Jerome K. Jerome – Three Men in a Boat Eleanore Jewett – The Hidden Treasure of Glaston Charles Kingsley – Westward Ho!, The Water Babies, Hypatia, Hereward the Wake D. H. Lawrence – Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, etc. Laurie Lee – Cider with Rosie, The Edge of Day John Milton – Paradise Lost Hope Muntz – The Golden Warrior Barbara Picard – Tales of the British People Rosamund Pilcher – The Shell Seekers Sir Walter Scott – Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, etc. Caroline Dale Snedeker – The White Isle Rosemary Sutcliffe – Warrior Scarlet, The Lantern Bearers, etc. J. R. R. Tolkien – The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings Sir Thomas Malory – Le Morte d’Arthur Robert Smith Surtees – Jorrocks’ Jaunts and Jollities Unknown -- Beowulf T. H. White – The Once and Future King, Mistress Masham’s Repose, etc. P. G. Wodehouse – Jeeves and Wooster stories, etc. Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own, Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando
History Leonard Cottrell – Seeing Roman Britain Jacquetta Hawkes – Early Britain Geoffrey of Monmouth – Historia
Travelogues and Guides 1851 -- Lavengro by George Henry Borrow (also The Romany Rye and Wild Wales) 1880s (fiction) – Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome 1904 – A Wanderer in London – E. V. Lucas 1908 (fiction) -- The Slowcoach by E. V. Lucas 1933 – English Journey by J.B. Priestley 1958 – How the Heather Looks by Joan Bodger 1968 – Journey Through Britain by John Hillaby 1982 – Kingdom by the Sea by Paul Theroux 1984 – A Matter of Wales by Jan Morris 1994 – Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson 2002 – Once Upon a Time in Great Britain: A Travel Guide to the Sights and Settings of your Favorite Children’s Stories by Melanie Wentz
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I'd like to thank my mother for always taking us to the library. Even if we were living somewhere just for the summer, she'd take us to get a temporary local card. And thanks, too, to her friend Ms. Elaine who knew an awful lot about children's books and shared lists with our family.
Some avid readers stick to the bestseller lists. Others get recommendations from friends or zip online to download the latest big buzz ebook. As satisfying as that is, there are times we want more. We haunt bookstores and libraries. We drift past shelves, thumbing through a volume here and there. Its an elusive sort of hope. We're craving a once-in-a-blue-moon book. That can mean a book rare in topic or scope or quality. Sometimes it is a book that simply suits you well, reviving old interests or sending you off in a refreshing new direction. If you're quite lucky, it somehow manages to fit those all of those descriptions at once.
This is how such a book fell into my hands...
It is said that southerners have a particular attachment to place. Certainly when I moved to Northern California in 2008, I despaired that I didn't have personal connections there. Thus it was quite a pleasant discovery to connect with my cousin, Marci, who it turned out lived only twenty miles away. (My maternal grandmother was a half-sister to Marci's dad.) We enjoyed meeting soon after Eli was born, but sadly it wasn't until the spring before I left that I realized Marci is actually a kindred spirit.
Like me, Marci likes shopping in unusual places, trying new foods, and travel. And she, too, is a huge bibliophile. In fact, both of us have public library backgrounds. Every time we met up, she gifted us with stacks of gently used books. Since we moved to Georgia, more than once we've had a fresh shipment of Marci books. (Bless her, one box even included the See's Candies I can't get on the East Coast. Does it get any better than pleasure reading paired with nostalgia chocolate?!)
In my pile of Marci loot, there were familiar books such as The Harvester by Gene Stratton Porter. But there were also volumes such as William Saroyan's World War Two homefront novel The Human Comedy and Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle. I quickly realized Marci has a knack for finding older books still well worth reading.
Then in the latest box I found treasure indeed. I'd already been rereading my stash of cookbooks and the Jane Brocket books (mentioned in my post about marmalade), all based on children's literature. On my morning walks I'd begun musing that if my career could be something like a cat, one of my nine lives might be to study children's literature. Imagine my joy when I discovered in Marci's box a little green hardback with an English cottage on the cover entitled How the Heather Looks: A Joyous Journey to the British Sources of Children's Books by Joan Bodger.
Ever have one of those books that you find yourself reading slower and slower because you just don't want it to end? Bodger made her journey in 1958, sharing the experiences with her librarian/historian husband as well as their nine year-old son and two year-old daughter. At the time, many of the sites were largely unchanged and Bodger was even able to meet authors now gone, asking them some of the very questions I'd also wondered. This travelogue is richly flavored with history and literature, but also a childlike sense of wonder. Bodger wrote in such a way that I could picture the moors, the thatched cottages, and sunsets over the Lake Country. Such a treat to read!
Thankfully, once this particular book was finished, it pointed the way to more and more and more books. The small stack you see in the photo above is just a beginning. Between Bodger and Brocket, I've been making book lists, searching libraries, filling my Kindle with free out-of-copyright titles, and shopping with online out-of-print booksellers. I now have a large map of the British Isles hanging in my office and I'm poring through written histories of England. I'm starting to understand more about British history, which naturally connects to world history, but also my own genealogy.
In a nutshell, ever since I'd read my first Narnia books, I've been in love with British children's literature and How the Heather Looks was both water and sunshine to that seed. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure what all will grow from this big reading project. I'm compiling a master list of books -- both classics and forgotten treasures -- that I plan to share with Eli (as long as he is interested). Thanks to Brocket and Bodger, we're already halfway through Paddington Bear's adventures. But I want more than that.
On our London honeymoon, Brian and I decided we'd return someday. Each year on our anniversary, we read our travel diaries aloud and wax nostalgic. This year, however, we actually started a travel savings account to make that dream a reality. By the time Eli is old enough to appreciate and remember what he sees, we'll have the funds to show him some of the places where great Children's literature took place, but also a land soaked in history from the Celts to crusader's castles to Shakespeare to Churchill.
In the meantime, I'll be reading and learning so I can be a good tour guide. Part of my plans include projects to uncover more family roots, which are almost exclusively in the British Isles. I'm fascinated by how many ties there are between the American South and the British Isles both in my family tree and the history books. Most of all, I'm mulling over writing projects inspired and informed by what I'm reading.
We're home from Blue Ridge now and I realized I never posted about a lovely weekend trip we made last month to Chattanooga. In particular, we visited Rock City one afternoon and then returned at night to see it aglow for the holidays...
After the sun set...
As you can see, I loved taking photos of the lights. Eli's favorite thing? Definitely the decorate-your-own gingerbread man station!
One Mama's Two Cents: Our family loves holiday lights and Rock City offers an unusual chance to walk among the decorations rather than just drive next to them. You can go at your own pace. The woods and huge rock formations are magical in the multicolored glow. In addition, after lots of running around, it was pure pleasure to visit the indoor hall for live music, a huge fireplace with rocking chairs pulled around it, hot chocolate, and freshly-made funnel cakes. Eli had a chance to sit on Santa's lap and get his portrait made in a set-up that was much better than most malls. (Calm atmosphere, cheerful Santa who obviously enjoys kids, and real beard!)
We're very glad we went to the Enchanted Garden of Lights! That said, however, I don't know that I would have liked going if Eli was much younger. Even in November it was fairly crowded and there were lots of opportunities for little feet to trip on tree roots and craigy rocks. For wee ones, you'll need a lot of adult supervision and a stroller definitely wouldn't be usable on the rough trails. Since Eli minds fairly well and is old enough to be steady on his feet, we plan to go back again for more holiday lights.
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