Favorite Children's Books and Movies

There are certain children’s books and movies that are classics and I remember them vividly and the affected they had on me. My favorite children’s classic was Heidi. I loved the story of the orphaned Swiss girl who charmed her grandfather who cared for her. Not only did I read the most popular book Heidi, but I also loved the rest of the trilogy which follows Heidi as she grows from a little girl to a young woman. I especially remember the descriptions of the melted cheese and bread sandwiches that Heidi ate to build her strength. Those passages would make my mouth order since I loved melted cheese sandwiches.

Another favorite book was Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. When I first read it, I didn’t understand that the setting was the time period was the War Between the States (the Civil War). When I read it again later when I was older and realized this, I enjoyed the book even more because I could understand it better. I cried when Beth died, as she was my favorite character, but I also loved Jo for her strength of character and determination. This book, too, I followed with reading Little Men. I couldn’t get enough of Alcott’s stories.

When I was quite a young reader, I loved the Bobbsie Twins series. I was enthralled by the concept of two sets of twins, one dark complected and the other fair. I could identify especially with Nan, the older girl. I remember that I especially liked the book where the Bobbsie Twins go to the seashore.

I read The Wizard of Oz and really enjoyed the book. But when I saw the movie, I was absolutely terrified of the flying monkeys. The witches were fine, but those monkeys were horrible. And we always watched the movie when it came on televsion, and to this day, I have little love of monkeys, flying or otherwise.

I didn’t read the play until later, but as a child I loved Mary Martin’s version of Peter Pan when it was on television. I saw the Disney cartoon when I was quite young, probably no more than four. My babysitter Connie Guilfoyle, the daughter of my father’s supervisor, took me to see it. I remember that Connie told me that I could cover my eyes when the part with the crocodile came on because that part scared me. Connie also took me to see Alice in Wonderland. I had an Alice in Wonderland rain cape and umbrella which I loved wearing. It was made of pink translucent plastic and had the characters imprinted on it. I didn’t read the Alice books until I was much older but truly enjoyed them.

When I was older, a pre-teen, I loved reading the Nancy Drew series of books. I had quite a number of books in the series and I would trade books with my friend Debbie Brown who had even more books in the series than I did. I also liked the Cherry Ames series, which was about a nursing student, who then became a nurse and had adventures as she worked in different types of nursing situations.

Another series I loved and appreciated when I was older was the Winnie-the-Pooh books. I never had them read to me when I was younger but loved them when I read them by myself. When I was in high school, I even read the Latin translation of Winnie-the-Pooh. When the Disney corporation bought the rights to Winnie-the-Pooh, I was tremendously disappointed in their version because the cartoon characters looked nothing like the drawings of the characters in the books. And they made Piglet, my favorite character, to be such a coward, when I did not see him that way from reading the books.

These were my favorite children’s books and I have even read them as an adult. They still hold much pleasure for me today as they did all those years ago.

Alice in Wonderland and Other Movies

This past weekend when we went to see Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" movie, I remembered well the very first movie that I ever saw, which was the Disney cartoon movie version of "Alice in Wonderland." My babysitter Connie Guilfoyle, who was the daughter of my father's supervisor at school, took me to see it, and she also took me to see other movies, mostly Disney cartoons. Connie took me to the movies because my brother and sister were too young to go to the movies and I was just barely old enough, about 3 1/2 years old. I was a very well- behaved child, so people never minded taking me places. But "Alice" was my very first movie. I was a little scared of the Red Queen, of course; who wouldn't be scared of her!? But I loved the cartoon movie; I wished that I was Alice and could have such an adventure as she did. My little life seemed quite mundane, compared to what Alice experienced, even if some of her adventures were a bit frightening. 

I also had a little plastic raincoat, a see-through plastic cape with pictures of Alice and the White Rabbit on it, as well as some of the scenes from the cartoon.  It also came with a rainbonnet and a little umbrella. These also had pictures from the cartoon on them and were made of see-through plastic. I dearly loved my "Alice" raingear and actually looked forward to rain so that I could wear them if we went out. Unfortunately, we didn't go out and about all that often, except to church and to my grandparents' home, but I do remember wearing my outfit to my grandparents' home. It must have been the first time my grandparents had seen it, because I recall my grandmother oohhing and aahhing over how lovely I looked in my raingear. I think I was with my father at that time, and it seems in my memory that Pat and Joanne were not around, so they must have been home with my mother. My father probably was taking a loan payment to my grandparents who had loaned my parents money with which to build our house.

Connie also took me to see the Disney cartoon "Peter Pan." I distinctly remember being very scared at that movie. Captain Hook was a nightmarish character for me, and I was as deathly afraid of the crocodile as Captain Hook was. I remember Connie telling me that I could put my hands over eyes and not look at the scary parts, and she promised to tell me when the scary parts were about to happen. But for the most part, I loved going to the movies with Connie. I felt so grown-up to be going out without my parents and the babies. And Connie always bought me pop-corn, which I loved and still love to this day. Pop-corn is one of my favorite things, and a movie just doesn't feel right unless I have some pop-corn to eat while watching it.

Later when we were older, my mother generally took us to the movies. First, though, she had to make sure that they were on the approved list from the Catholic Church. There was a listing of the movies that were playing and the Church rated the movies as to their acceptability, based on the values of the church. And they were quite strict. If there was any extra-marital sex, for example, the movie was "Condemned" by the Church. So the movie "Tom Jones," a classic book and movie produced in the 1960s, was condemned by the Church. However, I was about 15 when that movie came out and my friend Bridget and I snuck out to see the movie because we had read the book and were curious 15-year-olds. Did we ever tell our parents that we had seen it? Not on your life! Not even when I was older did I ever let on to my parents that I had seen a "Condemned" movie because that was a sin!

When we were in grammar school, I remember some of the movies we saw were "The Ten Commandments," "The Sound of Music," "Johnny Tremayne," and "A Nun's Story." The latter was probably not appropriate for young children such as we were because it had a lot of violence in it--it was about a nun serving as a missionary in Africa during the turbulent times when African nations were attempting to gain their independence from European countries. I did have nightmares after that movie, and decided that I would NOT be a missionary because it was just too dangerous.

But most of the movies we saw were happy-ending, sugar-coated movies. Lots of Disney movies, of course. What would be "G" rated movies today. There were certainly more of them when I was growing up than there are today. It seems as if today even the children's movies have double entendres and show disrespect to parents or other authority figures. And parents today tend to let their children see movies that are beyond their intellectual abilities, movies that they can't (or shouldn't) understand at very young ages. But movies today are so heavily promoted and marketed to audiences of young people, who attend many movies. And parents don't seem to check out a movie or even discuss the values of the movie with their children. There are teachable moments in some of those movies, but the vast majority of parents miss those moments and concentrate on entertainment value for themselves.