Books that helped turn me into a writer

World Book Day happened last week, so I’m a little behind. Started in England to help place books into the hands of children, it’s now global, and hosts a lot of events to make them more accessible. Thinking about it reminded me that I still own books I read as a child. Reading books throughout my childhood and beyond made me want to be a writer myself, for which I’m grateful, and looking through my bookshelves to find my favorites brought it back to me. They’re battered and worn now (the sign of a much-loved book!) and they each have a story.

The first is from my mother’s childhood. She was twelve in 1932 when she was given this, and as children, we, her five daughters, read it over and over. The tale includes some Romany people (who used to be called gypsies) who feature as the bad guys, something you wouldn’t see nowadays, not least because they are no longer perceived that way. But before WW2, they provided a stereotype of the kind of person who could show up anywhere and steal things. What always interested me more, though, were the illustrations of life in Britain back in the thirties.

The eponymous Ameliaranne comes from a working-class family with six children. The lost treasure belongs to a rich but lovely upper-middle-class young woman, who loses it. Our heroine finds it and after several adventures returns it to her.

Ironically, my mother’s life started in the upper-middle class, and she ended up a widow with five daughters, living in a two-bedroom flat overlooking the railway line. She never felt sorry for herself, but the contrast must have been jarring for her.

My second book is one most people have never heard of. Written by Joanna Spyri’s translator, Charles Tritten, as a follow-up to Heidi, I found it on my bedside table at boarding school. It was an eighth birthday gift from my parents, and I devoured it, eager to escape the world I was living in then to a mountain in Switzerland where goats roamed with bells around their necks.

This was also my first “library” book. I decided to start a lending library of my books, duly inscribing Ex Libris inside the cover, and drawing up several “Date Returned” columns on a blank page. Sadly, they remained empty, since I was the most avid reader in the family, and no one ever borrowed it!

The last was a book I was introduced to as a twelve-year-old in my freshman year of high school. (This is for my American readers. British readers will understand that I mean the first year of grammar school.) It’s by William Thackeray, so it’s a classic, but it’s what we might call a middle-grade fairy tale these days. The reason it’s so memorable is that in it a character issues the words I’ve never forgotten. “You Gaby!” (pronounced gay-bee.)

I was always an annoying pupil I suspect – the class clown. My English teacher had her revenge. “I want you all to look this word up,” she said, and the room fell silent as we diligently leafed through our dictionaries. My heart sank as I took in the definition: A fool or simpleton. My fellow students looked at me and erupted in laughter, as twelve-year-old girls will, while I tried to pretend I was indifferent.