Rediscover the magic of favorite childhood books

Why these books matter even when you’re all grown up

Child Reading (Enfant lisant) by Pierre Auguste Renoir. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel. Original public domain image from Barnes Foundation

Welcome to your Saturday Side Quest.

Side Quest (noun), as defined by the Urban Dictionary: An impromptu adventure or diversion undertaken by an individual, typically outside the realm of one’s primary goals or responsibilities, often characterized by spontaneous actions and unconventional activities.

I told myself I wasn’t going to write another post before the holiday break, but here I am. And here you are too! Thanks for keeping me company.

Putting together Thursday’s post, 39 cozy comfort reads for midwinter and beyond, reminded me just how many of my favorite books were written for young readers. And I don’t mean just the handful of selections I included in that list of recommendations. I also mean the many others that I left off the list because if I named all my beloved comfort books, I’d never finish the damn post.

Anyway, this got me thinking about rereading favorite childhood books as an adult, which in turn sent me to Google to see what other people have said about this practice.

Here are some excerpts from several articles I enjoyed on the subject.

In a piece for the University of Washington magazine titled “Rereading a favorite book is like catching up with an old friend,” Jane Brown writes,

Books are like people. Some you meet once and that’s enough. Some you want to get to know better, and whenever you are with them you discover more about them. Some are old friends you haven’t seen in years but to meet them again is a joy. Many of my books are old friends, familiar, comforting voices in times of stress and, even more, inspiring reminders of how very well it is possible to understand and represent our often bewildering world.

I absolutely relate to that. I definitely think of my books as friends, and often turn to a particular one in search of specific comfort or advice. Some people have comfort shows that they watch and rewatch. I have books that I return to on a regular basis like coming home to myself so I can remember who I am.

Writing for The MIT Press Reader, Timothy C. Baker has this to say about how books act as a way to meet our past selves.

The act of rereading, as many critics have noted, evokes two readers: the one who is reading the work and the one who read it first, what Wendy Lesser, in “Nothing Remains the Same,” calls “a little reflected face” of “the person you were when you first read the book.” Revisiting the books we read in childhood is a way of revisiting our childhood selves. Often this provides a sense of continuity; we may be charmed to find ourselves moved by a text in the same way, we may be delighted that our taste in fiction then accords with our taste in fiction now. We might be surprised to find that a text informed the way we see the world to such an extent.

We are called back. And the book welcomes us in, and much has changed, and much has not. We are who we were when first we read the book, and who we are now, and we learn to embrace our own multiplicity, just as the book, if it’s good enough, if it’s true enough, embraces its own many readings.

Molly Templeton agrees in her piece for Reactor Magazine, “Rereading Is Time Travel,”

“Reading is time travel.” But really it’s rereading that’s time travel. Sure, you can visit different eras of history through a novel or a book about an era, but that’s all external. Rereading is your own version of time travel, a trip through the other time(s) you read a book, the other things you noticed about it, the other ways you related to or hated the characters. Rereading The Book of Three, I remember fifth grade, that we read that book for class but I then went and read the entire rest of the Chronicles of Prydain, unstoppable in my adoration for Princess Eilonwy and her glass bauble. (I really didn’t know what a bauble was.) Rereading A Wizard of Earthsea is always like coming home.

This idea of being able to travel back in time to who you were as a child — and by extension the way you saw the world, what you believed to be true and could be true — tugs at my heartstrings a bit. Childhood reading experiences carry their own kind of magic. They transport us in a way that we can’t quite recapture as adults. The books I loved as a child seemed to me almost literal portals into not only other stories, but the worlds in which those stories existed and also the version of me that might exist in those worlds if I could only step across that threshold.

But as we grow older and grow up, we are expected to put such childish things aside. If we cling to the stories of our youth, we are judged to be less intelligent and desperately naive. As children, we are encouraged to read anything and everything. As adults, we are often made to feel ashamed of reading “fluff” instead of the serious books that make us smarter and more worldly.

But, as the ubiquitous quote often misattributed to Einstein says, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

And these books — these fairy tales — matter. As India Hansra writes in a piece for the independent newspaper for the University of Cambridge titled “There is no such thing as ‘children’s’ books,”

The books you read as a child are so important. We are at our most imaginative as children; our childhood favourites can teach us about our world and subsequently allow us to change our perspective on it. Your favourite books as a child should always have a place on your shelf, and in your heart. No matter how good the books you read as an adult, they can never replace your childhood favourites.

I could not agree more. Fairy tales and similar stories are rich with mythology, folklore, and archetypal characters that we recognize immediately. Not only that, but they are integral to the creation of our own personal mythology. They help shape who we are by giving us a lens through which to view the world and our place in it. They give us companions from whom we learn what it is to be brave and true and courageous and kind. And we carry these perspectives and lessons all our lives.

And when the going gets tough, these are stories we can return to for comfort and wisdom and maybe even new insights. For each rereading is a new journey, even if it is over familiar terrain.

Perhaps most important, revisiting favorite childhood stories may help you regain your sense of hope in an often frightening world. As Katherine Rundell writes for the BBC,

Children's books say: the world is huge. They say: hope counts for something. They say: bravery will matter, wit will matter, empathy will matter, love will matter. These things may or may not be true. I do not know. I hope they are. I think it is urgently necessary to hear them and to speak them.

All that said, this week’s Saturday Side Quest, should you accept the challenge, is to reread a book you loved as a child, and see where it takes you.

Is the story as you remember it? Do you still have the same favorite character, or has your life experience brought you into alignment with someone different? Are there things you missed as a child that are clear to you now?

You don’t need to have any great epiphany. You might, but you don’t have to. Sometimes it’s enough just to be able to go back to that place where you were able to lose yourself fully in a fantastical story. That is reward enough.

Happy reading. 💜 📚 ☕️