Random Fridays: Childhood Favorites

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A few months ago, I did a Random Fridays post about some of my favorite books, movies, and videos from when I was a kid. I had no idea at the time that Emma would make that the specific theme of this week's Random Friday. But since I had a lot of fun writing that post, I'm pretty excited to write another one with the same theme of favorite childhood books, movies, and TV shows. And possibly other things, depending on what I think of.

The Books:

(Yes, I had way more favorites than what I mentioned last time.)

  

Grimms' Fairy Tales

No, my love of fairy tales is definitely not a recent thing- just my love of fairy tale remakes. I don't remember exactly how old I was when my grammy bought me a book of Grimms' Complete Fairy Tales, but I do remember reading that book quite a bit- probably more than any other book of fairy tales I'd had before then. My tastes then were rather different from now, though. I barely gave "Rapunzel" a glance (I'd heard it plenty of times already), "King Thrushbeard" I outright disliked, and while I liked "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" well enough, it certainly wasn't my favorite. I preferred less well-known stories, like "The Six Servants", in which a king's son, aided by six companions with rather bizarre powers, won the hand of a sorceress-queen's beautiful daughter. (And now that I think of it, I rather want to try my hand at retelling that tale!)

The Chronicles of Narnia

Narnia, fairy tales, and The Hobbit- you pretty much have half of my childhood reading list right there. The Chronicles of Narnia were probably the first "real" fantasy books I read, and I'd listened to them- either read to me by my parents or as the Focus on the Family dramatizations- even before that. I used to love Voyage of the Dawn Treader most, though I can't recall for sure why. Ironically, some of the books I liked least then, The Horse and His Boy and The Last Battle, are probably my favorites now.

Caddie Woodlawn

Like most kids, I read the Little House books. (Possibly unlike most kids, I read all five series- Martha (my favorite), Charlotte, Caroline, Laura, and Rose (my least favorite).) I also read Caddie Woodlawn, a somewhat similar (though mostly fictional) book, and in some ways liked it better. It seemed a bit more relatable, since it was more a growing up story than a frontier life story. It was also funnier, but then again, fiction generally is funnier than reality.

The Movies:

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

We watched this movie a lot, both because I and the rest of my family enjoyed it and because it provided a compromise. It was shorter than Mary Poppins or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (both of which I suggested fairly often), my sister and I enjoyed it, and it wasn't animated (which Daddy could only take so much of). I really enjoyed the movie, and want to watch it again sometime, but unfortunately the part I remember most is the Oompa Loompa's song . . . which tends to get stuck in my head at annoying time and won't. come. out. 

Mary Poppins

I think I mostly liked this movie for the music- for a while, all my favorite Disney songs were from Mary Poppins. Of course, the rest of the movie is pretty fun too, especially when you realize how many nods to the book are actually in there (which I didn't realize then, naturally, but do now). As I mentioned before, we didn't watch it a lot because it's a long movie and my sister and I had to, you know, go to bed at a reasonable time. Now I think I should watch it again sometime . . . 

 Other Things

Jungle Jam and Friends: The Radio Show

Someone please tell me that I'm not the only one who loved Jungle Jam? I never listened to it on the radio, but we had nearly all the episodes (as far as I know) on cassette, and we also had CD versions of two of the cassette albums. For a while, car trips meant listening to Jungle Jam, and later (when The Chronicles of Narnia and other audiobooks became the norm), I listened to them by myself. And like VeggieTales, I still enjoy some Jungle Jam now and then.

Beethoven's Wig

For a while, I'm pretty sure this was the only music I really listened to. For those of you who don't know, the Beethoven's Wig CDs were meant to introduce kids to classical music: they contained pieces of classical compositions paired with funny lyrics, followed by those same pieces without words. Of course, being a kid who hadn't yet learned to appreciate the value of instrumental music, I only really listened to half the songs on each CD- but I definitely enjoyed them.