Advent Book 5 – A children’s classic

Today saw the first fiction book in my Advent calendar and it’s a children’s classic – The Railway Children by E Nesbit (I had said that I wanted no nineteenth century classics in the calendar and I note that this book was first published in 1906 so it meets my criteria).

The Railway Children is one of the books I read as a child (I have also seen the film which is, rightly, highly regarded). I was a voracious reader as a child and consumed large amounts of books including what I would consider to be children’s classics. I have reread many of them since and not all have lived up to my memories. Little Women was unbearably preachy and had some very dated views on disability. What Katy Did was even worse (very sad as I loved that book as a child). Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm was still very readable. Pollyanna was as insufferable and sentimental as I remembered and Anne of Green Gables was an absolute delight to read as an adult as it had been as a child, although its sequels are beginning to bore me. I still have some others to read which I remember with affection – The Little Princess, Five Children and It, Ballet Shoes, The Secret Garden, Black Beauty and others. I would probably have got to The Railway Children eventually and now I have the opportunity.

I remember this book with affection but as we can see above sometimes a child’s view of a book doesn’t endure with an adult’s mind applied to it. I also remember that even as a child I thought that there was a degree of classism in the story, especially as it related to Mr Perks who worked at the railway station (played by Bernard Cribbens in the film) – I wonder if that will spoil the book for me as I apply an adult eye to the interactions of the characters ?

The edition of this book that I have been sent contains a glossary of words I might not know, which would have been useful when I was a child, and it has an introduction about the author and the context of the story which I shall read. It is in excellent condition and has been rarely, if ever, read.

My fifth book is one which I might have bought anyway (although probably on my Kindle) and I will definitely read.