Books tell stories and create memories and we feel nostalgic about the time we spent with them.
Parents feel close to Laura, Mary and Pa and Ma Ingalls. They're connected to Beezus and Ramona and Fudge, and they want their kids to get to know them, too. Sometimes kids connect with the books of the past just like we did. But sometimes they're looking for younger, hipper friends.
"I've worked in the library for 15 years and we always have that grandmother who comes in with her granddaughters and the grandmother loved the Little House on the Prairie and she wants her granddaughters to read all the Little House on the Prairie books and the granddaughters are standing behind her rolling their eyes," says Amy Miller, youth collection development librarian at Central Arkansas Library System.
Miller typically suggests that grandkids try the first book in Grandma or Mom's favorite series. But she'll also suggest books written more recently about similar characters or settings.
Miller, after all, had her favorites and understands the desire to share them.
"I was a horse-crazy girl. I wanted a horse so bad. It was just me and my mother. We lived in town and it was not feasible for me to ever have a pony, but that was the one thing that I thought would just make my life so much better was if I could have a horse," she says. "So I read all the Marguerite Henry books -- Misty of Chincoteague, King of the Wind, all of The Black Stallion books by Walter Farley, National Velvet ..."
Miller turned the pages while sitting in the crook of a tree in her backyard, her feet hanging down on each side, just like they would have if she were in a saddle.
"What's really cool about my job is that now I read reviews every month and I see all of these new horse books coming along," Miller says. "[Catherine Hapka] is taking Marguerite Henry's concept and writing a series of chapter books called the Ponies of Chincoteague. They're brand new."
For some, however, friends who came alive on the pages of a book are irreplaceable. That's the case for Carolyn Haywood's character Betsy, with whom Fayetteville Public Library's Director of Youth and Outreach Services Lolly Greenwood became acquainted while sprawled on the yellow bedspread of her twin bed in her room near the kitchen and her parent's room.
She can think of no similar stories to recommend to young readers.
"That series and books like them are a sweet memory tucked away in my childhood," Greenwood says.
Miller often sees parents who read the Harry Potter series and fell in love with the characters, turning their own kids on to the series. Harry Potter has almost become its own genre, with various series popping up that incorporate magic or that are set in boarding schools for wizards or superheroes.
Arkansas author Trenton Lee Stewart, who wrote The Mysterious Benedict Society collection, captivates Harry Potter fans -- and some fans of The Hobbit, as well -- with its riddles, challenges, adventures and fights against dark forces.
Voracious reader Ian Beal, 9, flew into Little Rock from London on a recent Saturday afternoon to visit his grandmother, Lee Ann Matson, and made a beeline for Fletcher Library. He thinks Potter fans might enjoy The Creature From My Closet series by Obert Skye, which features mismatches from other stories, such as Potterwookiee, a mix of Chewbacca from Star Wars and Harry Potter, and Katfish, a pairing of Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games and The Little Mermaid.
Ian doesn't always appreciate books that are picked for him, but his grandmother found the Creature series and he approved. His mother, Laura Beal, introduced him to Diary of a Wimpy Kid and he enjoyed that as well.
"I never actually would have gotten it because it looked kind of strange on the cover," he says.
Ian also read The Chronicles of Narnia from his mother's childhood with her, and he's reading classics like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and the original Hardy Boys series with his father.
Bobby Roberts, CALS director, devoured The Hardy Boys books at age 10 or 11 after someone gave him his first copy.
"I went back and read one of them last year. I do that every once in a while, go back and read something I read 20 years ago just to see if I still think it's as interesting or if I think it's as interesting as I did then," he says. "I still thought it was pretty good."
His renewed interest prompted him to research about the authors of The Hardy Boys.
"The author was a nonexistent person; he was just a made-up name. Franklin W. Dixon was his name, but there wasn't any Franklin W. Dixon; all kinds of different people wrote them, so they just kept writing them," Roberts says. "They've been updated quite a bit and modernized, and they've gone back to the old ones and rewritten them."
Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys' female counterpart, grabbed Vicki Plant's attention when she was about 8 years old.
"My mother gave me my first Nancy Drew -- it was The Clue of the Dancing Puppet and I read it in about 45 minutes," says Plant, who works as office manager in the English department at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and part time at WordsWorth Books & Co. "Then she got me another one ... and I did the same thing. And she looked at me and said, 'No more. If you want more you have to buy them yourself.'"
Then Plant's father introduced her to a used book store.
"You could buy Nancy Drews cheaper there than you could new and I started buying those and I noticed that the stories were different. I think the original stories came out in the '30s and I was reading them in the '70s and they had already started modernizing them," she says.
For a modern-day Nancy Drew, Jordan Jacobs' series starring 12-year-old Samantha Sutton may fit the bill.
"She acts her age," Plant says. "She just wants to be an archaeologist and the mysteries scare her like they would a kid her age, but she works through them and figures everything out."
Fairy tales, mythology and folklore were also childhood favorites for Plant.
"Those are everywhere now," she says. "They're [hugely] popular."
In Megan Morrison's Grounded: The Adventures of Rapunzel, the first in her Tyme series, Rapunzel feels sympathy for her captor and sets off on a journey with Jack -- of Beanstalk fame -- to protect her.
The Ever After High books by Shannon Hale are about the children of fairy tale heroes and villains.
"Maleficent's daughter really doesn't want to follow in her mother's footsteps and the theme of first book is about her agonizing over this decision of who she's going to be and what she's going to be," Plant says.
Those updated fairy tales are more of a draw for girls, Plant says. Others have wider appeal.
"One of the funniest books I've ever read is called The Heroes Guide to Saving Your Kingdom and it is every fairy tale you can imagine crammed into one book and twisted every which way you can think of," she says. "All the Prince Charmings of all the fairy tales are really mad because they're never named, they're always just called Prince Charming."
Dana Thornton, assistant director of the Columbia County Library in Magnolia, relished the time as a child she spent curled up in a swing on her grandmother's front porch in Bossier City, La., with Trixie Belden mysteries.
"The Trixie Belden books were among the first books I purchased for the library when that duty fell to me," she says. "I am happy to say they are still circulating."
Susan Gele, spokesman for CALS, was another fan of Trixie Belden books and encouraged her now-grown daughters to read them when they were in elementary school.
"One of them liked them and one of them didn't," Gele says. "The gender roles were much more traditional and old-fashioned than I remembered. It didn't make an impact on me when I was a child, but when I went back and listened to the audiobooks with my child it was significantly different from the life we lead now."
Miller points CALS patrons to an online reference system, NoveList, on cals.org as a way to discover new young adult series. NovelList prompts users to enter a book title and then offers similar reading options.
"If you have a child that's turned on to something that they really like, you can keep getting them books that are similar and they will keep reading," she says.
Family on 07/29/2015