From Cherie Priest's blog:
So how about this? I’ve done my pop culture icon love-rambling, now it’s your turn. Who pulled the chain to light the bulb in your head when you were a kid? Go on, tell me. I won’t make fun of you for it. Ripley made me cry a little bit when she chucked the ship’s cat into the escape shuttle for safe keeping. You can’t possibly confess anything sillier than that.
Anastasia Krupnik. She's not nearly as exciting as Ripley, but then, neither am I. She made me realize that I wasn't alone* in a lot of things.
*The girl brought a plaster bust of Freud home from a yard sale, for Pete's sake! Totally the kind of thing I would have done at that age, if I'd lived somewhere where there were yard sales within walking distance.
Harriet the Spy. She is intrepid, poking her nose into places I couldn't even imagine (seeing as how she is from Manhattan and I was from southeast Missouri, although living on Oahu the summer I discovered her).
Posted by: Jeanne | 14 April 2008 at 12:22 PM
I thought of Anastasia first thing too. And I still don't think of it as a series, even though I have all the books, because I read the first one before the second was published, and each one involved a sort of perfect joy when I discovered it on the shelf.
Posted by: Sarah | 15 April 2008 at 02:55 AM
I was thinking of Harriet the Spy as well, but the light bulb in my head became extra bright when I remembered that I read this in 5th grade and gave a great book talk about Harriet in front of the class. I got a laugh from my classmates!I was in heaven! I remember it vividly! And now, here I am, a children's librarian going out to the schools and giving book talks and if the kids laugh at my presentations and come in to get the books that very same day, it's a good day. I didn't start out wanting to be a children's librarian, I just kind of fell into it "by accident"- or was it????
Posted by: Ellen | 16 April 2008 at 06:54 PM