Soooo it’s been a while! Just like with my other daily book memes, I haven’t been able to quite keep up due to my super awesome trip to Romania! You can read more about it here in my October Monthly Wrap-up post! But yes, I will be working on posting a lot more regularly for the rest of the year, …and beyond! I may be starting an internship in mid November, and it’s out of town. But I’ll figure something out if that even happens. Trying not to get ahead of myself here…

This meme is hosted by Alison Can Read and Parajunkee.com, and you can find all of the details in her most recent Feature & Follow post! But basically, people post in responses to a prompt every week, and then people vote on each others’ posts on that topic. The person with the most votes, is chosen as the next week’s feature!

And this week’s prompt is:

What are your favorite childhood stories? (children’s books, nursery rhymes, etc.)

Some of you may know that I spent most of my childhood (years 3 to about 11) in Austria! It should come as no surprise, then, that the majority of my childhood favourites will have been in German! Some are originally German, while others are translations…and with the help of this tag, I will also learn which is which.

I will start off with a disturbing one…as well as one which explains why I’m so drawn to some of the morbid stories out there. This book is filled with some old fairytales, which unlike the Grimm collection, were not changed to be more “kids friendly” over the years.

I’m not sure if this is the exact cover of the story book which I owned, but it’s pretty similar at least. If the exterior doesn’t disturb you, the interior sure will. It is filled with stories which first and foremost are lessons and warning for little children. The moral behind each of these stories, has to do with behaving a certain way in society.

Struwwelpeter, the story for which the front cover of the book is illustrated, for example…is the story about a boy who refused to be hygienic. The warning is, that children who, like Peter, refuse to stay clean and take care of their bodies, whill end up looking like Peter. (I think there was some other punishment which Peter had to endure also…)

Most of the punishments in this book, involved very painful deaths. If you’re up for it, you can read more about these stories in this article: The best scenes from the most demented German children’s book ever published. Gotta love the title of the article. And really, I couldn’t agree more.

The next book is considerably more lighthearted! Sorry if I scared you with that first one, guys! I thought I’d get the weirdest one out of the way first, haha.

Hurray for Pippi Longstocking! Or as I remember her, Pippi Langstrumpf (which holds the exact same meaning, but is in German). I do remember reading some of these, but more than anything, I remember watching some sort of TV show about Pippi. And it was one of my favourites. And after just a little research, I found a little bit more about it!

I’m pretty sure that this show used to play on one of the two cable channels we had at home. My dad was, and still is, very against cable TV hahaha. So it was very rare that we could watch anything that wasn’t on VHS tapes.

Another favourite were Richard Scarry’s books! Such as What Do People Do All Day?

I remember being fascinated by the large pages and the detailed illustrations on each one. There were so many things to look at! And so many new words (in German) for me to learn.

My sister and I read these books over and over and over, and were very sad to have to leave them behind when we moved to Canada. We left a lot of books and toys, and other things we grew up with when we moved from Austria to Canada. I still miss some of those things, although it’s been years and years since we moved.

Of course we also had The Raindbow Fish in Austria! Or as I remember it Der Regenbogenfisch. Gotta love those long, combined German words. Hah. I remember really enjoying this book because of the colours, and also the added textures and sparkles.

I guess I always liked the shiny things.

The illustrations in general are just so pleasing to the eye, and the story was good too (from what I remember). I can see myself reading this book to my kids (when I have them, haha).

And oh my goodness! I just came across this intro! I’d forgotten that there even was a TV show! But now that I’ve seen it, I remember watching this show a lot!

There are numerous other book which I remember, but I cannot remember the titles of. One of them in particular I remember had a shiny green dragon which kept appearing throughout it. And there was also a scary story in this book…about a sister and brother who went to visit a family member in the woods, and on the way home…the girl was carrying a pile of magazines given to her by the relative, and saw something creepy following her. But like I said, I can’t remember the name of that book, or the author’s name. If any of you know, please tell me! Not knowing is driving me nuts.

What are your favourite childhood stories? Did you grow up somewhere other than North America too? How do your childhood stories compare to North American ones? LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS BELOW, OR MAKE YOUR OWN POST BY JOINING FEATURE & FOLLOW FRIDAYS!