Books were always a Christmas staple when I was a kid. Mum and Dad always placed a few in and around the wrapped prezzies. They were usually about my favourite stuff at the time: dinosaurs, monsters and mythology. A few nature and history books always made there way onto the Christmas settee too as well as the latest Super Heroes and Gerry Anderson annuals. Enough reading to keep you going for the whole year!
There are so many of those books I could wax lyrical about I could probably start a new blog. So for now I'll pick just one, which for me captures the essence of those most important and magical Christmases when I was a kid in the Sixties and early Seventies. I can see it now nestled between gifts wrapped in the thin Xmas paper of the time, glowing with a ghostly glow! One of my older brothers got a maturer version of it on his Xmas armchair, which he may still have. But for me it was heaven when I got Supernatural Stories for Boys, Christmas 1968, by the great publishers Hamlyn, who along with Collins, probably made me who I am today!
If you had to pick one book to sum up your Christmases past readers, which would it be?
One of my friends bought this book for a mere £1.05 (if I recall correctly) around December 1972 from a shop called W & R Holmes. His copy had a dustjacket with the very same illustration. Years later, I bought my own copy (from a different shop in the same premises) for £1.25, which I still have. There are quite a few annuals that remind me of Christmas, but as far as actual books go, this is the one that best sums up the Yuletide season to me, too.
ReplyDeletethat's amazing Kid that its the same book for you. How wonderful. I think it was reprinted a few times. I don't own the one I has as a kid but I did find one in a charity shop a few years back. Probably cost me something similar to yours! Priceless memories though. These things from the past really are like time travellers.
ReplyDeleteIt was indeed reprinted through quite a few years; originally it was published with a dustjacket around a dark blue cloth cover with white lettering. I think at some stage the colour of the cloth changed to a lighter blue with gold lettering, until it was eventually published with the same picture underneath the dustjacket (like an Annual's cover) and, finally, without a dustjacket at all. Long before I had my own copy, my friend gave me his, but I can't remember if I returned it to him or it was just eventually dispensed with. I think I got my copy in around '78 or '79, but I'm not 100% sure. One look at that cover 'though, and it's the Christmas period of 1972 for me once again.
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