Reading up on the past

One of my stronger memories of my official childhood is reading, not that I was what you might call a good reader but we did have a fair number of books in the house and stored in a big wooden toy box were some of mine, usually those my Mum thought I'd outgrown.

A good example of which is this one which was really a book for seven to ten year olds that stayed in that box well into my mid teens.

It's a series of two short stories of a group of young children called Benji, Jack and Jane plus dog who have to move together with their parents and their adventures through play with other children and grown ups.

Its very innocence, the clear lessons shown about appropriate behaviour such as owning up if you do something and clear consequences for wrong doing are woven into a fun set of adventures.

Another is The Three Golliwogs, no longer print but last available as The Three Gollies in the late 1980's.

Really this is a compilation of short stories, originally printed in Sunny Stories from 1937 to 1942. The first compilation was in 1944 under the name The Three Golliwogs, in 1968 showing them having fun.

Many of us had gollies, playing with them back then.

It was really that I before I knew the terms I was looking for even in my mid teens as what I now know as regression was even then a part of what made me different than most of my peers not least in my own mind I WAS that younger child.

It was why I kept the books and puppets from that era.