Sarah M. Awa
  • Home
  • About Sarah
  • Press
  • Fun Stuff
  • Home
  • About Sarah
  • Press
  • Fun Stuff
Picture

Join Me!

Get alerts on new releases and discounts on my books.
Notify Me

Books That Shaped or Influenced Me When I Was Younger

9/29/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
​Well, I’m copying off Katherine this time...heh. (And her post isn’t even quite up yet!) Plus, I’m doing a similar topic for the next Thinklings newsletter next week—you can sign up here to read it—so I decided to whip up a quick nostalgic post for my blog, too.
​Here are the top 3 (fantasy) books or series that influenced me as a child and a bit about them. I’ll go in chronological order.
 
1. No Flying in the House by Betty Brock

This is the first fantasy book I remember reading, if you don’t count the big board books of illustrated children’s fairy tales. I even remember that I got my copy from my older cousin Siri* more than 3 decades ago. (You can see that practically ancient copy in this video.) I have read it many times. As a little girl, I was fascinated by the tiny talking dog; the part where it says “If you can kiss your elbow, you’re a fairy” (sadly, I cannot, though I certainly tried hard to); and the setting: a grand old house atop a sloping terrace. I haven’t been to many fancy, luxurious places, and part of the fantasy for me was living in a place like that with servants and grand parties and all. You can probably guess that I also wished I was part fairy like Annabel. This book ignited my imagination, and I will always think of it fondly.
 
2. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

Or perhaps I read these first? I don’t recall. No, I think I read Brock’s book first. Anyway, I was quite young when I read these with my mom. That’s not the only series we’ve read together.** I absolutely love having a reading buddy and someone I can talk to (for hours, if they let me!) about a book or series. These were also imagination-kindling books, even though parts of them were scary for little me. But they really grabbed me and of course I longed to escape into a magical world with talking animals. (Much better than school and bullies...) I even wrote a story with talking animals for an elementary school project!
 
3. The Hobbit and, just after, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
​
We did a unit on The Hobbit in seventh grade English class, which was great fun because we had an awesome teacher fresh out of college with almost as much energy as Steve Irwin. Mr. G had us do stuff like putting on a little play, acting out a scene of our choice. I think the one my group did involved a feast; I remember bringing in plastic food for props. Out of all of the group projects I had to do from K–12, that was the one I hated the least, haha. When I was about done reading the book, I discovered my parents owned the LOTR trilogy, and so I dived immediately into it after The Hobbit. I raced my friend to see who could finish the trilogy first, and I barely beat her. So I also had someone to bond with over those books, and their epic scale certainly worked at broadening my imagination. I was irrevocably in love with fantasy.
 
I know these books—well, #2 and #3—are basically The Generic Fantasy Books that everyone has/should read (before Harry Potter came along), but yeah. That’s how it went for me. I’m going to wrap this up here and get back to all the other work I’ve got right now! If you want to see some other books I could talk about fondly, watch the video I linked to above in #1.
 
What books did you love as a child?
 
 
--------------------------------------------
*Yep, I’ve known that name all my life! My cousin had it before Apple Lady did, heh. Btw, it’s the Danish form of Sarah. Did you know you’ve been calling your iPhone assistant “princess”?
 
**We read the first 5 Percy Jackson books together, too, and loved them! I was an adult at that point.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Sarah Awa lives in Ohio with two hairy guys and writes books about werewolves.

    My Facebook
    My Twitter
    My Instagram
    My TikTok

    Amazon author profile
    ​Goodreads author profile

    I now have an account on Medium.com!

    ​My Linktree, which has All The Links :)

    My list of favorite werewolf books on Shepherd.com

    ​My company
    Thinklings Books' website

    Awesome merch for my book!

    Goodreads reviews for Hunter's Moon

    Reviews from Goodreads.com
    Picture

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019

    Categories

    All
    Amazon
    Book Review
    Clare Dunkle
    Diana Wynne Jones
    Fun
    Gratitude
    Interviews
    J.R.R. Tolkien
    Madeleine L'Engle
    Marketing
    My Books
    My Personal Life
    Podcasts
    Publishing
    Querying
    Sale
    Social-media
    Stories
    Struggles
    Ted-dekker
    Thinklings Books
    Thinklings-books
    Writing

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.