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Lines remembered from children’s books

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In terms of books, I had a pretty special childhood. My Mum was a children’s librarian so she made sure my sister and I had the right books at the right age. There were disadvantages – no comics, although we were allowed Tintin books (I used to read Mickey Mouse and so on at friends’ houses, or at the doctor’s or dentist’s waiting room).

My Mum was, not surprisingly, an inveterate quoter of lines from kids’ books – her own favourites were Alice In Wonderland (so many lines ending with “…said Alice”) and Winnie The Pooh, from which her favourite was (when Pooh was offered a choice of two things) – “Both”, said Pooh.

As I get older and less able to remember what happened 5 minutes or 5 days ago I find myself often remembering and quoting lines from books I read 50-60 years ago. The current one, as I am doing a lot of cooking, much from Ottolenghi’s books which seem to require honey every second recipe, is “Ramona never minded being sticky”. I find myself saying this when I wash my sticky hands for the umpteenth time – I don’t have OCD or anything but fuck I hate being sticky or dirty or whatever.

That line comes from the Beverly Cleary books about Beezus and Ramona and Henry Huggins – anyone ever read those? Good wholesome American sixties fun. Ramona was the naughty younger sister of Beezus (Beatrice) and was always getting into trouble, not to mention playing wonderful games like pretending she was waiting for a bus, or dragging a piece of rope around who was her pet snake Ralph. Or just being sticky. Oh how we laughed!

Anyway, anyone else have favourite enduring lines from kids’ books?

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Comments

  1. Ah yes! My parents also took a dim view of comics, requiring me to read such po-faced throwbacks as the Children’s Newspaper and the Elizabethan. Nothing racy like Beano, Dandy, Tiger etc. Eventually I was allowed to move on to Swift and Eagle, but it wasn’t long before my comic of choice was the NME.

    As for lines, loads:
    “I’m such a clever Toad” – Wind in the Willows
    “Suffering snakes!” – Biggles
    “The pocket was empty! The money was gone!” – Emil and the Detectives
    “Yarooh!” – Billy Bunter (which I have only just realised is Hooray spelt backwards!)

  2. I was on holiday with family up in the Lake District over Christmas and whilst walking round the perimeter of one of the smaller lakes remembered the line in Swallows and Amazons where the kids had written to their overseas father about sailing to one of the islands. He responds with a telegram saying “BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN” which in these modern times of risk assessment and regulation seems an entertainingly laissez faire approach to parenting to say the least. It’s a terrific line though and despite enjoying the book when I read it in primary school that line is the only bit of the book that I can properly remember.

  3. What an excellent question! Nothing comes immediately to mind except perhaps Jabberwocky:

    Twas brillig and the slithy toves..

    There are more than a few quotes from kids TV shows too.

    “Time for bed” said Zebedee.

  4. Well my own reading material as a nipper was very much The Beano books and comics of the early 70s. The Three Bears would eat so much after a successful raid iof Hank’s Store that the final frame would involve at least one character saying “Boilk!” as they contentedly lay on the ground, nursing their distended bellies. To this day, a family word for having had enough to eat is Boilk. “No thanks – I’m a bit boilk.”

      • There is one line of Oor Wulie which has always stuck in my head, and coming from Glasgow I was an avid weekly reader. Wullie has acquired a model boat, but is having trouble finding somewhere to try it out – his father is in the bath, the pond in the park has been drained for repairs and so on.

        Wullie then goes to the museum where he sails his boat in the enormous fish tank. Of course, he gets chased out by a fist-waving museum guard who shouts at him for scaring the fish.

        ‘Ach’, says Wullie as he trudges off, ‘It was a wee bit o’ life they were wearied for.’

        I was never stopped from reading anything as a kid, and am mildly appalled that a librarian of all people would seek to censor. When I was a bookseller people would sometimes ask for recommendations for boys who were reluctant readers. Those who needed to ask were usually looking for something ‘improving’ or at the very least ‘appropriate’ and weren’t impressed if I honestly told them that I loved Enid Blyton and the Jennings books as a boy, and James Herbert and Desmond Bageley in my early teens.

        I’ve posted this link here before at least once but it bears the repeat. It’s Neil Gaiman’s wise essay on why cultivating the habit of reading for its own sake is the most important thing, and what is being read can look after itself – https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-daydreaming

        • What a great article that is Gatz, thanks for posting it. As someone often involved in trying to encourage very reluctant teenagers to read I wholeheartedly agree.

  6. Crikey – proustian rush there; an aunt bought me a book when i was but a chizzler entitled Henry and Ribsy; Henry’s obsessed with catching a chinook salmon, Ribsy is his dog and I’m almost sure his surname is Huggins. Ramona might even have made an appearance.

    • Yep @ivan – I think one of Beverly Cleary’s books was called “Henry and Ribsy”. I’d forgotten about Ribsy, not being a dog person. Henry Higgins, yep, maybe he was embarrassed by his surname? Can’t remember. Interesting that the books were kind of about a community of kids, with each one being from the POV of a different kid

  7. Ramona I remember, but only dimly from a tv adaptation that was on Channel 4 (possibly) some years (20-30) back. Think my younger sister watched it, hence me picking up on it.

    As for quotes – well one that is oddly memorable is the sound in Asterix when anyone got thumped. “PAF!” I think it was. On a slight tangent, my daughter is currently reading some of the Mr Gum books by Andy Stanton, so I wonder if she’ll still be exclaiming “THE TRUTH IS A LEMON MERINGUE!” some years hence.

  8. Loved reading as a child, the usual suspects I imagine – Jennings ( no sir it’s a private hedge!) Just William…I’d snort with laughter. And from there somehow onto Sven Hassels WW2 books and onto Alistair McClean and so on. Still read every bedtime, mainly thrillers, police procedural books, the odd military history , music biogs and so on.

    Tried and tried with my two boys , now 15 and 17 to no avail. Hey ho, I gave it my best shot but was maybe a bit guilty of what Neil Gaiman says in that article of a bit of snobbery and probably wanted them to read what I did all those years ago.

    If anyone can help me with this I’d be grateful and amazed! At the age of about 12 I read a book, I THINk it was vaguely a tale of adventure but I definitely remember it being funny too. Anyway, stick with me, there was a line in the book from an elderly woman about a cat which had scratched her which went along the lines of “ungrateful thing, just after I’d given it a lovely big of coley and all!”

    I just remember loving the book but have no idea, obvs, what it was called or who it was by.

  9. I read constantly as a nipper so I have loads. William saying “Cripes” springs to mind, plus we learned the duck poem from “The Wind in the Willows” – “we are down a dabbling, up tails all”. I loved the AA Milne poems – “Please Father Christmas if you love me at all, bring me a bright red India rubber ball”. “The knight whose armour didn’t squeak” was a favourite – “of all the Knights in Appledore, the wisest was Sir Thomas Tom, he multiplied as far as four, and knew what nine was taken from”. I also had a framed (by my Grandpa) copy of “If” by my bed which still gives me a twinge – “if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you”…

        • Ach, in spirit more than ‘owt else. There wasn’t much in the difference as maturity goes between the Outlaws and the habituĂ©s of the Drones. Violet Elizabeth was surely a younger Madeline Bassett?

          I’m saying these things, Twang, and it’s 30 years with VAT since i picked up anything featuring William but I know when I started reading Wodehouse there was just a vague whiff of Crompton back then.

          But hey, your mileage may well vary. She did get inside his head so well. I didn’t know Richmal was a ‘she’ until quite recently.

  11. The whole of chapter 11 of Through the Looking Glass. — and it really was a kitten, after all.
    Cycling through Greece with my then girlfriend. “If this weather continues we shall both be as brown as berries” with thanks to the Famous Five.

  12. Another Jennings man here. I never really rated Just William. I’ve re-read a couple of Jennings recently and Anthony Buckeridge, I think, was on a par with Wodehouse in building up small scale farcical disasters and resolving them all neatly. Old Wilkie. ‘I… I… Cor-wumphh!’

    Similarly I headed for Alastair Maclean and Desmond Bagley. Those old Fontana paperbacks with the photo of a key scene on the cover. The moustaches. The partings.

    It’s not at all a children’s book but I read it the first time at 12 years old. Puckoon by Spike Milligan. I was breathless with giggles. Father Rudden commands fire to fall from heaven during a Sunday mass. Once, twice, three times. Then the small voice of the Verger, up in the rafters. ‘Sorry Father. The cat’s pissed on the matches!’

    Sedating the escaped puma. ‘Steek eet een-a hees bum!’

    Glorious

  13. Another fave of mine was “3 men in a boat” – I’ve read it so many times I know vast chunks by heart – the cab pulled by “a knock kneed somnambulist whose owner, in a charitable moment, sometimes referred to as a horse”.

  14. “I must go down to the sea again
    to the lonely sea and sky
    I left my socks and vest there
    I wonder if they’re dry?”

    I recently found my copy of Spike Milligan’s “Little Pot Boiler” that I’ve had since I was 5! It’s amazing how much of it I remembered.

  16. I had a lovely picture book called ‘The Little Indian’ – a young lad & his Dad doing Native American stuff. ‘ The big Indian chopped down a big tree with his big tomahawk, to make a big fire , and the little Indian chopped a down a little tree with his little tomahawk to make a little fire’ etc.
    The nice line came, after lots of repitition, when the ‘ the big Indian caught a big fish & little Indian caught a little fish, but the little Indian ate the BIG fish, because he was small and had to grow.’ This was used at dinner times to cajole us into eating up our grub, & I think it worked.

  17. Mousey, my mother was also a children’s librarian and I had a similar experience to yours. Books were usually left around the house for me to find, and I got to read the cream of British, European and American children’s literature at the time (also an Antipodean Margaret Mahy). I was allowed comics though. It was Dr Zeuss at the dentists so that always had bad associations! One favourite was the US teen writer Paul Zindel. There was a book of his called “Pardon Me You’re Stepping On My Eyeball” I liked a lot. I was so taken with this phrase I had it printed on a T shirt when I was thirteen and wore it often.

  18. My favourite children’s book is The Man Whose Mother Was A Pirate by Margaret Mahy. The Man goes to tell his boss that he is quitting his office job to sail the oceans with his mother. His boss tries to dissuade him by saying it all sounds very exciting, “but the taste is never as good as the smell.”

  19. I was reminiscing recently about The Coral Island by RM Ballantyne. I loved that book – 3 boys shipwrecked on a tropical island, getting along famously and having all sorts of japes etc. – and a subsequent reading of The Lord of the Flies rather put a dampener on it. Naturally, I resorted to google to read up on it and discovered that The Lord of the Flies was, in fact, squarely aimed at puncturing The Coral Island’s worldview. So there you go.

  21. Slight return…I had an odd time with children’s books when I was a kid, because my father retrieved a box of his own books from the 20s from a cousin and I read the lot. There were a couple of Williams, but mostly they were school stories and tales of derring-do (biffing the Hun and repelling the fuzzy-wuzzies) by the likes of Gunby Hadath, Percy F Westerman and so on. They were only about 30 years old, these books, but they seemed as though they were from another era, as indeed they were, andI must have had some very odd stuff sloshing round my head.

    One thing that inhabits my brain permanently is the caption to a picture showing a portly gent dressed in Three Musketeers gear, including a splendid hat festooned with feathers. He’s waving his sword around and uttering the immortal words “Do thou, Basbo!”

    What does it mean? I have no idea. Presumably Basbo was a character in the story. Not a phrase I’ve ever found occasion to use, unfortunately.

    • I had access to a large book of Punch articles and cartoons from 1972. As I was only 6 at the time, there were plenty of unfathomable, of-their-time cartoons. I remember Last Tango in Paris jokes and references to Michael Hestletine. And there was a whole page of cartoons by Mahood imagining a time in the future when immigrants are everywhere.

      A black (!) BBC newsreader is seen saying “Thank you, Robert Dougall for the 9 O’Clock News. Now it’s time for OUR version.”.

  22. Naturally, the quotes I use are in Swedish, from books by Swedish authors…so this may be of little interest to you! 🙂
    The most quotable series of books is the Ture Sventon books by Åke Holmberg, very funny spoofs of the private investigator hero type. I still read them, still laugh out loud. They’re the reason why I’ll mutter ElĂ€ndige pastejsmackare! (“Wretched piesmacker!”) when I leave a bad shop or restaurant or part ways with an unpleasant person. They’re the reason why I exclaim StĂ€ndigt denna Vessla! (“Always the Weasel!”) when I once too many encounter a frequent ocurrence or ubiquitous person. It’s why I’ll shout Dröm eller LĂ€ngtan? (“Dream or Longing?”) when I present someone with a choice. It’s the reason why I’ll think of piano tuners every time I pass the street Surbrunnsgatan (and as that’s in my neighbourhood, it happens daily). It’s why I say Enligt min ringa mening…; Det ska bli mig en oförtjĂ€nt Ă€ra att…; Ramla pĂ„! and Det Ă€r för tidigt att yttra sig om den saken Ă€nnu. (“In my modest opinion…”; “It will be an undeserved honour to…”; “Stumble on!” and “It’s too early to express an opinion on that matter yet.”) It’s why I’ll say Jag tar den i sabbatskrukan (“I’ll put it in my stovepipe [hat]”) when I pack a bag.

    But as a family growing up we’d regularly quote from two sources; The Three Musketeers(most often “Lucullus dines with Lucullus” whenever we ate something disappointing – from the scene with the ancient hen served to Porthos in the home of his mistress) and Falstaff Fakirs Vitterlek. Falstaff, fakir was a very funny Swedish writer (real name Axel Wallengren) in the late 1800’s who spoofed everything and everyone in a very quotable way. Still very funny to read today. Too many quotes to mention (and translate…! 😉 )
    Also two quotes from the Donald Duck comics; mum would always say “Wait for us, uncle Donald!” in any situation where someone was lagging behind or taking their time finishing doing something. And in good moments in life I’ve quoted Br’er Rabbit from an episode in the comic book: Solen skiner och magen Ă€r mĂ€tt, allt i vĂ€rlden Ă€r ljust och lĂ€tt! (“The sun is shining and full is my tummy, all in the world is easy and yummy!” – with some poetic license to make it rhyme…) To blank stares from everyone around me!

    I was allowed to read anything I wanted and taken to the library every week. I read as many books meant for adults as I did children’s books. My parents had nothing against comics per se, but thought it was an unnecessary cost, so I only got them when I was ill and had to stay in bed! But I did get the Asterix and Tintin albums for Christmas and birthdays, and from the age of eleven or twelve I started to buy the Swedish edition of Mad Magazine every month.

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