Round 6
Children's Literature
I Am David (originally published as "David". You may know it as "North to Freedom).
by Anne Holm -- first published in 1965
My mama bought this for me when I was about 10 and I read it a few times a year until I was at least 16. I've read it a couple times since then. It's the story of a kid who has lived in a concentration camp in Bulgaria his entire life and he escapes when he's 12 or 13. It follows him along until he finds his mom in Denmark.
It's a pretty sad story so I don't know exactly why I liked it so much. I guess I found a connection between my cushy life in the suburbs of Calgary in the 1980s and a Stalinist 60's concentration camp.
While I had to make my way to Mr. Soft Drink for cream soda and sours, David had to be lowered off the side of a boat into the Mediterranean in the middle of the night.
When David smelled his first bar of real soap, I understood, because we had just been introduced to the miracle of "SoftSoap", that came in liquid form, and had a pump.
The similarities were endless.
I had to do a group project in a children's literature class in university and I picked this book for the group. The assignment was the four of us would get up in front of the 71 other people in the class and discuss what we liked and disliked about the book. This would go on for 15 minutes. Shortly before we were to "go on" one member of the group bolted, claiming stage fright. Another guy said "sorry dude, I didn't even read it". The third person had read the book but didn't seem to know anything about it, so that left me, totally unrehearsed (we were just supposed to chat, after all, and were encouraged to not rehearse) to talk for 15 minutes. This may not seem like a big deal to some of you, but it is a very big deal for me. I'm not good with the public speaking. I managed to get through that and (happily) we were graded individually.
Bla bla bla. It's still one of my favourites (maybe just for nostalgia's sake).
Apologies to Adrian Mole, my other favourite. He's another European twerp with problems, but not quite the same as David's.