Top Ten Dogs from Literature

This week's Top Ten from The Broke and the Bookish is a freebie week, so I decided to pick my top ten dogs I love from different books. 

 

1) Charley from Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley; a road-tripping dog.

2) The brilliant “watchdog” Tock from The Phantom Tollbooth

3) Odysseus’ dog Argos from The Odyssey; never stops hoping to see his master again.

4) Hagrid’s dog Fang from the Harry Potter series

5) Mr. Rochester’s dog Pilot from Jane Eyre

6) Crab from Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona

7) Kojak from The Stand; the most loyal pup ever.

8) Nana from Peter Pan, who wouldn’t want a nanny that’s a dog?

9) The Starks’ direwolves from Game of Thrones (I know they aren’t technically dogs)

10) Harold from the Bunnicula series.

Top Ten Favorite Characters in Children’s Books

This week's Top Ten from The Broke and the Bookish asks for my Top Ten Favorite Characters in any Genre. I am going to go with Children’s books because it’s a genre I rarely talk about here.

1) Tock the “watchdog” in The Phantom Tollbooth – He’s such a loyal companion for Milo.

2) Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia – He’s always there for the other characters and he’s willing to lay down his own life to save them.

3) Charlotte in Charlotte’s Web – Wise and kind, she’s the best sort of friend.

4) Matilda (Roald Dahl) – All she wants to do is read. I loved her as a kid.

5) Califer in Howl’s Moving Castle – This cranky fire demon was one of my favorite parts of the book.

6) Jack Pumpkinhead in the Wizard of Oz series – He’s such a strange character, but a fun one.

7) Turtle in The Westing Game – I read this for the first time when I was about Turtle’s age and I just loved her character.  

8) Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle in the series named after her – She teaches kids great lessons, but she never makes them feel bad about themselves.

9) Meg in A Wrinkle in Time – She thinks that she isn’t as good as those around her and it takes her awhile to realize what a powerful force love is.

10) Charlotte in The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle – She’s a prim and proper young lady until she takes a trans-Atlantic ship to move to America. Then she becomes a sailor and must fight to survive. It was one of my favorite adventure stories when I was young.

Bonus: Most of the cast, especially Dumbledore, from the Harry Potter series. I don't consider that a Children's series, which is why I left it off.

Image from here. 

The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth

The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth
by Norton Juster
★★★★★

I grew up adoring this book. A bored young boy finds a tollbooth in his bedroom when he gets home from school. He then proceeds to travel to a faraway land and go on adventures that teach him lessons and challenge him to grow and mature. It’s a parable about the value of imagination and exploring the world around you. It’s also wonderfully funny and clever.

It taught me to appreciate words and the myriad of meanings that they can have, but also not to use them just to impress people. It taught me the value of a world with that holds math, science, English and art in equal measures. There is no balance without all of those things. The book provided constant reminders about the value of friendship and the importance of surrounding yourself with people who will improve you and not drag you down. It showed me that the true villains in life are self-doubt, idleness and things like that, not the monsters we normally picture. And on top of all of that, the book, so full of life lessons, is accessible to 10-year-olds. Somehow Juster slyly slide those things into the midst of a great story.


Reading my beautiful new Annotated edition was such a treat. Although I’d read and reread the book over the years, I knew very little about the story behind it. Juster was an architect, not an author, but he had a view of where children were headed and it wasn’t pretty. His message, encouraging kids to journey outside the walls of their home, both physically and mentally, is more important than ever in the age of video games and You Tube.

Leonard S. Marcus (a children’s literature scholar) compiled the annotated edition and it’s filled with fascinating trivia and behind-the-scenes tidbits. Jules Feiffer's illustrations, which are such an integral part of the story, are explained in detail, as is the books evolution. I particularly loved seeing all of the lists of possible characters and obstacles that Juster kept.

If you’ve never read the book, start with a regular copy, but if you’re already a devoted fan, the annotated copy is a delight!

"My goodness," thought Milo, "everybody is so terribly sensitive about the things they know best."

"You must never feel badly about making mistakes, as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong than you do by being right for the wrong reasons."

Images from The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth