Here be stories: childhood revisited

Sven Axelrad

What Young Sven Was Reading in the 90s: My phone beeps in my pocket. It’s a message from Mila. She wants to know what I was reading when I was ten. I was a sensitive kid, listening to my mom’s cassette tapes of Tanita Tikaram, and stuff like The Lemonheads, which my brother and I bought for almost nothing at the Gunston 500. We loved Choose Your Own Adventure books, Calvin & Hobbes, and a French version of Aesop’s Fables, but there were novels too. I remember The Fourteenth Summer by Gary Paulsen and Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. Both are coming of age stories, and I saw something of myself or my life in the pages. I was, and I guess still am, more Jim Nightshade than I am Will Halloway. I wish I could go back and tell that sensitive kid that he will write a book someday, a few even. I would tell him to make notes about everything.

Gareth Crocker

While most children my age were reading the likes of The Secret Seven, Hardy Boys and The Famous Five, I wandered down a different path. Or rather … a drain. Which led me to the infamous clown in Stephen King’s IT. I must’ve been around 11 years old at the time and it’s fair to say the book had a profound impact on me (I agree … where the hell were my parents?). It probably explains my lifelong obsession with all things spooky. Not to mention my rampant anxiety and tendency to burst into tears at children’s birthday parties.

CA Davids

Before I was a reader (and writer) of novels, I was an apprentice to whatever books my mother managed to bring home: mostly small hardcover Ladybird books. Eurocentric fare that was all she could get and afford: The Lives of the Great Composers, on Beethoven, Mozart and Bach, and, ‘Easy-Reading’ books like the Brother’s Grimm tale, The Elves and the Shoemaker. I still have it, its spine held together with tape, though its memories remain undimmed: encountering words like “astonished”, holding it on my tongue, rolling it around for fit. There was the weekly educational Look and Learn series, British music magazines that I read into my late teens (I’ve kept those too), and almanacs to end the year off; made possible only by my mother who stretched her income, ensuring our pilgrimages to CNA to collect standing orders.

Haidar Eid

As someone who spent my early childhood in Gaza/ Palestine I started reading the literature of the Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani from an early age. Two of the novels that I can never forget, novels that have shaped my consciousness, are Returning to Haifa and Men in The Sun both of which are about the macabre reality behind the stories of the horrors of the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948, and the cruelty and bestiality of Zionist settler-colonialism.

Qarnita Loxton

The only things I remember reading are Nancy Drew, Secret Seven and Sweet Valley High. The rest was a mash of nameless library books and school readers. Not the most impressive of literary lists but I can confirm I have grown (a bit!) since then.

Alistair Mackay

It’s risky talking about beloved childhood books because there’s always the chance the authors have since been revealed to be problematic. Rudyard Kipling has a complicated legacy, but five-year-old me didn’t know about any of that, and couldn’t get enough of The Just So Stories, which explained how the elephant got his trunk, how the leopard got his spots. The line “the great, grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees” still lives rent-free in my mind. I adored Bill Peet’s books, especially The Wump World that followed cute little dassie-like creatures as they were driven underground by polluting humans who arrive from space. Later on, in charge of my own reading, I remember loving Sue Townsend’s The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole and the sarcastic, sassy way in which Adrian dealt with his teenage angst and his family.

Shaun Lunga

The Day Gogo Went to Vote by Elinor Sisulu was the first book where I recognised pieces of myself, even if I couldn’t name it then. We read it in grade four, before I started going to the library on my own. I was very close to my late maternal grandmother; we spent most of our days together. On her pension days, I’d skip school to help her get dressed, and she’d tell me stories as we moved through the morning, with a cup of tea I had to make, and it needed to be hot! If not, I had to make it from scratch. This book is part of why I fell in love with reading. It follows six-year-old Thembi and her elderly Gogo as they travel to the polling station so Gogo can cast her vote for the first time. Two themes stand out strongly: intergenerational connection and the fight for dignity. Thembi’s care for her Gogo shows how love moves across generations, while Gogo’s determination to vote speaks to the reclaiming of dignity after years of being denied basic rights. Their journey takes place during South Africa’s first democratic election, when Black people were finally able to vote.

Michele Magwood

Unapologetically Enid Blyton, I’m afraid. I loved the Wishing Chair books and I wonder now if the fact that Mollie and Peter found the magical chair in a fusty antique shop sparked my enduring love of antiques and fusty stores. And then there was The Magic Faraway Tree - compulsive stories of an enormous tree inhabited by magical characters, which had enchanting foreign lands whirling past at the top of the tree. On, then, to the Famous Five and the Secret Seven and eventually to the school stories of Malory Towers and St Clare’s, the original “girl power” stories. On hot, boring African afternoons I was transported to magic woods, faraway lands and to picnics replete with ginger pop.

Hlonipha Mokoena

Granny’s Reading Room: I don’t quite remember reading children’s books. In my faulty memory, I went from the abecedary to the full-blown novel. I remember reading Huckleberry Finn and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or some other Roald Dahl book or books. But, I don’t think that these were memorable. My first memory of books that changed me, was my grandmother’s collection of Encyclopaedia Britannica. I would sit on the cool floor of our living room in granny’s house and I would devour pages and pages of the encyclopaedias. What fascinated me was the randomness of it — one moment I would be looking at the transparencies that showed the veins and arteries of the human body and the next, I would be reading about polar bears. Those volumes gave me wanderlust and I am yet to shake it. Someone also left a box full of Peanuts comic books in my grandfather’s tool shed. I sat in the heat of burning corrugated iron and read and read. This was my first experience of total immersion and concentration. The only problem was that I didn’t yet understand that they were supposed to be funny. Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and Snoopy snuck into my young mind and stayed there forever changing how I felt about laughter and humour. Then came the revelation of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and my reading list was set for life. But, I always go back to the child who was sitting cross-legged on my grandmother’s floor; those are still my favourite books because they remind me of the innocence of sitting on the cool floor of my granny’s lounge engrossed in a book.

Thango Ntwasa

There’s a South African pre-teen series of books I read as a child that followed a young girl in post 1994 South Africa and her experience of race, gender and the politics of a free country. I can’t remember the name or its author so I’ll go with second place, Jacqueline Wilson’s books. From Nick Sharratt illustrations to Wilson’s biting protagonists who were never shy to speak their minds, I found my confidence in her characters like Tracey Beaker, Flossie and the Double Act twins. There is a style to her prose that only Wilson fans know, a growing community of millennials on TikTok even share her influence to this day.

Jennifer Platt

“I’m late. I’m late for a very important date. No time to day hello goodbye, I’m late, I’m late, I’m late.” This was the one of the songs of the beginning of the read-along Alice in Wonderland LP that my mom used to put on for me to keep me occupied while she had to do a few chores. I remember her putting the LP on so loud just so I could read and sing along while she hung up the washing in relative peace. Still one of my favourite stories and I can remember every word of the story.

Kevin Ritchie

The most seminal book I read as a child was Wilbur Smith’s When the Lion Feeds. It tells the story of twins Sean and Garrick, from their young teens through a war, the establishment of the Witwatersrand gold fields, financial disaster and then even more derring-do, infused by family feuds all taking part against an incredible and unforgettable African backdrop. It was an incredible story for a young homesick boy in a boarding school in the North East of Scotland and sparked a lifelong affection for Smith’s stories. It was also the very first grown-up book I’d read after a solid diet of the Enid Blyton canon of Famous Five and the Secret Seven.

Lindiwe Sangweni-Siddo

My childhood was filled with joyful memories of books that transported me into imaginative worlds where I felt part of the characters’ lives. Between the ages of eight and twelve, I adored Enid Blyton’s stories—especially the Famous Five series, with Julian, Dick, Anne, George, and their loyal dog Timmy embarking on thrilling adventures. I loved the sense of excitement and freedom those tales gave me. The Famous Five on Treasure Island was a favourite, sparking my fascination with mystery and exploration. As I grew older, my reading shifted toward stories that deepened my social and political awareness. I discovered the African Writers Series, often found on my parents’ shelves, and was captivated by works like Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Achebe’s storytelling not only featured prominently in our school curriculum but also inspired lively debates at our family dinner table—shaping my understanding of culture, identity, and change.

Zibu Sithole

I grew up in a reading family, both my parents were avid readers and raised us to be the same way. Another element in reading my parents (who were the ones buying all the books) saw as important was representation, not just racial representation, but also cultural representation and diversity. Animal Stories from around the world was my favourite. It’s a collection of short stories from around the world published by Hamlyn that stretched my imagination to places I had never been to but could visit in my mind. And the magic of talking animals is still a win for me, tears after my son has outgrown bedtime stories.

Elizabeth Sleith

With honourable mentions to the Mr Men series; the Narnia Chronicles; and everything Roald Dahl ever wrote, I’m giving the “favourite” to Enid Blyton and her Faraway Tree series – three books about a group of children and a magical tree, which they climb to access the strange lands that come and go at the top. Some of the lands are a kids’ dream – the Land of Goodies or the Land of Birthdays – while others are more sinister, such as the Land of Secrets or The Land of Upside-Down (hello, Stranger Things!). The adventures they have there are full of wondrous inventions and dramatic twists, limited only by Blyton’s rule that everything must work out in the end. I think of the recurring characters as old friends, and their stories as the training wheels for a curiosity that has served me well. It’s still true that no “land” is quite what you expect, and that’s just as it should be.

Anna Stroud

Memory is a funny thing. Most days I couldn’t tell you what I wore the day before, yet I can vividly recall the first book I borrowed from the library at age five: Kleintjie (Miffy in English) by Dick Bruna. I remember the thick cardboard between my fingers and the primary colours sparking happy feelings in my chest. Though I remember my first, I struggle to pin down a favourite. It changed every few months when the book bus magically appeared. Most of all, I remember the smell. Old, warm, familiar – the pages spirited me away to the worlds of Aandstories vir Kleuters, Reënboogrant, Sweet Valley, Asterix, The Mystery Kids, Goosebumps, Ouma Hester en die Getaway Kar, Hackers, Scrambled Legs, Who Killed Peggy Sue?, Deenie, Fearless, Die vrou met die pers oog, Slinger-slinger, Vaselinetjie, Dis ek, Anna … I read anything and everything and I’m all the richer for it.

Nathan Trantraal

Tintin was everything I wanted to be, with his boy scout skills and his infallible moral compass. I couldn’t be Tintin, because no one could. But I see in the evolution of Hergé’s stories —from the Boys’ Own adventures of the earlier books to the contemplative Tintin in Tibet and the political consciousness of Tintin and the Picaros—something of my own personal evolution. Where the Wild Things Are frightened and intrigued me. The anger of the boy king of the beasts resonated intensely. I wanted to be like Tintin, but this boy was my double. Then, there was Asterix. Along with Tintin, this was my first experience of comic books. I fell in love. The Gauls reminded me of my family and the people I knew: loud and devoid of good sense, and yet extremely resilient and funny in the face of the constant threat from the Roman Empire.