I love books. I love words.
I am doing the 30-day book challenge to get some conversations started about books. Please do join in with a comment on your own books – or a link to your own post!
Day 21 and the next prompt is:
What is the first novel you remember reading?
First novel? Wow that goes way back in time! Here I take “novel” to mean any book that was primarily words. Not a picture book. And a book that someone older than 16 might still occassional read.
And it is the book that pulled me into reading:
It is called Silver Chief: Dog of the North.
I do not have the book anymore and finding information on it is actually a challenge! It was written by Jack O’Brien
It is set in the Arctic and if I recall mostly Alaska and Yukon.
It is in many ways a romanticized and sanitized view of life in the Arctic and the peoples in the Arctic. Jack O’Brien was a military man – and a member of Admiral Byrd’s Arctic expeditions.
I found the book in my parent’s library. We grew up out in the country and my mom loved books. She would buy up books at every church and yard sale she encountered.
When I was 10 or 11 (life blurs that way) I had acute appendicitis. My appendix actually burst, and I developed peritonitis. And I spent 2 weeks in intensive care recovering with a tube draining my abdominal area of infection. That summer was a bust (pun intended) and, because of the surgery and ongoing infection, I couldn’t do anything a boy of that age might normally do. So I began pulling books off the shelf and reading them.
Silver Chief: Dog of the North
Silver Chief to the Rescue
The Return of Silver Chief
Silver Chief’s Revenge
And associated with the Silver Chief books were some books about a Mounties…
Royal Red: Colt of the Royal Mounted
Corporal Corey of the Royal Canadian Mounted
Silver Chief is a part husky part wolf dog that begins life as semi-wild animal who learns to avoid humans as cruel and arbitrary beings. Silver Chief develops a bond with a Canadian Mountie who needs Silver Chief as much as Silver Chief. Silver Chief learns he can trust and rely on the Mountie.
It was a great early adventure book for a young boy and one – that I can imagine were to re-read it now – would reveal its age and cultural viewpoints.
merlinspielen 