Buffy ,'Beneath You'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
I think some kids are looking for familiarity, yeah. It's why most little kids (really little) like rules -- they know what to expect if rules are in place.
I loved the whole "other worlds" thing when I was little, but I think what I meant above is that if the world they're reading is *mostly* like theirs, with phones and TVs, but doesn't cell phones or DVD players or video games, it can be a little weird because it's not quite otherworldly enough.
I loved the whole "other worlds" thing when I was little, but I think what I meant above is that if the world they're reading is *mostly* like theirs, with phones and TVs, but doesn't cell phones or DVD players or video games, it can be a little weird because it's not quite otherworldly enough.
Possibly? I read the Bobsey Twins books when I was a kid, and I am trying to remember how I felt about the differences. I know I loved the Little House books but that was because of the other worldliness.
I used to like stuff with the degree of difference you are talking about. Stories about villages with one person in the village having a phone or a shared phone in the pub when everyone I know had a telephone , and all phones operator assisted in the book when calls were direct dial with exceptions. Or people in books using coal and oil furnaces that were tricky to operate when everyone I knew was on gas or electric run by thermostat. Going back a bit longer, gas lights instead of electric which OK closer to an alien world, but not that alien lots I recognized. Obviously kids vary, but I can testify that at least some kids won't be bothered by the alien but familiar thing.
Oh, I loved Elizabeth Enright. I was a country kid and was amazed to read about kids in a town.
My kids love Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, for example, which is weird old technology but not quite The Olden Days. I read The Happy Hollisters (1950s) and Swallows and Amazons (British, 1930s) and Enid Blyton's Five series (British, 1950s) as a child born 1972, and was not fazed by much. Except it took me forever to figure out that a torch wasn't a flaming piece of wood.
Also, Alsatian = German Shepherd. Alsace. Right. I'm still not entirely sure what treacle is.
I'm still not entirely sure what treacle is.
Syrup.
So... syrup tart?
I sort of think of it like Karo. Which is nasty. But you do use it in pecan pie, which is good. Which I'm pretty sure they don't make in Britain.
The pictures of treacle tart I googled do look very much like pecanless pecan pie.