Book two, where are you?
Last year I decided to reread one book each month that I had loved when I was a little kid to see how they held up to the refined and sophisticated literary standards of my adult self. As it turns out, I had excellent taste as a l’il nipper. OR I still have the sensibilities of an eight-year-old. Pass the marshmallow cereal.
During this process, I discovered that several of my beloved books had sequels or in some cases multiple further adventures, and then seeing A Wrinkle in Time getting the big-screen treatment reminded me that I’d only ever read the original trilogy, the “other” two books in the Time Quintet having been published after a long pause while I was off looking at other things. So, obviously, I’m on a new booky quest to read all of these books I missed out on as a child, starting with the L’Engles, but this has started my brain tip-tapping down memory lane thinking about other favorite books—worlds and characters I would like to revisit.
So now even though the stack of books I have here to read is already incredibly ambitious for any mortal creature, I’m making a wishlist of imaginary books—books I would read if only they existed.
And who knows, if there’s one thing I’ve retained from the children’s books of my heart, between wishes and tesseracts and the assistance of talking animals, anything is possible.
I think everyone who’s ever read this has a heart-scar from the experience, and I’m no different. I don’t want to change the ending, because I think heart-scars are important, but if a book of short stories of doggy adventures not narratively important enough to make it into the novel were to suddenly turn up, it wouldn’t undermine the emotional impact Big Dan and Little Ann left on us. I promise we’d still be sad.
Many books have been written about how Heathcliff made his fortune, or detailing Miss Havisham’s trip to crazytown, but nothing about this trumpet-playing, chalkboard-writing mute swan that covers the 10 or so years between the book’s end and its epilogue; the life and career of a jazz trumpeter who is also a giant bird. The watercress addiction, the unacknowledged cygnets? I need the juicy Behind the Music tell-all.
No explanation required. It’s about pets, adventure, and loyalty and there’s not a single person who doesn’t love this book (LALALA I AM DEAF TO ANY CONTRADICTION). 99% of my baby-reading was animal-based, and this was and will always be the best of them. Genuinely harrowing and refreshingly realistic, with no talking animals (squinting at you, movie version), I need more of this trio from the author AND illustrator.
This is one of the books I reread last year, and my desire for a follow-up is less about a love of a character or setting and more about, “Yeah, but NOW what?” Major (after)life experiences change a person and a family dynamic and some things are hard to bounce back from. MG books can resolve their problems without addressing the aftermath, ‘cuz kids don’t care, but I’m an adult who is curious about the fallout here.
A mean little girl is kicked outta school, sent to live with mean aunts, then lured into the attic by a bunch of creepy/friendly dolls that are animated either by ghosts or a lonely girl’s robust fantasy life. What’s not to love? It was the first orphan I encountered in kidlit who was a jerk, which is great for those of us bored by long-suffering saints. Plus, baby’s first ambiguity. Sequel is needed. For the kids.
I basically read this once a week for the duration of my childhood, and everything I know about life, I learned from this book. I now live in a house made of animal bones with a wild dog that I tamed, I spear whatever I want to eat, and all my clothes are made of bird feathers. I need a second book for further instructions, because I think I’ve done something wrong. People are staring.
This was a perfectly acceptable book title when I was a kid, when you could smoke on planes and in hospitals. Rama is no companion animal, no face-licking Old Yeller; he roams wherever he pleases, adopting temporary homes, never settling down with any one person, although he’ll endure their company for a time. Plus he’s got an earring, so you know he’s cool. 100-and-change pages is not enough for such an adventurous cat.
This one comes from a shallower desire, since I didn’t read it until i was a fully-grown woman, but when I did, it slotted so perfectly alongside many things I love, with its romping energy, word puzzles, “strangers gathered together in mystery plot” premise. It reminded me of a series I adored as a child: the Liza, Bill & Jed Mysteries by Peggy Parish, which had six books, so this one deserves at least one more.
Maybe it’s dumb to want another book about the true-life mischief a raccoon gets up to when you let it into your home. I have the Internet now, after all, where folks always seem to be letting raccoons indoors and then running to Instagram after the clever little raccoon hands have gone on a gleeful spree of destruction and adorable mayhem too darn cute to NOT document. But Frosty was special and I DO remember him.
Now that I’m actually thinking on it, I might not need a sequel to this one, I might just want to reread it. What would a sequel even look like? Cue dream sequence music… It’d probably be an adult-audience retell of the story that was all “JK that’s not how anything ever worked out in Puritan New England, silly!” And then everyone gets hanged because people knowing how to swim is unnatural. Yeah, I don’t want that.
