The intensity with which we feel things as children has a way of resounding with unexpected ferocity in later life. When I heard that Murray Ball, creator of the Footrot Flats cartoons, had passed away last week, it was like a splash of cold water in the face. I don’t think I knew, until that moment, what an intrinsic link those cartoons were to my childhood.
I’m now in the final countdown towards 40, so naturally those whom I admired while growing up are starting to fall off the perch. Leonard Nimoy and Tony Grieg are two others whose deaths affected me a great deal. But Ball’s caught me off-guard for two reasons: One, because he had in effect been retired for 20+ years and was no longer in the public eye; two, because I doubt I’d read a Footrot Flats cartoon in over a decade. So when the news of Ball’s death came through, it brought with it a dual flood of melancholy and nostalgia.
I was a little appalled at the minimal media coverage of Ball’s passing, too. But it soon occurred to me that in the greater scheme of popular culture, Footrot Flats was but a small flame, one that burned brightly in the Antipodes for a few years, guttered, and then went out. For those of my generation, however – late X, early Y – Footrot Flats was a defining cultural touchstone.
Its popularity peaked in the mid-1980s, when the animated Footrot Flats movie hit cinemas. I can still vividly recall the day we went en famil to see it. Dave Dobyn’s theme song for it, ‘Slice of Heaven’, became a smash-hit and helped elevate the movie’s profile.
But while the film was a faithful and successful adaptation of the source material, it was the compilations of Ball’s cartoons – in numbered, saddle-stitched volumes – that made the greatest impression on me as a child. I must have had a dozen on my bookshelves. In addition to the cartoons, which were consistently smart and funny, Ball created original material for each volume that served as a sort of introduction. In one, he had his son – who I believe was about 14 at the time – write a biography of the author. I wish I still had that book, so I could quote it directly, but I recall references to his father’s large nose and that, when Ball sneezed, it frightened the cows. Much like the British author James Herriot, Ball lived what he wrote about – and that authenticity shined through. Dog, Wal, Cooch, Horse – they all seemed real.
Every publishing writer has a series of influences that are as clearly defined as geological strata. But it’s easy to forget that the path towards authorship is usually first cleared during childhood. There is no doubt Ball was one of those early influences for me, someone that made me want to read and write. When I skim the surface of my childhood memories, these are the other authors I find on top:
Ruth Park
Her Muddle-Headed Wombat books, of course. I owned The Muddle-Headed Wombat in the Treetops and The Muddle-Headed Wombat is Very Bad can still quote whole sentences from both. One night, when I was maybe eight years old, I stayed awake reading Treetops over and over until the small hours of the morning, and then I fell asleep with it in my hands – something I’ve never done again.
I also borrowed other Wombat titles from my school library. There are so many enchanting things about Park’s books. The thing that seems to have entered the lexicon is Wombat’s tendency to add ‘bubble’ to words that end in –ible, i.e., “that would be terribubble”. But I believe it was the characters that made the books – soft-headed but kind-hearted Wombat, narcissistic Tabby Cat, and Mouse playing the ‘straight man’ (or woman) to the other two.
Roald Dahl
Whatever you think of Steven Spielberg’s BFG movie – and I thought it was pretty good apart from the gratuitous and very Spielbergian American football scene – it will help introduce Roald Dahl’s books to a generation of children that might never have picked them up. And that, my friends, is an outcome for which it is worth tolerating a dash of Yank imperialism.
Our school librarian read us a number of Dahl’s books, including The Witches and George’s Marvellous Medicine, but my favourite was by far The BFG. My three-year-old daughter and I recently (re)discovered the movie and the book together and I was amazed how well I could recall all the names and events, even though I probably hadn’t laid hands on the book in 25 years.
Again, it was the characters and language, as much as the events, that made it magical. The BFG talking in pidgin English about “the telly-telly bunkum box and the radio-squeaker”, “frobscottle” leading to “whizpoppers”, and even the evil giants’ names – Childchewer was one I remembered without prompting – all speak to Dahl’s unique genius. He knew how to entertain children, and knew better than to talk down to them.
And I can see why his work appealed to Spielberg. They shared a belief that a child could be the hero of a story and that adults should not be trusted.*
Kenneth Grahame
The Wind in the Willows was the first ‘adult length’ book I read, when I was around seven years old, if memory serves. My parents and I were making one of our annual pilgrimages from Sydney to the Gold Coast for a holiday, and what helped pass the time was a hardcover edition of Kenneth Grahame’s timeless story. It included beautifully detailed illustrations by Michael Hague, and even before I was old enough to read the book, my mother and I had played a game where I would try to find Hague’s initials on his drawings.
Looking back from the distance of adulthood, I’m a little vague on the storyline and character specifics of Willows, although I remember Ratty’s classic line “messing about in boats” and that Toad has a rough time of it (does he end up in jail? That’s what my brain tells me).
Choose Your Own Adventure
No discussion of my childhood reading would be complete without a mention of the Choose Your Own Adventure books. I doubt there is an ’80s kid in the English-speaking world who didn’t pick up one of these first-person titles, which let the reader choose what he or she should do at the end of every few pages. (If you want to [do whatever action], turn to page 40.) The goal was to get to the end of the book unscathed – so of course there was always an irresistible temptation to cheat.
Again, my school library had an extensive collection and I worked my way through most of them. There was also the Choose Your Own Adventure ‘Time Machine’ series, which offered some history along with numerous unhappy endings (I had Time Machine 2, which was set in the age of the dinosaurs.) Soon enough there were imitators; I can still recollect the disdain with which I regarded my cousin when he referred to the inferior Pick-a-Path books. I also owned a couple of horror-themed imitators that had fabulous cover art: Horror Hotel and Nightmare Store.
I hadn’t thought about it until writing this, but the Choose Your Own Adventure series probably played a part in my inclination to read and write speculative fiction in later life, as many titles had supernatural elements or themes.
* My other favourite was Danny the Champion of the World. Not only did Dahl make pheasant poaching fun and exciting (and justified), he also created the father every boy wished for. But it was not illustrated by Quentin Blake, which was disappointing. In my mind, Dahl and Blake were a couplet, as inseparable as Kirk and Spock.