Yeah, this was probably one of the more noticeable examples of my feelings towards a book's characters shifting dramatically from childhood to adulthood. In most cases - well, at least those cases where rereading as an adult didn't leave me with a profound feeling of "Wow, this book is terrible" - either I reread the book frequently enough as I grew up that my opinions on the characters grew up along with me, or my favorites didn't really change all that much; a lot of the characters who had me at hello as a child still get me exactly that way as an adult.
But this one really changed! I remember very clearly that as the young child I was when I used to reread the book a lot, Tacky-obbie was far and away my favorite, I found Life very grating, and I disliked Skarra immensely. (And also, I found him incomprehensible; I was an extremely stubborn, opinionated child, and was often drawn to "bossy big sibling" characters, e.g. Susan was my head and shoulders favorite in Narnia from a very young age. I think I might have disliked Life because she was a more extreme version of that archetype and I might have seen some of my own flaws in her, without realizing it. Skarra was the polar opposite of what I was like at that age, to the point where I couldn't relate to any of his decisions at all.)
And then reading as an adult it was a shockingly huge perspective shift, especially since I remembered so clearly how I used to feel about everyone. Tacky-obbie was just kind of there as a typical everykid child protagonist, and I found myself really loving Life and Skarra for, on the whole, all the reasons I hadn't liked them before. It was a very interesting window into my childhood psyche, especially with Tacky-obbie, who I'd loved as a kid but as an adult I ... it's not even that I couldn't see why I used to like him, it's just that I found him uninteresting compared to the more damaged and prickly characters around him. It made me recognize why everykid characters are such a staple of middle-grade books, and also at what approximate age I must have developed the draw toward damaged, flawed screw-ups that I have now, because it was definitely after the period in which I read that book a lot.
.... oh, and I completely missed that this is the author of The Gammage Cup! I bought it on the basis of your post - it's sitting in one of my to-read piles right now - but I didn't recognize the name at all, and if you mentioned it in your post I must have skipped that part (there were parts of that post I didn't read once I had read far enough to realize this sounded like a book I'd really enjoy). That's great; I never actually thought to go looking for her books before, and I'm even more interested in reading it now.
no subject
But this one really changed! I remember very clearly that as the young child I was when I used to reread the book a lot, Tacky-obbie was far and away my favorite, I found Life very grating, and I disliked Skarra immensely. (And also, I found him incomprehensible; I was an extremely stubborn, opinionated child, and was often drawn to "bossy big sibling" characters, e.g. Susan was my head and shoulders favorite in Narnia from a very young age. I think I might have disliked Life because she was a more extreme version of that archetype and I might have seen some of my own flaws in her, without realizing it. Skarra was the polar opposite of what I was like at that age, to the point where I couldn't relate to any of his decisions at all.)
And then reading as an adult it was a shockingly huge perspective shift, especially since I remembered so clearly how I used to feel about everyone. Tacky-obbie was just kind of there as a typical everykid child protagonist, and I found myself really loving Life and Skarra for, on the whole, all the reasons I hadn't liked them before. It was a very interesting window into my childhood psyche, especially with Tacky-obbie, who I'd loved as a kid but as an adult I ... it's not even that I couldn't see why I used to like him, it's just that I found him uninteresting compared to the more damaged and prickly characters around him. It made me recognize why everykid characters are such a staple of middle-grade books, and also at what approximate age I must have developed the draw toward damaged, flawed screw-ups that I have now, because it was definitely after the period in which I read that book a lot.
.... oh, and I completely missed that this is the author of The Gammage Cup! I bought it on the basis of your post - it's sitting in one of my to-read piles right now - but I didn't recognize the name at all, and if you mentioned it in your post I must have skipped that part (there were parts of that post I didn't read once I had read far enough to realize this sounded like a book I'd really enjoy). That's great; I never actually thought to go looking for her books before, and I'm even more interested in reading it now.