Fiction Friday #1 - Kid Classics

Since I truly love to read, I thought I would start sharing my reading list with my readers. Sometime last month I wrote about the qualities of a good book, and I will be using this criterion to evaluate the books I'm reading for you guys.**Sidenote: Due to the fact that I do occasionally read non-fiction books, I will slip some of those into my Fiction Friday posts. Let's be honest here, Non-Fiction Friday just doesn't sound as cool! ;)For this first week of Fiction Friday, I want to let you know that I have been reading books that are considered 'kids classics' but were not books I read as a child, in case you were wondering why I'm reading kids books.Pippi Longstocking is the first book that I will be covering with this particular blog series, and it was quite interesting. Other than knowing that Pippi was a little girl with red hair and pig-tails that stick out, I had no clue what the book was about. This was particularly beneficial because there was no way I was going to guess the way it ended. :) After reading it, I'm still not sure what it was about. Granted, it is a kids book, so it was primarily written to entertain kids which means that it the characters don't have to be believable in a tangible sense of the word. They can be extravagant and bizarre without explaining why they are the way they are. As an adult, I kept waiting for Pippi's backstory to explain her to an extent that made sense to me but that never happened. It was still a fun story, or collection of stories, since each chapter seemed to be completely independent of the rest of the book other than sharing a main character.Mary Poppins was my second book. Now most of you probably were just filled with warm fuzzy feeling from your fond memories of Julie Andrews playing the title character in the 1964 classic film, but I don't ever remember watching Mary Poppins so I had no clue what was going to happen. (I would like to see it now that I've read the book though!)  Mary Poppins was quite a complex character. You could never really know which version of her you were going to get and she always had a new and exciting trick up her sleeve. I always enjoy experiencing a different time and place, and the author of Mary Poppins, P.L. Travers, gave her readers a lovely tour of mid-1900's London. It was great!! I felt as though this book was similar to Pippi Longstocking in the fact that it doesn't feel like a continuous story but rather a collection of individual stories. However, there were a few aspects that were carried throughout and gave the book some continuity. Now I just need to find a copy of the movie so I can see how well it matches up!!Overall, I would say they were both good, but in a very different way than books aimed at adult audiences. I am currently in the process of reading a few more books, so make sure you check back next Friday to see which books I read and what I thought of them.