Favourite adventure stories from one’s childhood
Today and every 5th of May is Children’s Day in Japan, and to celebrate, goo Ranking published a list of what adventure novels from one’s childhood made one’s heart beat faster.
Demographics
Over the 21st and 22nd of March 2008 1,036 people from the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.7% were male, 7.0% in their teens, 14.7% in their twenties, 30.1% in their thirties, 27.0% in their forties, 10.9% in their fifties, and 10.2% aged sixty or over. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample. Only the single people were asked today’s questions.
This is a fascinating list. First, there is but one Japanese author, then there are a good number of countries represented, although of course it will be the Japanese translation that people read as a child. Next, I must admit to never having heard of books 2, 8, 18 and 19.
For me, the book that defined my childhood would have to be The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, both of them read to me by my mother. I could only manage to read by myself the Tales of Narnia, which would probably be third on my list of memorable adventures.
Ranking results
Q: When you were a child, what adventure novel made your heart beat faster? (Sample size=1,036)
Rank Title Author Score 1 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain 100 2 A Captain at Fifteen Jules Verne 86.4 3 Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe 71.4 4 Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson 67.9 5 20,000 League Under the Sea Jules Verne 57.5 6 Doctor Dolittle Hugh Lofting 50.7 7 Around the World in 80 Days Jules Verne 45.4 8 The Wonderful Adventures of Nils Selma Lagerlof 41.4 9 Pippi Longstockings Astrid Lindgren 33.9 10 The Time Machine H.G. Wells 28.2 11 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 27.1 12 The Lost World Arthur Conan Doyle 19.6 13 The Tale of the Koro-pok-guru Satoru Sato 18.9 14 The Neverending Story Michael Ende 17.1 15 The Jungle Book Rudyard Kipling 13.2 16 Tales of Narnia C.S. Lewis 12.9 17 Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien 11.1 18 A Princess of Mars Edgar Rice Burrows 7.9 19 The Lost World of Time Edmond Moore Hamilton 7.5 20 The Tales of Earthsea Ursula K. Le Guin 7.5
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed, or check out my weekly newsletter. Thanks for visiting!
Read more on: books,children,goo ranking
Subscribe to feed
Send to mobile
Subscribe to 世論 What Japan Thinks newsletter
Anne C said,
May 5, 2008 @ 23:18
me too! although the order would be different-oh and i didnt recognise the tales of koru pok guru either! Mum only read the great classics! L.S
Janne said,
May 5, 2008 @ 23:37
I have read all but five of these. Three of them (the Conan Doyle, Burroughs and Hamilton books) do not seem to offer much of interest to me as an adult, judging from their other works, but Jules Verne’s “A captain at fifteen” (have never heard of that one either) could be fun, as sould the Satoru Sato book.
BTW, #8 is very well known. It’s by a Swedish author in the early 20th century and features a young boy that has been shrunk to the size of a finger traveling north across the country on the back of a wild goose. It was intended (and used) as a geography textbook for primary-school students. The author (who is a Nobel price winner) made a god enough job of it that the book sells all over the world, and is now read in school as a classic piece of Swedish literature, rather than as a geography work.