Oh my! I waited too long and now there are more than 40 comments to read 😃

Skipping down to answer the OP before I do that - yes I certainly did, but not so much fairy tale characters.

I loved The Borrowers books and would build tiny houses out under the bushes in our yard, with shells for dishes, imagining myself living in them, or a tiny person stumbling upon them and moving in. I read Edward Eager's magical books and imagined myself finding an object that granted wishes, or finding a magic book at the library. I would imagine myself as Lucy in the Narnia books, finding doorways to other worlds.

I read a lot of SciFi too - my dad was an avid fan - so I read many of his books, which also fueled a lot of my imaginative play.

And I identified with the princess from the Princess & The Pea as an adult - still do. A single crumb in my bed, or a tiny seed in my shoe, feels enormous - and painful!

P.S. Reading all the comments reminded me of more books I love from my youth. I still go back and read a good number of them. I've collected copies of many of my faves over the years - some are books I've kept since childhood.

I have a lot of books 😁

Then and now, The Princess and the Pea and I do share that kind of sensitivity, and I enjoyed reading all fairytales as a kid, plus 1001 Arabian nights, Jane Goodall and her chimpanzees, DC comic Superman, Batman and Smurfs. When I got a blown up toy Batman from my mom, it was nearly as tall as I was, I could fantasize me having that kind of coolness and power. And I was quite sad when someone stole it - must be one of my cousins. Many decades later at work, a subordinate preferred to call me Bruce Wayne, so that brought back childhood memories of yesteryears. Back then one of the children book illustrations I read told the story of a German Shepherd broke free from dognapping. The dog ran for freedom across a snowy field with the metal chain still attached to its neck. But along the way, the chain got entangled around a shrub and the dog could not break free and then died from the cold and exhaustion. It made my heart broke into pieces for a long time.

It hit me right out of the blue. For those that know me relatively well, if you listen to the lyrics in the opening you'll see that I'm PATTY DUKE! I posted this years ago.

All of you are Cathy, except little ole me who loves my burgers and dogs. I also won a dance contest in high school. Patty would've been proud. ;)

Patty put out a beautiful album and I'd stand in front of the full length door mirror while holding one of the finials to my canopy bed for a microphone, and sing Funny Little Butterflies.

Encore! Encore!

I did not read that many comic books as a child (and did not have any of my own), except for the ones that were at my mother's beauty parlor, and I would read those, along with women's magazines when I was 4 or 5 and accompanied my mother there. I liked Litte Dot, but I also read Donald Duck comics, as well as some Sci-Fi comics that had flying saucers and aliens, although those tended to scare me. As a teenager, one of my cousins introduced me to The Fly, which was his favorite, along with Green Lantern, but I only read what he shared with me and never bought any for myself. The first comics I bought for myself were underground from San Francisco circa 1969.

I loved the movie Darby O'Gill and the Little People, and I believed in little people as a child. I've always had a fascination with folk tales and legends, and I guess my favorite folk tales are Russian. We have a collection of DVDs from Ruscico of movies from the 1970s that the Russian government commissioned to be make of Russian folk tales, and contemporary Russian life. My favorite is Rusland & Ludmila, which is the national Russian epic, and it is a two disc DVD.

I will say that I do not identify with any Russian characters, but I do love watching them, as they appear exotic to me. It has always been easier for me to identify with German or Scandinavian characters in legends, but I did identify a lot with characters in English novels - more so than in American novels.

Lars, Little Dot was my favorite, then Archie. I need to look online for old Little Dot cartoons and figure out why I loved her.

I was intrigued by the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn when growing up. I guess that may have added to my being very mischievous in my youth.

I have been mulling this over as well. Think about how all this stuff molded us as kids. We were being taught our respective roles even if it didnt take in the end. Has anyone wondered how on earth it was that Snow White moves in with the Dwarfs and immediately starts sweeping, cooking and so forth? Where on earth does a princess learn how to sweep? Because she is a girl it comes naturally? so weird.

I had thought of the Borrowers as the little people mentioned but also remember the Teenie Weenies. Reread the Borrowers. I did a few years ago and was shocked at what I had missed as a kid. They were sort of tragic books. The community of Borrowers were completely unsupportive of each other in general with the abandoned boys Spiller and Peagreen as notable exceptions. They competed with each other for resources. It is odd what you miss as a child.

FWIW, my uncle worked for Whitman Publishing and regularly sent us those comics when we were kids. There was Casper and Richie Rich too. I remember learning who/what the god Mammon was through a Richie Rich comic.

Which reminds me that I read Greek myths as an elementary student too - our school librarian introduced me to a large anthology that I loved. I can't recall if that influenced my imaginary play or not, tho.

Oh, carolb_w_fl_, D'aulaires' Book of Greek Myths! That book was very popular at my grade school.

As for characters I identified with-- Robinson Crusoe in his loneliness, but that was as an older child.

Speaking of comics, anyone else remember the girl who was super strong but also morbidly obese? The comics made fun of how much she ate. Talk about politically incorrect -- couldn't get away with that today! (And is often pointed out, Donald Duck wore no pants. What was THAT about?)

I think that was Little Lotta. Just looked her up. The comic was published from 1953 to 1972 then sporadically until 1993. I assumed it was much earlier than that!

I don't know that I deeply identified with a character as much as it sounds like you did. But I was a voracious reader and would get very sucked into books and imagined myself as many of the characters. I had a tendancy to really love adventures with young women as the protagonist and so in some ways I definitely identified with them. I don't think there was any single book so much as many books by a few favorite authors. I spent countless hours picking up as many books as the library would allow me to check out, reading them, and then going back for more.

I'm sorry you had such a depressing childhood / teenage years. I feel privileged that I had wonderful family support though I really struggled socially as a young child. I barely had friends until my tween years. I was a tomboy and rather studious, so as a young child when girls and boys did not play together (at least in my schools), I felt very ostracized and isolated. I was frequently bullied (mostly emotionally). Probably around my tweens I realized that the games the boys played (sports) were games I could understand and enjoy and that there was no reason I had to play with the girls and suddenly things became less painful. Once I hit my teen years and switched to a bigger school, I was able to find other girls who played sports or were studious and they didn't seem to be as interested in playing cruel exclusionary emotional games and I was able to find friends. I do think this isolation pushed me towards reading and books. But it also helped me develop a sense of self and comfort in being different. I think that has helped me in my adult life.

When I was in elementary school (especially the early part), all of my friends were girls, and I would only play games with girls at recess, such as jump rope, hop scotch, jacks, Cooties, etc. I would also play on the swings with girls. I did not like the games that boys played, such as baseball.

However, I was on the track team in Jr High because I could run fast - mostly to get away from the boys who would chase me. I was never bullied, I think because I came from a prominent family, but I also did not notice bullying at my school, except in the class just ahead of mine. A lot of the students were Czech, and their families were very peaceful farmers.

I was also bullied for being different. Lots of kids were back then, and I of course turned around and bullied other kids as a way of trying to fit in - which is shameful to me now.

It still happens, but thank goodness our society is moving further and further away from accepting such meanness as the norm. I feel that there are some who wish to go back to those times, but they're very misguided if they think they'll succeed.

I was a voracious reader throughout my childhood. I did like Trixie Belden Nancy Drew And The Hardy boys for the adventure aspect. However I did not identify with any of them. They all had at least one loving parent.

I found the dark side of fairy tales quite disturbing.

I loved the movie Cinderella with the dancing mice. Don't ask me why. No taste I guess. But that's not a book.

The parts I found disturbing about most fairy tales was the chopping off of toes to get into a glass slipper etc. That's sad to me.

Many fairy tales are from times that were much more brutal than today. I've read a lot, and the Disney versions they're not.

The latest book of fairy tales I've read is a French one from 1920 with gorgeous illustrations, but the stories are mainly about young people - esp. females - being unquestioningly obedient and 'good' in order to receive their rewards of happily ever after.

There was even one about a young girl's curiosity being a fatal flaw.

FWIW, there are many digitized books of fairy tales available for free @ gutenberg.org.

I loved Disney's Cinderella as a child, and the part where the mice made her dress was enchanting to me.

My parents didn’t read fairy tales to us for just that reason, yeo. And even though we had some volumes of HC Andersen, they didn’t read those to us either. Many fairy tales have been ”sanitized” and many have long had alternative endings, but the early versions were definitely dark. I started reading some of Andersen’s when I was older, and they were just, well, odd, I recall Thumbelina being rather trippy.

I did like to imagine that I was Heidi, after I read it. The ”woods” near our house was being partially developed with houses, and the part nearest our house (which would later become a park) was where they piled the dirt dug up for the basements and foundations. It was a nice big hill, and it quickly grew over with wild grass and wildflowers (or weeds, depending on your imagination). I would hike up the hill imagining I was Heidi in the Alps. Many years later I spent an academic year in the Alps, partially fueled by that book and imagination. Loved it. And like Heidi, I sometimes slipped a bun in my pocket to take back to my room for later. But the I would be Francie from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and take it out on my little balcony on my favorite little chipped plate, while I read.

Other than Trixie Beldin, I liked the Hardy Boys much better than the stupid girls, that just screamed and put on makeup.

I had a Spin and Marty book, and there’s a passage where Annette was swimming. comes out of the water, takes off her swim cap, and shakes out her dark curls. I definitely did not identify with her! My hair comes out of any headcovering limp and straight as floss.

carolb -- Oh yes, a good girl can't have curiosity. I agreed to be married in a Catholic church to please my MIL, so I had to have 'counseling'. The priest scolded my DM because I had 'an inquiring mind'. (That is to say I don't accept 'truths' that depend on prior leaps of faith. Isn't that called 'circular argument'?)

As for Disney, I blame the man for sanitizing stories meant to warn and and inform into the 'happy endings' nonsense that encourages children to accept kinds of hogwash as adults.

My dad had a couple collections of fairy tales. They weren't very nice tales but I liked them and read them as a child. I think my daughter has those books now. Part of the reason I became a reader, I think, was my dad was a big reader. After he read the newspaper I would too, even when I was a little kid. I may not have understood a lot of it but I liked reading it. Sometimes he'd let me read it first, but I'd have to put it back the exact way it came lol. He also had a Reader's digest subscription forever. When I moved out he always gave me a subscription for Christmas, until he got demenia and forgot. There were also books that I read, that I would never have picked myself, like John Steinbeck novels.

In my German class of the Romantic Period (which started earlier in German than it did in England), we were taught the difference between Märchen (fairy tale) and Volkserzälung (folk tale). Fairy tales have a known author, such as Hans C. Anderson, Ludwig Tieck, Novalis, or Charles Perrault (Cinderella). The Grimm brothers did not write fairy tales but instead collected folk tales, whose authors were unknown and lost in time. They did this because they were creating a comprehensive German dictionary and used the tales in the etymology, to trace the origins of the meanings. In Germany, they are known more for their dictionary than their folk tales, although they only got to the letter B, and it was not completed until 1961. The main library of the university that I went to had it, and I believe it was in 36 volumes.

I was very much interested in folk literature when I was at university, and I was especially interested in Russian folk tales, which can be even scarier than German tales, but not if you read them in English (or even French) translation. English and French translations of Russian folk tales tend to leave out gory details, but German translations do not, and so I read them in German until I learned Russian. There is almost no loss from the Russian to the German translation, and pretty much none that is significant.

When I lived in San Francisco, I would go to the main library in the Civic Center and visit their anthropology section, which had books that contained Native American folk tales - some that had side by side text in the original language with a literal English translation so that no details would be lost. One thing I noticed about this was that the stories would include information about defecation and urination (especially in the woods), which the writers seemed to think was important, but in the normal English translation, this information would be omitted. I guess this was useful in their tracking or leaving trails, or so it seemed from the stories.

In Russian folk tales, people often get cut up into a thousand pieces, but if they are lucky, they get put back together again by a witch. There is a lot of magic going on in Russian stories, but they can also be very gory. For magic to work, things often have to be done in multiples of three, and there are often multiples of three characters, such as three brothers or three sisters, each one more beautiful than the previous one.

I have some of the Andrew Lang volumes. IIRC, one is Russian or Slav tales. They're all available on gutenberg.org as well.

Foghorn Leghorn

I never read the books, but 5 year old me admired Pippi Longstocking from tv (the 1969/70 era version). I would watch both the german dubbed versions and english dubbed ones. I wanted my hair in pigtails like hers and would try to braid them. I even tried to get the pigtails to stick out like hers (they were just really lopsided instead). For books, I identified with kids that had adventures. My favorite books when I was in the 11-14 year old range were the Dark is Rising books by Susan Cooper and a book called the The Ghosts by Antonia Barber. I checked those out of the library and would read them over and over. Oh, and Tom’s Midnight Garden by Phillipa Pierce. I related and identified with characters in books the best when they were close to my own age at the time (male or female)

I strongly identified with Madeleine, the eponymous character in the books by Ludwig Bemelmans. I had a hat and coat like Madeleine and feared nothing. Every summer I went to summer camp for two months without my parents, and when I was old enough I went away to boarding school and even had my appendix out at school while we were in Naples, Italy. And I started taking French in kindergarten!

Such a great topic! My mother required us to read for a set amount of time on days off school, and most of us grew up to be voracious readers. A love of books was modeled and cultivated. Im not sure if I related to a specific character, but loved meeting various characters and following their adventures and experiences that were always best when they were very different than my own. I have always been drawn to things that are magical, and to this day like fiction with magical realism. i worked with kids in schools, and there was nothing better than to see kids captivated by a story, or lost in the creative process in art, or in writing. Reading, using your imagination, and being creative allow you to step away from your life, and expand the realm of possibilities. Such good stuff. We also grew up next door to a family who had an acrobatic trampoline act in the circus. They traveled to shows in the summer and were on the Ed Sullivan Show once. They had 3 daughters who all performed with their parents. They practiced in the back yard and were the most lovely people. They had interesting friends (including Earl Sruggs) that also had acts, and visited them. It was wonderful and great fodder for the imagination. Needless to say we all did acrobatics at some level, and had opportunities to put on the safety harness and give it a go. Lars, I guess I didn’t really answer your question, but was shy as a child, and anxious about some things, and think these kinds of experiences, whether you relate to a character or not are healthy and a way to expand your horizons and perhaps gain confidence and learn you are not alone.

I identified with Sara Crew from the Little Princess. I also loved the Secret Garden and made my own secret garden in a wooded area of my childhood property.

Anyone renember the cousins in the Famous Five series. Those books were great too.

I have mulled this thread over and realized there was a character that I saw as me. It was the elephant child in Kipling's Just So Stories. I recognized him as me asking too many questions. Thinking toooo much.

When I was in jr high and high school, I read a lot of poetry, especially Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, and Edgar Allen Poe, but I also liked Wordsworth. After I learned German, I read Heine, Novalis, Schiller, Hölderlin, Goethe, etc. I found that I liked the German Romantics better than the English, but I still found Shelley and Keats inspiring.

I wrote a lot of poetry when I was a teenager, from 14 to 19 or 20, and some of it was published in magazines, which one of my English teachers had submitted. I also won a poetry recitation contest and a poetry writing contest when I was in high school. My English teacher enjoyed trying to interpret my poems, but she was better at it than I was, as they were rather abstract and obscure. I wrote from compulsion to express my feelings rather than my thoughts.

I’m pretty sure I read Black Beauty 50 times as a young child. I also devoured repeatedly all those Marguerite Henry books (Brighty of the Grand Canyon, King of the Wind, etc.) I don’t know that I identified as a horse, per se, but I was definitely horse crazy and finally got one of my own when I was twelve.

What IS it with tween girls and *horses*? Does that even continue today, when both genders have a variety of pop stars to moon over?

I will admit to also wondering about the horse thing.

I think it's because they're so beautiful and powerful. We were into horses too, took riding lessons and went to horse camp.

And most kids just love animals in general - a horse is a pet you can ride 🙂

I’m wondering why anyone is wondering why kids would be horse crazy. I’m surprised that anyone thinks that’s unusual.

It’s just an interest like any other.

ETA: Agree, Carol. :)

Jakabedy, I can’t believe I forgot about Marguerite Henry books. I had them all and still want to see the ponies of Chincoteague!

Funny, you never see people wondering why boys like playing football or fishing or motocross.

Oh, we had a plethora of pop stars to swoon over back in the day. That's not a factor in why we were horse obsessed. Horses signified a very special friend who could take you to wonderful places. They've always seemed a bit magical to me.

Why Horses? Why not!

Well like most pets because as soon as you look in their eyes you know love and acceptance.

For some of us the human zoo is a lot less comfortable.

Plus most pets are very good listeners ;-) Unlike some human beings..

I loved the Nancy Drew books, and identified with her in a way because I was always curious. And when my mom died when I was 9, and it was just my dad and me, I could relate to that part of Nancy's life. But mostly I just wanted her roadster.

I read a lot of comics as a kid, and one I could see myself in was "Brenda Starr, Reporter." When I became a newspaper reporter much, much later, and they put a PRESS sticker on my windshield, I thought it might just as well have said BRENDA. lol

About 10 years before that, I read a novel about a woman who had stepdaughters. I had stepdaughters, and the protagonist's feelings and experiences reminded me so much of my own. When I finished the book I wrote to the author, saying, "Thank you for writing the story of my life." She wrote back. We corresponded frequently for years, and are still friends.

what a great question

I read a lot and identified with many too, I guess

If I don't think too much:

-Gerda

-Winnie-the-Pooh:)

-Jean Valjean

- the Count of Monte-Christo..lol

-Scout (Finch)

-many heroes/heroines from ballads and poems and such. Like " Janet sits in her lonely room
Sewing a silken seam"

-Lolita

April, so happy to ”see” you again!

thank you bpath, same here!

Good to hear from those who were crazy about horses. BUT...I'm thinking about the timing here. This interest seems specific to tweens -- who are on the cusp of understanding XXX. (Edited to avoid potentially shocking content.) In any case, Ida Clair's post makes romantic sense.

I’ve had an imaginary horse since I was 3, with real accompanying books, figures, accessories, and toys.

I'm going to have to research Gerda - I'm not familiar with her.

I did like Winnie-the-Pooh books as a child, but I identified with Eeyore, although Winnie was my favorite character, followed by Piglet.

Gerda was the girl heroine in Hans Christian Anderson's The Snow Queen.

Growing up, we had a beautifully illustrated volume of Anderson's tales - and still do. The cover art shows Gerda...

LOVED our Hans Christian Anderson story book! I also love the movie staring Danny Kaye! Little Mermaid was my favorite. I had a book with holographic pictures I wished I had kept.

In my earliest reading years, I read all of the Bobbsey Twins books our small-town library had. I loved those kids - two sets of fraternal twins: Nan, Bert, Freddie and Flossie. I identified strongly with Flossie, the girl half of the younger twins.

I did identify somewhat with Hansel of Hansel and Gretel, but I think that because of my German grandmother and the fact that I had a record (78 RPM, I think) that told the story.

I had that record too!