I was recently thinking about books I loved as a child and would love to reread now. The Runaways immediately popped into my head. It’s a book I haven’t picked up since I was about 14, after reading it for the first time when I was 10/11 years old.
The book follows Nathan and Julia, two misfits of their class – the last to be picked for teams, and always without a partner. They are the outsiders at school and unhappy at home, feeling disconnected, unseen and different. Until they come across a secret stash of money… Forging an unexpected friendship, Nathan and Julia travel through ups and downs whilst negotiating being child runaways and avoiding the adults in the world, who they believe will find them and punish them.
I wanted to work out why I was drawn so much to this book as a child and then in my teenage years. There is the simple, straight forward reason… As a kid, wouldn’t it have been amazing to come by a stash of money and have the care free attitude of spending it on sweets and toys, thus becoming the person everyone wants to be friends with?!
On deeper reflection though, I think I was also a child that felt disconnected, unseen and different. Not all throughout my childhood but certainly at times. To have a book that represents you, to read about other children feeling like the ‘other’, was a way to be less alone.
I wasn’t an obviously different child until I reached age 10/11 (to put this in context, I was born female and was in school as a girl – prior to me realising I was or even could be trans)
I was well into football, hated anything that was remotely feminine, got on much better with boys and dressed in mainly masculine clothes. As a younger child this wasn’t a problem, younger children tend to be much more free to express gender, yet the closer to double digits you get, the more pressures seem to appear. This was my experience. The older I got, the more obvious my differences became.
I picked up The Runaways purely by chance in my primary school library and it spoke to me almost immediately. Those feelings of difference and aloneness were replicated in the story I was reading. It also allowed me to imagine running away from it all, camping out in tents and hotel rooms with a friend who was experiencing the same as me. It was an escape. And possibly one of my first experiences of how books can provide a relatable link to a character and an escape from the challenges of feeling different.
It’s a book I intend to read again soon. I wonder if, now I’m older with more life experience and resilience, I will relate to it with fondness or with sadness for the experiences of my younger self .
Do you have any books that you were drawn to as a child? Why? Do you still think of that book now? Would you enter that books world again, if only to reminisce?
The Weary Wanderer of Life 