To Put Away Childish Things #24

It occurs to me that I haven't talked much about comics.

This is odd because for many years I talked about little else. I was a collector, and like all collectors I was given to waxing lyrical on my specialist subject. At the drop of a hat I would hold forth on the latest Fish Police or League of Superheroes or DNAgents or whatever else I was reading at the time. Although I haven't collected now for a long time and have sold a lot of the comics that I once had, I still have a wardrobe full of them that I now never look at.

I don't really want to talk about those comics now though, I want to talk about an entirely different comic. I want to talk about a comic that first appeared in 1963 - just after I ha started school - and lasted until 1971: Treasure.

I could already read when I started school (in the UK that was at the age of five) because my parents had always given me comics and helped me with books for young children but when Treasure came along it became the original source for my lifelong love of literature. It introduced me to The Borrowers, The Wind In The Willows, Robin Hood and of course Alice In Wonderland. 

Of course it was a very long time ago so I can't remember much about it but the very fact that I remember it at all tells you how important it was to my early development. As well as literature it had history and geography and even science, all written for and aimed at children of infant school age. 

Some stories and articles were presented as traditional panel stories; others - notably the ones reprinting classic stories - were presented as text with illustrations. My reading developed at an astonishing rate as my mother went through every issue with me until it fell apart. My reading age constantly ran several years ahead of my chronological age. If it had a detrimental effect at all, it probably accounts for my lifelong love of children's literature and my peculiar obsession with Alice In Wonderland.

Treasure disappeared in 1971 absorbed into World of Wonder and later into Look and Learn. About those, I know little or nothing but I hope that they continued the fine tradition that launched me into my love of literature and language and I hope that there are equivalent publications out there for today's kids.

 I have just spent a very pleasant hour looking at some of the illustrations from treasure to be found on the Look and Learn website.

And I may go back and look at some more later.