I know this sounds like a book lovers’ blog tag, but actually, this question was asked of me by my reader son. I love that he has reached an age where it’s not uncommon that we will have discussions about books while I chauffeur him to his different activities.
However, feel free to answer it as you would a tag.
I had to think about this one, because I’ve been having emotional reactions to fictional characters probably since before I could read.
I remember weeping buckets over the doomed friendship between Todd and Copper, as experienced by me through the little book accompanied by a 45 record that we had and played on our little record player.
So I guess you could possibly say that Todd was my first fictional crush. I was certainly in love with the woodsy setting as well.
I continued to be drawn to wilderness-dwelling characters who were thin, spry, quick, fey, and solitary. As a little girl, of course, it wasn’t so much that I consciously had a crush on these characters as it was hero worship. I wanted to be them. I remember feeling that way about Peter Pan, and this guy:
At the age of about twelve, I had a thing for Durnik from the Belgariad. He was strong, quiet, capable and practical … everything I wasn’t.
But now we are getting closer to my teenaged years, about which, the less said the better. I’ll give you one more though, which was a literary crush when I was about thirteen: Odysseus. That was the year that I read a simplified version of The Odyssey in school. Odysseus is a beefcake like Durnik (after all, he is the only one who can draw that big bow!), but he’s also clever and quick like my old favorites.
So there you have it.
Out of Babel 
For me, I think it was Penny from the Inspector Gadget cartoon. I don’t remember anything from books though.
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Good choice!
With her little blond pigtails, she looks like Lucy Pevensie.
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Is that how you imagine Lucy?
I always took my image from the first editions, forget the artists name.
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The editions I grew up with had little pen drawings at the start of each chapter. Lucy was always in a knee-length dress with a collar, and pigtails. The books said she was blond, hence … blond pigtails.
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Huh, I guess it’s been awhile. I always pictured her ad brunette. Now I want to go look it up, hahaha!
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They made her a brunette in the live action movies, but in the books, Peter and Susan have dark hair (almost black), and Edmund and Lucy are fair-haired.
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Man, I HATE when movies do that to me. And I grew up on the books too. Sigh…
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I actually really liked the face of the Lucy in the live-action movie. That was one of the few things I liked about it.
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When I was in high school I saw Man of La Mancha and had a crush on Don Quixote / Peter O’Toole. I read the book by Cervantes. If I ever meet a man like Don Quixote I’ll follow him anywhere.
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Good choice!
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