Emotion Collision: Fountain Dipping & Children's Books

Fountain Dipping & Children's Books

This NY Times story tells how a man in Rome has been arrested for taking coins from the Trevi Fountain. According to the article, the authorities estimated that he raked in up to over $1000/day for 15 minutes of work. Asides from Goonies quotes and the ever-so-fleeting desire to investigate this & pan-handling as a way of life, this article also reminded me of a children's book I read a long time ago about two(?) children (brother and sister?) that ran away from home & lived in a museum. One of the things they'd do is bathe in the fountain & loot the change for food. Anyone know what the name of this book is?

Speaking of children's books, I recently read the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. Although they are classified as children's books, I thoroughly enjoyed them. They definitely fall under the darker side of kid's reading though...more along the lines (and perhaps darker than) A Swiftly Tilting Planet.

Your Insatiable One ~ 2002.08.07 13:29 PM

On August 8, 2002 11:47 AM, freesia said

What were those really dark fantasy books about the boy who woke up on his eleventh birthday and time had stopped, and ... one of when was called "Greenwich", and he was looking for these rings, and what the hell were those books called. I LOVED those. I should read them again.

On August 8, 2002 2:29 PM, Your Insatiable One said

Did you mean Greenwitch by chance? There's a "The Dark Is Rising Sequence" by Susan Cooper that has Greenwitch as one of the books in the title and has an 11 year old boy as one of the protagonists.

On August 9, 2002 10:43 PM, yukino said

Heh. You know, I have those books but I have still never read them.

Also good blast-from-the-past stuff: The John Christopher tripods trilogy: The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, and The Pool of Fire.

On August 10, 2002 1:23 PM, haglund said

The titles sounds familiar, but I am drawing a blank on the books. Could be because it would have been about 20 or so years since I read them, if I did.

On August 13, 2002 9:54 AM, haglund said

Ah ha! After doig a search, I realized why thosse titles sounded familiar. Way back when, when I was a boy scout, they would send that pathetic "Boy's Life" magazine. The only thing worthwile was when they started adding the comic rendition of "The White Mountains", then followed by the others in the trilogy. Month (I think it was a monthly) by month - or whatever - I would follow the story to it's conclusion. That must have been sometime in the '82 - '86 time frame... yeah, that is a blast from the past.