A Book is a New Adventure

Well, it has been a long time since I have sat down to blog. The past month has been a whirlwind of life, with hundreds of moments where I thought, I should blog about that. However, life kept me from sitting down at the computer and blogging. However, we have still been reading. 

 

Today, we spent the morning at the Cobb County Bi-Annual Library Book Sale. I always look forward to these sales because you never know what you are going to find. It is a treasure trove for books.

I was tempted to make a bulk purchase of Babysitter club books. I tried enticing Miss M to start reading them, but she wasn't interested.

Little J found no issues what-so-ever with sitting on the very dirty fair grounds floor to read some of the books she wanted to get.

We ended up with a huge stack of books for only $23.00 for over 30 books. I know we really don't "need" anymore books in our house, but really, you can always use more books in the house. For what it would have cost to go to the movies, we got hours of entertainment lined up for the next several weeks.

Here are some of my favorite finds: 

I cannot believe we have never actually read When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne. For all of the excerpts I have read over the years, it will certainly feel like finding an old friend.

I picked up two books of children's poetry because we love reading poems at night before bed. On nights when it has been a long day, it is nice to read a couple of short rhymes that don't require too much brain power.

I also cannot believe that we didn't have a copy of Goodnight Moon. So we picked up this one and next to it was the hysterical book The Dumb Bunnies. Ironically, the cover on the book The Dumb Bunnies looks very much like the bedroom from Goodnight Moon.

We found several books featuring Maurice Sendak's illustrations. The Swine Lake by James Marshall looks particularly enticing.

I always love anything by Rosemary Wells. This little book Yoko looks charming.

Little J stills loves the feel of board books. These two books are simple with only one or two words on each page. These will be great to emphasize word structure for her.

Always a fan of anything with Madeline, my oldest picked up this lovely paperback: Madeline's Rescue.

She also found several chapter books. I loved The Family Under the Bridge when I was a child. I cannot wait to reread it with her. Reading books from childhood is like finding an old friend. Another woman at the book sale brought Abel's Island by William Steig over to Miss M, letting her know how highly she recommended the book for adventure.

We found this vintage version of Pinocchio, which I think the cover illustration is fairly creepy. Let's just say that the real version of Pinocchio, pre-Disney remake is violent and creepy. Pinocchio gets Gepetto thrown in jail and then he smashes the talking cricket's head with a mallet all by Chapter 4.I think we might let that book sit on the shelf a while. I don't recommend this version as a read aloud.

Little J loves these tiny Beatrix Potter books. We have four of them, and so she squealed with delight when we found The Tale of Mrs. Tiggle-Winkle. Something about the feel of a tiny book in tiny hands is magical.

I also found this reader, Lions, which I had a copy of this when I was in grade school. My daughter thought it was so funny and wanted it to play school with Little J.

And the last of the more than 30 books that we picked up that I would like to share is "I Won't," Said the King, an original print from 1945. Inside the front cover was this delightful bookplate that read A Book is A New Adventure with a child's name carefully typed on it.

 My dear Sally Ann Olson of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, I am sure you have grown, moved away, started a new family of your own, and very well likely may no longer be with us. However, it you are out there, yes, your book has found a new home with two little girls eager to find adventures within the covers of a book.