Childhood book time

For some reason, lots of childhood thoughts/memories coming up today. Through a chain of free-association, I remembered a picture book I had from the library a number of times as a kid - all I remembered was inanimate objects had been drawn as birds, and the one I remembered SPECIFICALLY were the scissor-birds, because of the creepiness (to my child's mind) that you would *put your fingers where their eyes were* to use the scissors - I started hand-sewing around age 6 and even before that I used paper scissors, so I knew how scissors worked.

I though I hadn't a prayer of finding the book, but good old Loganberry Books' Stump the Bookseller (that's their new format! And I'm glad to see Loganberry lives yet...).

It's "The Ice-Cream Coot and other Birds," and it's by Arnold Lobel, who was a well-known children's book author/illustrator, so I guess it's not so very obscure.

And yes, I found a shop in the Abe Books consortium that had a copy for not too many monies....so I ordered it. (Some of the nicer copies are very very pricey). That same shop had a book on soft-toy making I wanted, so I ordered that too...and kept scrolling through the Toymaking listings just in case (there are one or two other books from my youth I'd love to find again, but since libraries now do more aggressive weeding AND a lot of time has passed since I was a kid, it's easier to find them as ex-lib copies than to try to locate them in a library).

And I saw another book I remember checking out many, many times as a kid: Joan McElroy's Dolls' House Furniture Book. It had patterns for making furniture (if you had access to thin wood and a good jigsaw) but it also had a wonderful section on accessories to make for your dollhouse. (But their copy was $155, too much money. I did find a cheaper copy on Amazon).

And yeah, I often do this: I buy my own personal copy of a book I loved from the library when I was a child (I still have a few of my own, personal childhood books that I hung on to, but there were many, many more I checked out as a kid. I tracked down a copy of She Was Nice To Mice a few years back because I remembered reading it as a girl. (And yes, the author is THAT Ally Sheedy).

And I have copies of a couple of books Jean Ray Laury either wrote, or contributed to, about dollmaking and toymaking, because I got those out from the "grown up" side of the library regularly. And a copy of "Making Things," which is kind of 70s-fabulous. And the Woodstock Craftsman's Manuals - both #2, which the library had when I was growing up, and #1, which I had never seen before I bought a copy of as an adult, but which I figured HAD to exist, given the "#2" on the one I knew.

And in a chain of clicking, I was reminded of two book series I read as a tween: the Katie John series (by Mary Calhoun; fundamentally it's "slice of life" stories about a girl whose family moved from California to Missouri, and she had to learn to fit in in a new place, but it was also a lot of the sort of fun adventures kids had years back when they lived in a pretty safe place where they could make their own fun) and the All-of-a-Kind-Family series (about a family with four or five girls, growing up on the Lower East Side in New York City - so it had the exoticism for me of being an urban setting. And also, this was my first real introduction to some elements of Jewish culture, because the family involved was Jewish, though I don't remember now how strictly observant they were. I *think* there was some talk of Sabbath-keeping, but then again - in the Little House books, Laura and Mary, who were some flavor of Protestant Christian, weren't allowed to play on *their* Sabbath, so that would not have seemed so unusual to me)

No, I didn't order sets of those. But they do bring up the happy childhood memory of being 10 or 11 or so, and having a big stack of 'chapter books' (and also craft books) from the public library, and it being either a rainy summer day or one deemed "too warm" (and therefore I am not expected to run around outside) and I could stretch out on the living room sofa and read.

Another childhood thing - I should photograph them in their new home, but I did grab the Frisbee Dog and the funny dodo bird type thing and the rabbit and chick figures, and took them back to my house with me when I came home...they rode in one of my knitting bags. I am pretty sure they all came from a shop called "The Land of Make-Believe" which used to exist on Main Street in Hudson. (And looking them up to be sure I had the name right....well, I sadly learned that they shut their doors back in January. I remember when they opened. (In their early years, they weren't *just* toys. There were some gift-type things....including some more, shall we say, adult-themed things, on high shelves but not unnoticed by young teens. I was slightly scandalized that they sold those things...at least, the stuff that I had a vague idea as to what it was). That was the store that sold Smurfs. And that was the store where I bought the copy of "The House at the End of the Lane," a children's book that I was WAY out of the demographic for (I was like 13 when I bought it) but which I wanted so badly when I saw it, and I waited and schemed and then happened to be in there one day when they had their remaining copies on the half-off table....and I still have that book and it is still an occasional source of comfort.

(And I just realized something now: I commented the other day on Twitter that I was happy to see that Cartoon Network is apparently reviving "Summer Camp Island" (even if they are showing it at a time when I'm in church; hopefully I can either watch it on their online setup or they'll rerun it). I *love* "Summer Camp Island" and I just now realized that the aesthetic of that show is very, very similar to that of "The House at the End of the Lane" - anthropomorphic animals, stuff rendered in soft pastels, nothing too terrible or scary or tragic happens, most of the main characters are kind to one another (in Summer Camp Island, there is an antagonist, a bratty older-girl counselor who is an anthropomorphic cat witch). But there is a strong similarity there between the mild adventures that Bartholemew Kangaroo and his friends have, and what Oscar and Hedgehog and the other campers experience....And yes, the show is just....soul-soothing to me. One of the reviews I read online mentioned it was aimed at people "looking for gentleness" and yes, that's exactly it. I suspect there are enough jangled adults out there who very quietly and very in-the-closet, so to speak, partake of some of these forms of little-kid entertainment - not ironically, not in some kind of twisted way, but as just an escape. An escape to somewhere nicer and softer and friendlier where your biggest worry is maybe they won't have your most-favorite flavor of ice cream on offer (but they will still have ice cream, and probably still a flavor you like))

But yes. Maybe the lower-responsibility schedule of summer does put me in mind of thinking about things of my childhood - of the long summer days spent reading or climbing trees  or going looking for wild berries to pick (there were wild strawberries, the real edible kind, not the terrible "barren strawberries" you find in some areas, that grew in the field behind my house; I think once we found some wild highbush cranberries) or making your own toys (I sewed a lot as a kid - both stuffed toys and doll clothes - and I also made dollhouses) or even just looking at craft books and planning what you'd make *next.* And it's nice to revisit that mindset for a little while.