It's coming on towards Valentines Day, and for some odd reason, I started randomly reminiscing about a Valentine's book from my childhood. I don't know why it occurred to me to think about it, but as usual, the idea gets stuck in my head and I drive myself crazy trying to place the book. Does that ever happen to you? Where recognition is just at the edge of your consciousness and you wish you could just transmit those scraps of images to Google and hope that miracle of a search engine can just tell you the answer and put you out of your misery already? ... Ok. Maybe it's just me.
All I could sense was a vague image of a kid cutting a heart and always not quite getting it and kept cutting more until there was only a teeny tiny heart left. I tried Google, and Ebay and Etsy, and and random old book online archives, when, FINALLY, I saw a book cover that triggered the memory.
AHA!
It was "It's Valentines Day" by Jack Prelutsky.
That gust of wind you felt was my huge sigh of relief, as if I had just found a lost wedding ring or something, but no, not really of that magnitude. I was pretty ecstatic though, and it brought back so many memories of those Scholastic book club order forms and library book sales, and the joy of receiving a brand spanking new book.
So, crazy me, I decided to look for other books from my childhood, because obviously, I hadn't spent enough time on the internet yet. I found out that there was a whole series of books called the Scholastic Weekly Reader, and apparently, my parents had signed us up for a subscription. I don't remember any of this, but I remember the books, which was what counted.
After browsing (yes, browsing now, instead of frantically searching) through vintage Etsy shops, I found a couple more of my childhood favorites, and ordered them online. It's kind of crazy that if my parents had saved those books, they'd be worth a pretty penny now. Well, not a whole terrible lot, but at least I wouldn't be shelling out money to buy them again, which I did. Still, it was like Christmas all over again when those books showed up and I flipped through those pages.
Here are some of my favorites:
Do you have any favorite children's books from when you were young? There's so many books available these days (and I love many of them), but to me, those oldies really were goodies.
Happy Reading!
One of my favourites was The Balloon Tree by Phoebe Gilman. Also anything by Robert Munsch. :) ~Stephanie
ReplyDeleteI loved Little Bear and The Little House.
ReplyDeleteHa! I know exactly what you are talking about. And it does drive you absolutely nuts until you can place the memory. I LOVE Scholastic book orders. I fill out one every month from my son's school and he ABSOLUTELY refuses to read the new books. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteI have had the exact same feeling of having a vague memory of something and never placing it, the feeling of finally finding it is AH-Mazing! So happy you were able to find that book!
ReplyDeleteAlso what a coincidence one of my all time favorites from my childhood is 'The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash'. My mom still has our copy and I actually own two copies of it (found at random garage sales, couldn't pass em up!) and it is now one of my lil girls favorites! It's nice to keep some of your childhood memories alive and pass them on to your own children.
I had completely forgotten about happy birthday moon, then saw the picture of the cover and it all came flooding back!! I shall be keeping my eyes out for it now!
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