Mamacita told me this morning that she had dropped a box of my old books off in our garage yesterday. After I took LW to school, I hauled the big ass box inside, nearly giving myself a hernia in the process, and brought it into the den. I opened the top and after inhaling a face full of dust and incurring massive lung damage, started pulling out diamonds and pearls, emeralds and rubies. With every cracked spine and weathered cover, I got more and more excited and nostalgic.
Anne of Green Gables, King of the Wind, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and my favorite…Tailchaser’s Song. Along with those cracked and tattered covers was a set of hardback books with “Children’s Classics” embossed in silver on the bottom of each worn spine. My most precious possessions when I was nine or ten.
See the tattered covers? Oh how I loved these books…. *sigh* They don’t have ISBN’s, they were published in 1954. The pages are a little brittle, but I was so happy to see them again. I need to make room on the shelves for them and for their companions.
The whole list….in case you’re interested:
- Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
- Heidi – Johanna Spyri
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – Mark Twain
- Black Beauty – Anna Sewell
- Five Little Peppers – Margaret Sidney
- King of the Wind – Henry Dennis
- Aunt Erma’s Cope Book – Erma Bombeck (I was a strange child)
- Traveller – Richard Adams
- The Winter People – Phyllis A. Whitney (I went through a mystery phase when I was eleven and I was soooo over the Bobbsey Twins, but my mom wouldn’t let me read anything more grown up. There’s a lot of Phyllis on this list!)
- Hunter’s Green – Phyllis A. Whitney
- Listen for the Whisperer – Phyllis A. Whitney
- Vermillion – Phyllis A. Whitney
- Snowfire – Phyllis A. Whitney
- Lost Island – Phyllis A. Whitney
- Sylvester – A.C. Crispin
- Fury and the White Mare – Albert G. Miller
- For Love of a Horse – Patricia Leitch
- Angel on Skis – Betty Cavanna
- The Ghosts of Now – Joan Lowery Nixon
- Anne of Windy Poplars – L.M. Montgomery
- Anne of Avonlea – L.M. Montgomery
- Anne of the Island – L.M. Montgomery
- The Blue Castle – L.M. Montgomery
- Sea Star: Orphan of Chincoteague – Marguerite Henry
- Julie of the Wolves – Jean Craighead George
- The Secret Horse – Marion Holland
- Brian Piccolo: A Short Season – Jeannie Morris
- Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Wanted: Date for Saturday Night – Janet Quin-Harkin
- Twelfth Night – William Shakespeare
- Dragonwyck – Anya Seton
- Winter of the Owl – June Andrea Hanson
- A Wind in the Door – Madeline L’Engle
- Stephanie – Jack Weyland
- Tailchaser’s Song – Tad Williams
There were also a few comic strip books in the mix and a couple of children’s books that I will put on LW’s shelf. For now, I’m dusting all 36 of these off and making room for them among my more contemporary friends because I like to mix the old with the new.
Wow, I thought I read a lot as a child. You make me look like I was nearly illiterate. All kidding aside, I think it’s wonderful you found these treasures again. MWAH!
Heidi!!! I wished so much my family would move to Swiss for a long time.
Those are wonderful treasures indeed!
Wow! Looking at these books is like visiting with old friends. Good for you for finding a place to cherish them.
That is some treasure chest of gems. I can only imagine the memories that you uncovered with each and every one of them.
King of the Wind was one of my favorite childhood books ever. I re-read it recently, and I still love it. I just wish I could find the old illustrated copy my mom had. But, I know her. She’s thrown it out.
what a delight that must have been. I swore I packed up all my books from my youth….but my mom can’t find them. 😦
glad you have yours.
visiting from SITS! have a great rest of you Sunday!
I wish I had my childhood books. I would have loved to pass them onto Tween.
Anne of Green Gables!! OMG I adore that whole series … I used to laugh & cry to those books. My mom actually let me watch the show when it came out (mini-series I think?) on tv – a HUGE deal, since I was not allowed to watch tv.
I see a few other favorites in your list, and a whole lot that i never read at all (I was limited to certain books when reading *shrugs*).
What an absolute treasure chest of fun!
I went through my local library so I don’t own most of the books I read when I was a kid but wow! It is so awesome that you have all of those 🙂
When I was growing up and we would travel to my grandparents’ house they had a bookcase that lined the length of this long narrow hallway on the way to the spare bedroom. I would spend hours picking through all those old books with the tattered spines and musty pages and become fully absorbed in the very books my Dad and his siblings had loved along the way. Five Little Peppers was a classic favorite from those visits that I had completely forgotten about – thanks for nudging be along memory lane!
What an absolutely sweet find.
I LOVE Black Beauty and Little Women.
What a treasure!
I think I’m allergic to all the dust and old books in your post. Could you keep the dust on your side of the Internet connection? 😛
Jigme Datse
In the word and intonation of Napoleon Dynamite, “Luck-ee”