From those old books have emerged some of my girls' favorite stories. A few have been re-issued, like my old Mr. and Little Miss books, but others are available at libraries or your favorite online book trader (I'm a Paperbackswap.com type myself). In the interest of fairness, I also traded for L's fave so the girls could enjoy that. I'm sharing these in case you're in search of old-school reads to go along with your Elmo-does-everything, Disney-redundancy, and learning-with-Dora selections that are a dime a dozen.
Here are our good old books, in no particular order:
The Little Engine that Could, by Watty Piper -- the Loren Long illustrated version is beautiful, and of course the story is timeless
Mrs. Duck's Lovely Day, by Vivienne Blake -- we read this on really rainy days
Frog and Toad are Friends, by Arnold Lobel -- four separate stories in one little book
Little Toot, by Hardie Gramatky -- L's favorite, about a harbor tug boat that also happens to be a modern-day environmental hazard (bygones...)
Buzzita, by Rhoda McBain -- actually from my mom's childhood (!); one of my favorite stories ever
The Little Squeegy Bug, by Bill and Bernard Martin -- has a character with a gun, but that gets reproached, and the rest of the story is adorable
Corduroy, by Don Freeman -- the original story, not tampered-with new Corduroy, which isn't near as good
Most of our books are in pretty good shape, but a few need a new binding. I have no idea where to start with that or if it's even possible in this day and age. Not to mention, I'd have some 'splaining to do if any of these books went AWOL for any period of time.
1 comment:
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton, and the Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. Let me just add that Little Golden Books (e.g., Scuffy the Tugboat) really kind of suck. Their messages are weird (such as see how the tugboat went out into the world to see what it was like, and really it was a scary place, so he was better off going back to where he belonged), reading them as an adult. I also detest Margaret Wise Brown (Goodnight Moon isn't bad, though), because her rhyming pattern is weird and hard to read. But the story about her son is interesting (how he squandered her fortune and such), especially considering her books often are dedicated to him.
Post a Comment