This week in bloggery

This week, I'm hanging out over at my pal Burgin's blog, celebrating a few of my more recent vintage kid book finds. Well, some of them are recent, like Tomi Ungerer's The Sorcerer's Apprentice (pictured above, and I'm just noticing that the sorcerer looks just like I do when I score an excellent book at an estate sale or library sale). I got Elissa Jane Karg's incredible How to Be a Nonconformist (below) last spring at a library sale. What a great book that is! Check it out here. And later this week, I dare to attempt to describe the weird wonderfulness and wonderful weirdness of Dare Wright. I've been sitting on this first edition copy of The Lonely Doll Learns a Lesson for a few years now, and that's long enough! Time to move on.

Meanwhile, in anticipation of everyone's holiday shopping needs, I've been working my way through the stacks and listing as many books as I can over at the etsy shoppe. In honor of Vintage Kids' Books My Kid Loves, that obviously includes lots of children's books, but I also have scored copies of Scavullo Women and Better Homes and Gardens Treasures from Throwaways, the subjects of two of my most popular posts. Now they can be yours at very reasonable prices! Woo-hoo!

Now for sale at the etsy shoppe

Now for sale at the etsy shoppe

Here, bookie bookie bookie bookie...

This week you can find me guest blogging about a few of my favorite children's book discoveries over at my pal Burgin's blog, Vintage Kids' Books My Kid Loves. This past fall Burgin got an actual factual job, as the Bearenstain Bears might say, and that has left her with far fewer hours to devote to book collecting, the not-so-vicious cycle that goes something like this: hunt and gather books, read books, cherish books, hoard books, reshuffle piles of books, cull some books, box up certain books, start to really freak out over books, sell books, give away books, dump books by the truckload at local goodwill. Rinse. Repeat.

Meanwhile, I find myself with two kids in school full-time for the first time and therefore with far more opportunities to forage for books (and other vintage stuff, but mostly books) than is probably healthy. Pictured here is the result. I try to use my time more constructively—distance running, household-maintaining, even freelancing for actual money (to buy more books!), but you can see the temptation of what might be at this week's estate sales or library sales or what might've just been donated at the thrift store is all too much for me.

That probably puts me at the reshuffling/culling point in the not-so-vicious book-collecting cycle. I'm definitely not ready to part with my books by the truckload but I am able to accept that while it's okay to hoard doubles of your favorites, triples and quadruples is a bit ridiculous. Thus you will find some good ones over at the etsy shoppe. Happy hunting—and happy reading!

Being Ramona (an appreciation of Beverly Cleary)

I don't have a sister. I have an older brother, which I think is the least fraught sibling dynamic there is, but I could be biased. Until I became a mother, everything I knew about sisters I knew from literature or some facet of pop culture: Pride & Prejudice. The Brady Bunch. The Roches. Little Women. King Lear.

But now I have two daughters, three and a half years apart, whose relationship, depending on the moment, fascinates, amuses or frightens me. I also have different sister source material: the oeuvre of Beverly Cleary, whose books I've amassed at my usual haunts—library sales, estate sales and thrift stores. I'm sure I read a good chunk of the Ramona series when I was kid, but the stories didn't make any lasting impression—a fact I attribute to her lack of equine characters. I also didn't have a sister, and the Ramona books are about a lot of things, but mostly they're about Ramona and Beezus, two sisters, about five years apart, whose relationship in turn fascinates, amuses and frightens.

Cleary is a miniaturist, a crafter of tiny domestic dramas. This has become a bad word in contemporary literature—purportedly a way of denigrating women writers. Like, why is a novel considered "miniature" when [insert female novelist who rarely or never gets reviewed by The New York Times here] writes it, but when, say, Jonathan Franzen makes the foibles of an affluent suburban hausfrau his subject, then it's a novel of Big Ideas (probably helps to give big-idea-sounding titles like Freedom. Just sayin'). Anyway, I don't consider miniaturism to be a negative. I live my life in miniature; my dramas are mostly domestic, quotidian affairs, and when a novel mirrors my experience and makes it universal, that's a good novel, whatever you want to call it.

The Quimby family saga is nothing if not universal, even if the scale is small. Anxiety about money pervades all. In the Quimby household, nothing is disposable. Making one pair of oxfords last a whole school year is paramount. Buying and then losing a pair of red rain boots is a very big deal. Mr. Quimby loses his job and the family can no longer afford a weekly dinner at the local hamburger joint. Mrs. Quimby gets a job as a receptionist at a doctor's office. Ramona throws up at school. Ramona doesn't think her teacher likes her. Ramona is babysat. Beezus becomes a babysitter. Ramona ruins a library book. The family cat dies. Beezus goes to her first party with boys. A surprise third child is born. A stray dog is acquired. A bike is procured. An aunt gets married. Dad quits smoking. Etc. Etc. All the stories are about learning how to negotiate relationships—with our immediate family and distant relations, our friends and frenemies, our neighbors, teachers and babysitters. They're all about getting along.

And what better way to illustrate that point than with the story of two (competing-bickering-loving-hating) sisters?

Around here, we use Ramona as shorthand. We tell my younger daughter, when she is being pesty for the sake of pestieness, "Don't be such a Ramona." When the older one's sense of injustice and outrage is made palpable by a quivering upper lip, we say, "No need to get all Beezus on us." When our cat died, we talked about Picky-picky and how the girls buried him themselves in the backyard and what that must've been like. When they complain about dinner, they're reminded of the time Mr. and Mrs. Quimby put the sisters in charge of making their own damn dinner. If they make a new friend who's a boy, we wonder if he's a Henry, or more of a Howie? There is a subtle difference...

When my elder daughter was in first grade, we started reading the books together. By second grade, she was reading them on her own and in school. The younger one, eager to get in on any of her sister's action, became hooked on the audiobooks in preschool. For about a year, the husky, cultured voice of Stockard Channing, who plays every role in every Ramona book ever written, could be heard booming from the kid side of the house. (I always thought Rizzo was the best part of Grease, but Channing's work in these audiobooks might be her best ever.)

Then the Ramona & Beezus movie came out, starring that cute brunette who just broke up with Justin Bieber and the soap-opera guy who's married to Fergie from the Black-eyed Peas and the guy who was Carrie's second-to-last serious boyfriend on Sex and the City and the chick who plays one of the sisterwives on that Mormon show on HBO. And I was worried. I didn't want my kids' appreciation of Beverly Cleary's elegant prose (or Stockard Channing's amazing voice) to be tainted by some watered-down Hollywood bullshit. I'm so principled! Until it came to HBO one rainy day and I was like what the hell? We're paying for HBO for god's sakes—watch it.

I think they watched it 17 or 18 times before I was finally able to delete if from the Tivo.

My only real problem with the movie—a harmless enough travesty, as these things go—is the repackaged movie tie-in paperback, which features the actresses on the cover. My elder daughter insisted on buying this version for her little sister, despite the fact that we already have an extensive Beverly Cleary collection. There are many, many versions of Cleary's many, many books out there. Once I snapped up the 1975 first edition hardback of Ramona the Brave pictured here, which features the awesome illustrations of Alan Tiegreen, I was on a mission to find them all. Along the way, of course, I had to buy all the other versions, like the Dell Yearling paperbacks from the mid-’80s, illustrated by my second-favorite Louis Darling. We have a bunch from the ’90s, and then my daughters' favorite—the HarperCollins reissues from the early 2000s. They prefer these covers because the idealized, longer-haired version of the characters make them look "prettier." Ugh.

But I get it. They identify with Ramona and Beezus and they want them looking the way they want to look, Disney Channel-ready, not like some kid from the cast of Zoom. Which I realize is why I like Tiegreen's knobby-kneed tomboy Ramona best: that's the version that most reminds me of myself circa 1975, when we sported bowl cuts and wore overalls and ruled the sidewalks on our rollerskates and banana-seat bikes, just like the kids from Klickitat Street. I'm pretty sure that everyone who's read and loved these books can answer the question: Are you a Ramona or a Beezus? I may be a Mrs. Quimby now (alas) but once upon a time I was definitely a Ramona. Just ask my brother.

What the children got: the ongoing saga

In honor of my younger magpie's sixth birthday today, I bring you the latest accounting of their estate sale scores. The Native American outfit, above, is completely awesome. The tomahawk is not lethal, but she can now add "archery" to the skills section of her resume.

The older child insisted that I buy this copy of Trudy Phillips, New Girl. I applaud its darling cover, but I'm reasonably certain she's never going to read it.

This box of beads and sequins was a straight-up bribe, purchased to buy me a little more time at the infamous Owl Estate Sale. No one has touched the beads since I bought them—though they HAD to have them at the time—but I expect one day they'll meet their fate in a vacuum-cleaner bag.

I must confess that I was the one who bought this Lite Brite, without any nudging or nagging from any small child. I wanted it! I've wanted it for, like, 35 years. That commercial was irresistible. I don't know why my parents never gave it to me, but I rectified that wrong when I found this Lite Brite in the back of someone's closet. The box is beat to hell, but the lites are still brite. Don't we all just want our children to have what we didn't have? Happy birthday, kid.

Color me satisfied

So as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted by quotidian demands, I went to Wisconsin, land of ugly fish and beautiful flea markets, and all I got were these lousy coloring books.

Well, they're not lousy. They're pretty great, actually, I say as a person who hoards vintage coloring books. The first thing you do when evaluating whether a coloring book is worth 25¢ is flip through the pages to see if they've been used up. If they have, screw it—unless the cover is frame-worthy and you're the sort of shopper who has her shit together enough to frame vintage coloring book covers and sell them on etsy to hipsters decorating nurseries on the cheap. If the coloring books are hardly used or not at all used, like these, then buy them and give them to your kids who so don't need another coloring book added to the pile but who can say no to an armload like this (I only scanned a few) that a lovely Wisconsin woman sold to me for just $4?

These are all 1950s Color by Numbers coloring books, which take the whole soul-killing stay-within-the-lines enterprise that is coloring one step further by not even leaving it up to the kids to create their own wacky palette, giving Cinderella a cornflower face and burnt sienna dress should they feel so inspired.

But one of these things is not like the others and that's Ziggy and his Colors, a children's book about coloring that's illustrated by Frans Van Lamsweerde and written by Michael Dolan, which for some reason people on Amazon are selling for like $50. Van Lamsweerde was a Dutch artist/illustrator/cartoonist/greeting card designer who emigrated to the States in 1950. He worked for Disney and Hanna-Barbera, as well as illustrating for Golden Books and Whitman Books. As "Frans Van," he illustrated calendars and playing cards, mostly technicolor romantic landscapes that are not at all to my taste. Nevertheless, it would appear that I have stumbled upon something new to collect and maybe sell, should I ever get around to selling anything. Oh, goodie!

Kids find the darnedest things

I don't take my kids to estate sales as much as I used to, much to their relief and mine. I generally hit sales on Friday mornings, when both kids are in school and the merch is usually partially discounted but there's still good stuff left (and no lines to get inside). They don't like coming for the obvious reasons: It's boring! We're bored! You won't buy us anything! Though of course that's not true—I buy them stuff all the time, most of it total crap to appease them while Mommy finishes sorting through all the musty ephemera in the garage. But sometimes they hit on something good, like this nice edition of The Boy's King Arthur, illustrated by N.C. Wyeth and published by Scribner's, which my eight-year-old unearthed from a landslide of forgettable books, mostly mildewed and worm-chewed. The best part was how she gave me that familiar big-eyed, pleading look, the same one she gives me when she wants me to buy her some squalid Happy Meal toy:

Her: Mom, can I PLEASE get this?

Me: Oh, I don't know, sweetie—it's 25¢ and the dustjacket is in tatters... I guess, but you'll have to work extra hard in the salt mines next week!

When I was her age, my family used to do flea markets and antique shows every weekend. As a bribe, a distraction, my parents gave my brother and I a little money so we could shop. I think I spent most of my money on hot chocolate, doughnuts and pony rides (whenever possible), but I also browsed the stalls and made purchases, most of which probably ended up in landfills because as you know, I have everything, and remember everything, so I am sure if I bought it and it was worth keeping, I would still have it? Or at least remember it?

One thing I remember well was a handmade stuffed horse, with a yarn mane, that I obsessed over from the moment we arrived at a flea market held in a public-school gymnasium in Paramus, NJ. Part of the appeal might have been the young woman selling it. She had a whole herd of handmade stuffed horses—and she looked like Bailey from WKRP, but with cat-eye glasses and a Betsy Ross-style outfit. In other words, tres chic circa the mid-’70s. I hung around that booth all day, making small talk and ogling the many styles of patchwork horses—when I wasn't back at our own booth nagging my parents for the astronomical sum of $10. Finally my dad caved at the end of the day—I got the black horse covered with red hearts and I'm sure Bailey was glad to be rid of me. (Between the labor of making the horse and putting up with me all day—was it only worth $10? Inflation, I guess.) Anyway, long story short: The horse graces the bed in my old room in NJ, and my kids play with it whenever we visit. I refuse to bring it back to Texas as they have about 350 stuffed animals between them (no lie—we counted once, and that was a couple years ago).

Another time, at the flea market we did regularly on the grounds of the junior high school in Sparta, NJ, I bought a small, round blue bottle for 10¢ (10¢!). Later, I showed it to my mother who instantly recognized it as a highly collectible Lalique perfume bottle. She cajoled me into giving it to her in exchange for a small polished pale green stone with googly eyes glued onto it that a friend of hers was selling (I got to choose from a whole case of googly-eyed stones). And it should come as no surprise for you to hear that I still have that googly-eyed stone inside my old tackle box. (I'll add a photo next time I'm taking pictures.) Does my mom still have the Lalique bottle? Doubtful, but you never know...

Homegirls

Philosophically, I'm more of a Home Sweet Home person than a God Bless Our Happy Home person but if an anthropomorphized house is involved I'll overlook the Christian overtones. I scored this plate at the estate sale of someone who had a passion for anthropomorphized fruit. One wall of her kitchen was covered with grinning plaster fruit faces. I just got the plate, though more than a year later, I'm still wondering why I didn't get the fruit too.

I'm not sure when I developed my penchant for smiling houses—maybe it was the first time I read Virginia Lee Burton's classic children's book The Little House. Love that cute little house! And check this out—I just ran across this 1952 Disney short based on The Little House and it is fabulous. The story was adapted by Bill Peet, and the hand of the great Mary Blair is quite apparent. If anyone happens to be selling the animation cels, I'm interested.



So, foolish though it may be, I choose to view my house as a benign force in the universe—a refuge/haven/sanctuary/velvet prison/vehicle for self-expression. I lean homebody. Even when my house seems to be ganging up on me, daring me to hate it, with its leaky leaks, rotting gutters, nests of scorpions, peeling paint and total lack of energy-efficiency, I forgive. If I could somehow pull a Plumbean and incorporate a pair of giant eyes and a wide smile into my house's facade, I would.

By pulling a Plumbean, I mean trick out my house in the style of Mr. Plumbean, the protagonist in Daniel Pinkwater's The Big Orange Splot, another brilliant children's book about houses. His could-not-have-said-it-better-myself mantra: "My house is me and I am it. My house is where I like to be and it looks like all my dreams." Plumbean could totally have his own show on HGTV.

My daughter also has Plumbean tendencies. Her third-grade class is making something called "dream boards" this week—I'm not exactly sure what the takeaway is supposed to be; I guess if nothing else, she'll be better prepared to open her own pinterest account. One of the brainstorming questions she had to answer was "What is your dream home?" Now I think mansions and castles and magic kingdoms would spring to most third graders' minds, but she said, "I would like to inherit both of my mother's houses." Referring to the one in which we currently reside, and the one in which I grew up. I think her grandparents might take issue with her description of the latter as MY house, but I think we get what she means...and where she's headed.

Dream house #1

Dream house #2

When Scholastic was cool

Today I'm doing my bit as a volunteer at our elementary school's Scholastic Book Fair. I'm wearing a grass skirt and a lei because for reasons unknown the fair has a luau theme. I'm going to spare you my usual diatribe against the crass commercialism of Scholastic—the merchandising tie-ins, the emphasis on made-in-China tchotchkes and $5 pencils as opposed to, you know, good books. I ranted about that on my old blog, the Kindergarten Diaries, and maybe now that my kid is a third-grader and I'm working my eighth fair, I'm just over it.

And maybe I was blowing things slightly out of proportion, anyway. One commenter on my old blog pointed out that even back in the glorious ’70s, when I would squirrel away my meager allowance till the day the Scholastic Bookmobile would pull into our school parking lot, we were buying all kinds of books of little redeeming "literary" value. Like the Guinness Book of World Records, which is still a hot ticket though now it's an oversized hardcover and costs 30 bucks. (Can't tell you how many crestfallen boys I've turned away who didn't have enough crumpled bills in their ziploc bags to purchase the latest edition.) And while it was nowhere near on the same scale as it is today, we were snapping up our own movie tie-ins—novelizations of Herbie the Love Bug and Escape from Witch Mountain, as well as authorized biographies of Shaun Cassidy and Leif Garrett. Who's to say that was any better?

But one thing I can say is that vintage Scholastic books are definitely cuter. Which is why I always buy them, particularly from the 60s and 70s, when I'm out on my rounds. I'm not alone in feeling the love; you can find blogs and flickr sets devoted to their awesome covers. Here's just a random sampling of the Scholastic goodness in my collection.

My side of the mountain mystery

I don't remember ever reading My Side of the Mountain, and I'm not sure how that is considering it was written by the author of Julie of the Wolves and how awesome is Julie of the Wolves? Pretty darn awesome. And My Side is about a kid who runs away from home and moves into a hole in a tree, where he befriends a falcon and a weasel. Seems like a no-brainer. I'll try to get my 8-year-old to read it with me, but she'll probably be put off by the cover—the kid does look pretty grumpy and unappealing (whither the weasel? the falcon?).

Anyway, I bring this find to everyone's attention not because the book is intrinsically exciting but because of the bonus between the pages—this somewhat freaky sticker, which resembles a Wacky Pack but is not a Wacky Pack. What is it? Got me.