Very Tiny Living Things (Microbes)
My favorite book. Well, maybe not my favorite book *ever*. That would probably be Parsley. I think I checked Parsley out of the Sault Ste. Siberia Carnegie Library every week. Our Carnegie Library had lions and if you click this link and then click the picture, you will get a slideshow with the lions and some other random photos of stuff in Sault Ste. Siberia from one early May morning in 2009.
When I was small, we went to the library every Saturday for a story hour with our beloved children’s librarian Bobby Krieger (not sure about spelling). I’m sure Mrs. Krieger is long dead but I still remember her voice from 50 years ago or so. I loved story hour and she must have loved her job.
I looked and looked and looked for Parsley when the beach urchins were young. Ludwig Bemelmans is (was?) a very popular children’s author (think Madeline) but I wondered if Parsley was not politically correct enough for 1980s-born children. After all, a hunter tries to *shoot* Parsley and ends up falling off a cliff to his death, if I’m remembering accurately. His last words were (I think), “My luck, she is running out!” I am too lazy to go get the book and check. Because, although I did not find the book, The Commander was a bit more tenacious about the search for Parsley than I was so yes, I own a copy. (Thank you Moom.) And that was before them thar intertubes were worth anything to the average consumer, so she did her search mostly by phone.
I don’t remember exactly when my Microbe book came into my life. Maybe I was seven or eight. I do remember reading it many many many many times in my bedroom on Superior Street. (Note to self: look up and post photos of that long-gone bedroom. It was pretty cool for a small bedroom in a little bungalow.) I loved to read about science back then. I loved the pictures in my Microbes book and I think I probably had the text memorized. I still love it now, although I remember the pictures better than the words.
And so I was kind of freaking out during the last year when I could NOT find the book at The Commander’s house. Where the heck could it be? I knew she hadn’t gotten rid of it. She got rid of a lot of children’s books many many years ago before I had my own children (and I was okay with that) but there were some books that she kept and I knew that was one of them because I had seen it there. She must have known it was a fave. Last weekend, I was mucking about moving books around the Landfill and getting rid of some of *my* children’s books and right there, on a shelf in my house, was my Microbe book! Apparently I snagged it a while ago.
Does anybody else have favorite books from childhood that they still care about and wish they have or maybe have saved from their parents’ house or whatever?
Speaking of that, I think that I left Pockets up there! How could I have done that? I will have to rescue it on the next trip…
May 2nd, 2012 at 7:24 pm
Like tiny squirrels?
May 2nd, 2012 at 10:09 pm
Favorite books–A Wrinkle in Time, Charlotte’s Web and many others. I rarely met a classic book I didn’t like. 🙂
May 3rd, 2012 at 7:36 am
My nickname reveals one of my favorites from my childhood. Others include “Parsley”, and “Paddle to the Sea”. With reading to my own children I’d add, “Harold and the Purple Crayon”, “Dogzilla” and “Kat Kong”, and “Minn of the Mississippi” and “Ivory Gull”. The last two were by the same author as “Paddle to the Sea”, with the same careful research and fine drawing enhancing the stories.
May 3rd, 2012 at 9:19 am
I do not remember reading Parsley, although I do remember Bemelmans’s style (certainly from Madeline, but more? I do not recall). I got Floating Island from the library recently, not because I remembered the story (I didn’t; not one bit), but because I remembered that’s the title that taught me the tricky pronunciation of island.