Why It’s Worth It To Find Hard-To-Find Books

 

Okay, I admit it. I have some sort of sickness. I get heart palpitations in used book stores.  Lately, for business reasons, I’ve had birds on the brain and yesterday, for leisure reasons, I found myself in an antique store “just browsing”. Suddenly, there it was – between the Fiesta Ware and the World Book Encyclopedias lay the perfect “reason to buy”.  A big, beautiful old children’s book on bird migration called “Traveling With the Birds”, printed by M.A. Donohue and Company, copyright 1933. 

  “I need this”, I tell myself, “it’s research for my latest ScrapandLearn.com kit.”  But inside, I know I would’ve bought it anyway. For one thing, the illustrations by Walter A. Weber are to die for!

 

 The colors are so vibrant! Full, luscious pages of them all through the book!  And, even better, is the writing. Listen to (or read, I guess) the beginning of the very first paragraph:

“When you are going on a journey, you put all the things that you will need in a bag. You take your clothes and toothbrush and books and playthings with you. Then you buy a ticket at a railway station and are whisked away on a fast train. All travelers can’t do that. Birds can’t, and they are the greatest travelers of all. “

Why am I suddenly picturing myself snuggled up in front of a roaring fire with my little ones, eating popcorn and reading this book out loud? What’s happened to books, that I never felt that way about the textbooks they brought home from school?

I wonder if, in this age of fast food, fast cars and fast information, we’ve also lowered ourselves to fast book writing, made for fast reading. What was once the art of storytelling has, sadly, become pared down to “just the facts, please, so we can keep moving.”

Followers of Charlotte Mason talk a lot about “living books”. There seems to be some discrepancy about what exactly that term means.  The terms “well-written”, “inspiring”, and “passionately-written” pop up.  All very subjective, yes.  But why is it, I feel I know exactly what they are trying to say?

I think one online blogger, The Thinking Mother, said it best. She said, “A  living book feels like a friend”. And that’s exactly how I feel about this new purchase – a new (old) friend! One I want to invite into my home to tell us a lovely story we can learn from and actually smile and laugh while doing it. I even want to introduce this book to my “people” friends, so we can all be friends together!

 

For whatever reason, there seem to be more old book friends to be found than new. And that’s why I will probably keep seeking out that old book smell in used bookstores and antique stores even after I, myself have become a very old friend.

 

Sheri Stukel is creator of ScrapandLearn.com Educational Scrapbooking kits whose heart beats faster when confronted with beautiful old books, dates alone with her husband, and (best of all) witnessing God at work.