Sunday, July 26, 2009

Oldies, but Goodies.



I am a book worm, oh yes I am, and I have been since I was a wee little poppet. I used to go for a visit to Grandma's house and spend the afternoon locked away with her collection of childhood books, hours of musty, dusty, literary goodness.

The other day I began to ponder the whereabouts of a few little ink and paper treasures which I had been unable to part with over the years. I had a little rummage and voila, there they were, a little mustier then I'd remembered and housing a few beetle and bug families, but otherwise, good as gold.

A Little Silk Apron was actually my mother's book and was printed in England but unfortunately doesn't list a publication date. It's a tale about Tasseltip rabbit who appears to be suffering from an unfortunate case of myxomatosis in a handful of the illustrations, but is otherwise a very sweet tale filled with bindweed braces and pennies wrapped in dock leaves.

Sam And The Firefly was an old favorite and my grandmother hunted high and low on a recent trip to America to locate this copy for Le Artiste and Petal. How could you not love a story that features a firefly named Gus ?

Ambrose Kangaroo delivers the goods is from the Young Australian Series and was printed in 1978. I'm pretty sure you could find all sorts of interesting bits and bobs at Mr & Mrs Wombats Universal Emporium and I'm positive Brolga's birthday party would have been a complete hit. You can't go wrong with orange, lemon and raspberry cordial, a tin of fancy biscuits and two bags of mixed sweets, can you ?






Fables of Leonardo da Vinci is from 1972 and features some fabulous illustrations from Adriana Saviozzi Mazza. I particularly love this one of the lovestruck unicorn, poor old sap that he was.

And last but not least, a copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales printed in Yugoslavia, again without a date. Poor old Grimm's was given a slight make-over with a green pencil and a green texta (I'm guessing that I was going through my green period) but green dashes aside, it is full of fairy tale fabulousness.

What lovely sweet treasures indeed, I only hope that my children love them as much as I did and that they will pass the test of time and be around for many more generations of little Wafflers to enjoy.

2 comments:

  1. I adore children's books so much, I recently bought a new copy of Corduroy to hang on my wall. I'm not letting any kids touch it.

    Writing one is on my list of goals, partly to prove to people that I CAN write innocently. Really!

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  2. A challenge, innocent writing, fantastic, you go girl. Let me know if you need either a 7 or 4 year old for a test read :)

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