Do the names Bert and Nan, Freddie and Flossie mean anything to you?

I love reading.
I feel rich when I own the book I am reading.
My library is growing.
These are short sentences.

I decided it's time to move the hundreds of children's books I have stored on my bookshelves into the crawl space to make room for the grown up titles I've been collecting.
So far, all I've done is remove MY childhood books into boxes. (Haven't even begun to tackle all the Richard Scary or Robert Munsch or Franklin the Turtle books that my kids devoured.)

So what did I read?

Yup. I hearted the Bobbsey Twins.

My grandma bought alot of them for me at garage sales. (She was the queen of thrift shopping. No one else in her family inherited that gene.) Brand new, these hardcover books were $1.69 at the Woodward's book store.)

Looks like they cost a quarter if someone else owned it first:

(Who's Elfriede? And how could she part with this book?)

My grandma even found some classic Bobbsey Twin volumes; this one, here below? Was printed in 1934:

The pages are thick and discolouring at the top. These two (below) were printed in MCML (1950)

I just wikipedia'd Laura Lee Hope after I wikipedia'd roman numerals. I am CRUSHED. Laura Lee Hope is a pseudonym used by the Stratemeyer Syndicate for the Bobbsey Twins and several other series of children's novels. She is not a real her.

Interesting fact: The first Bobbsey Twin story was written in 1904, the last one in 1979. (And the one pictured below? Was the third title ever written.)

Who cares.

This is turning into a post like the one of my three sets of China.

Why am I saving them for my grandchildren? My own children never even looked at them.

This is the only Nancy Drew book I ever read:

Look at this fancy bookplate:

To Linda from her calligrapher-wanna-be Sunday School teacher.

This was the book:

This was the only Hardy Boys book I ever read:

My first tween book: (Doesn't she look like "That Girl" from the TV series?) (Does anyone even know what I'm talking about?)

I LOVED this book. A teenaged girl goes to Europe with a family on their vacation to watch their young children. A totally cute guy falls in love with her. They live happily ever after their first gentle kiss.

What Katy Did.

She swung on a big ol swing that she wasn't supposed to. It snapped and she ended up in bed for a year. Or something.

(I should have photographed the back inside cover, but it's too late now, no way I could insert a photo right here, half way through the blogging process. But what I wrote in big, bold letters, using a blue crayon is "Mom? Can I sit by the table, PLEASE." Obviously as anyone who has ever ridden in a camper would know, the only way to communicate to the adults who are driving in the cab of the pick up truck is to bang like crazy on that little camper window and gesture wildly, in the hopes that someone will notice. Then, because we never thought of walkie talkies, and cell phones weren't invented yet, we would hold up notes in order to communicate our wishes. In this case, my brother was probably being an idiot on the top bunk, farting and hogging the whole front window and I wanted to be civilized and sit at the back at the table. This was not a spot my mom liked us to sit at because what if the door suddenly swung open (despite double locking) and we were sucked out the back like we were in a pressurized airplane.)

Anyway, based on my printing, I'd say I was about 8 or 9 when I was reading those books.

But the turning point for me, the book that changed it all, was Mrs. Mike.

I read it when I was 12, on an airplane, on our way to Hawaii.

It was not a children's book.

And I loved it.

I couldn't bear to return it to the library, so I kept it.

And thus began my life of crime.

From Mrs. Mike I moved right into Danielle Steele and had EVERY SINGLE one of her 114 books.

THOSE I am not keeping for my grandchildren. I gave them all to a Woman's Shelter 10 years ago.

Three things I'm thankful for:

1. Memories

2. Musty smelling books.

3. Grandmas who kept an eye out for Bobbsey Twin books ...

Shalom,