I’ve got a confession to make – I am thoroughly obsessed with old children’s books. When I read to my boys at bedtime, we choose from a varied selection of books that we borrow from the library and books that we own. Some of the books I like, others not so much. Then there are a few that are just amazing, and those tend to be the ones that were written and published years before I was even born.
I am unsure why those older books are so captivating, but they are. Dylan seems to enjoy them too, and for that I am very grateful. He likes some of the newer ones, but he really likes some of the older ones. For example, last night I started reading to him from a book that he had pulled out of the Young Adult section at the library. “Snowshoe Trek to Otter River”, by David Budbill is the name of the book and it contains three short stories about boys who go out on wilderness adventures. It’s not a very old book, it was published just a couple of years before I was born, but it is not a new book either.
Anyways, since it is a longer book, I was unsure of how interested Dylan would be in it, as it does not have tons of pictures and the short stories in it are about twenty five pages apiece. He sat silently through the entire first story, and then we decided to save the rest for another time. He was as fascinated as I was, and went to bed talking about the boy’s winter hiking adventure. Today we read the second story and he was just as attentive.
The other book that we read tonight has been in heavy rotation since we borrowed it from the library last week. “Sugar on Snow”, by Nancy Dingman Watson, was published in 1964. There is a newer book available with the same title but it is not the same one. Dylan and I absolutely love this book, and the illustrations are just gorgeous. We live in Vermont and there is a sugarbush across the street from our house. The people who sugar there use modern equipment, flexible tubing and plastic taps, instead of metal taps and buckets. When we read the book, Dylan informed me that if we ever own a place with maple trees, we will sugar them, but we will use metal buckets and a “horse wagon”. His favorite page in the book is the page where one of the little girls has a sugar on snow birthday party and the children eat sugar on snow, home made doughnuts, apple cider, and pickles until they “become silly”. Yes, the child whose daily diet contains little to no sugar is fascinated by the idea of going to a party and getting “all sugared up”. Go figure.
Do you love old children’s books? What are your favorites?
Photo courtesy of Amazon.com.