Books, Beautiful Books

Be sure to check out Jacqueline's post on novels turned into movies over at Another Old Movie Blog (click title of this post). She mentions many of my all-time favorite books and has some wonderful illustrations of book jackets.

By coincidence, my 13-year-old has been reading MAMA'S BANK ACCOUNT by Kathryn Forbes. She finished it tonight at 11:40 p.m. One of the advantages of homeschooling is you don't have to quit reading if you're in the middle of a book you can't put down!

We have a video copy on hand of I REMEMBER MAMA, with Irene Dunne's Oscar-nominated performance in the title role, so I suspect she'll be watching it soon.

I first came across MAMA'S BANK ACCOUNT in my junior high school library. That's also the place where I first discovered GONE WITH THE WIND, MRS. MIKE, JUBILEE TRAIL, CELIA GARTH, OUR HEARTS WERE YOUNG AND GAY, PAPA'S WIFE, DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK, MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, and LET THE HURRICANE ROAR. My oldest daughter attended the same school -- based on her experience, the other children are all skipping it -- and they still had the same copies of GONE WITH THE WIND in the library. I wonder what happened to the rest of the books...

The high school library was also quite good back then. That's where I first found I CAPTURE THE CASTLE, AS THE EARTH TURNS, THE EDGE OF TIME, TRYST, and my all-time favorite books, Elswyth Thane's seven WILLIAMSBURG NOVELS.

When my daughter attended the high school, she brought me a unique treasure: the library's copy of Thane's YANKEE STRANGER still had a "check-out" card with the signatures of students who had checked out the book, including my own name. In this computerized age, the card had been unused for over 20 years, as the library had changed to a "modern" checkout system; it was pure chance that the card was still in the pocket of this particular book. (I hope the fact that the card hadn't been thrown away didn't mean the book was sitting on the shelf ignored!) The card was certainly destined for the trash at some point, so she brought it home to me and I tucked it in my own copy of the book. It's a wonderful little memento of the first time I "met" Thane's Day and Sprague families.

Happily, over the years I've managed to track down copies of almost all the above titles for my own bookshelves and share them with my children.