A Little Light Reading...

I am a reader...and a small time collector of childrens books..

(What the?!  I'm gonna stop right here for a moment.  Spellcheck is telling me that "childrens" is not a word.  Either is "children's"  I am confused at exactly how you pluralize that word then...I do admit that children is a form of plural child...but how else is that sentence going to make any sense?  I am a collector of Child's books?  That doesn't sound right.  Kids books?  That sounds too crass.  I was trying to sound all sophisticated and educated for crying out loud..Although, it did come up with childminders as a suggestion.  Well.  That's close.  Good grief.  I'll take suggestions in the comments please...)

Um.

Yeah.

I collect books for kids.

...books that children read.

For kids.

For young people.

(whatever)

And I read.

Although I think we established that...

(I may not be able to write after all of this, however.)

Last week while visiting the thrift I came across this wonderful little book in the form of a 1929 First Edition of Our Gang...which was, as you may recall, later renamed The Little Rascals.  And while I am not as old as the conception of this show, ahem...this was one of my favorite TV shows as a kid.  To tell the truth, I was rather surprised that when I looked on the shelf and spied this little gem.

One of the reasons for my shock was because I had no clue that there had been books written about Our Gang from the era itself...and the other thing was that this is such an old book...it was apparently loosing its binding.  So, someone kindly taped it up with masking tape.

gulp.

Bummer.

At least it's mostly intact...but still.  The incredible amount of tape on the binding made me hesitate buying it (yeah, it was $1...feel free to throw things at my head)  I have absolutely no clue how to get the tape off, or fix the binding...but it brought back so many memories that I decided to grab it anyway...even though this book doesn't house Alfalfa or Spanky as it was a bit before their time...it is full of little biographies of each sweet character with the most enchanting pictures.

In fact, as I sit here writing this, I'm remembering so many wonderful episodes of Our Gang and The Little Rascals that influenced my childhood.  I also just remember being totally in love with that time period, even as a young child...which has more than carried over to what makes up the modern version of me.  And as for this groups adventures?  I remember being held totally spellbound in front of the TV (of course, if you talk to my mother, she'd say that we were spellbound when Laverne and Shirley was on as well...Go team TV!)  But not to worry, I never was as mischievous as Our Gang. I don't think I would have been a very popular person at my house if I would have engaged in a lot of the escapades this group did. And besides, I kind of knew at an early age I wasn't quite as bold as these kids (and I was afraid my mother would skin me alive if I attempted half of their stunts)

Let's just say it was vicarious childhood adventures...

I think all the happy childhood memories are worth $1, don't you?