11 January 2010

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?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

When I grew up "Our Gang/Little Rascals" was an afternoon staple in our house. I loved Petey the dog and Froggy.

Mytutorlist.com said...

Hehehe, I love childrens books too! I think $1 is worth all the childhood memories :)

Ric said...

I loved Little Rascals, but my mother hated them; religious nuts of the time thought it encouraged rebellion (and Superman made kids jump off buildings). So I only watched at the neighbor's house.

And it's "children's" (IIRC from sixth grade); the possessive form of "children."

Anonymous said...

So, I spent a bit of time catching up with you here and I must say that you have to have one of the most entertaining blogs out there. I was totally laughing out loud many of times (thanks for that!). As for the yoga, I've never tried it but would really like to someday. I'm afraid if I did that pose in the picture, I'd probably pass gas! LOL!
Good catching up with you!
xoxoxo!

Michelle

Kristal said...

Hiya My Beautiful Friend! Love the new banner...Sweet Baby...I really do need to learn how to do that myself.

Spellcheck...is underlining it's own name!! So off with it's head! Can you tell that I just go done reading "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and CHILDREN'S book! Wow, I have two things underlined now.

Your score of that wonderful book was well worth the 4 quarters you spent. Just an idea, I'm sure the pictures are wonderful, what if you framed them? Then no need to worry about masking tape!

Hope you are having a good start to the new year. I've been a busy bee, loading up my shop with goodies...hence my failure to blog like I last told you. But it's still on the agenda.

Smooches and poodles,
Kristal

Granny J said...

As the Golden Oldie here, I have to point out that in the 30s/early 40s I watched movie short subjects done by Our Gang!

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