Used Book Report: Westchester Rotary Club Book Sale

Andrew wanted to get some work done this afternoon so I took Jackson out for a very long slow drive to my favorite mom-and-pop nursery in Gardena. On the way, I screeched to a halt and pulled over to the side of the road when I realized it was the weekend for the annual Westchester Rotary Club book sale in the parking lot of the Ralphs on Sepulveda. Good stuff, Westchester!

I'm particularly pleased with the complete 12-volume set of The Golden Book History of the United States in fine/very fine condition. The plan to home educate out of the garage continues apace, bwahaha! (So long as no one cares what happened after 1960. Ahem.)

Also found a first edition hardback of Minn of the Mississippi; some Margaret Wise Brown, Bill Peet and Steven Kellogg paperbacks: Ed Emberley's very first book, The Wing on a Flea: A Book about Shapes (original illustrations, not the 2001 update); Aliki's Manners; Seven Simeons; some Antipodean folklore; a John Burningham book (we love Mr. Gumpy!); a nutty old Golden Book called Peter Lippman's One and Only Wacky Wordbook, and the The How and Why Wonder Book of Mathematics, which includes a supermodern section on the use of punchcards and reels in a "calculating with computers." Hee.

Used Book Report: Latest from Savers in Vegas

Here are the highlights from my latest trip to Savers in Las Vegas with my mother-in-law.

This 1965 retelling of The Gingerbread Man by Wallace C. Wadsworth, illustrated by Anne Sellers Leaf has supercute vintage illustrations (find the ladybug on almost every page!), and even got a good review from a businessman at the airport who overheard me reading it to Jackson while we waited. ("That's a good story!") The Riddles book is an English translation of a 1991 Czech book by Vaclav Fischer, illustrated by Blank Rojejskova, in a very bright, almost '70s style. Lots of fun and brainstorming to come out of this one!

The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle, a hardback of Guess How Much I Love You and a book called Feelings by Aliki, the third of which is extremely non-linear and almost a series of oblique, too-canny cartoons about emotions. Looking forward to plumbing the depths of this one.

Seuss writing as LeSieg plus Roy McKie illustrations? Love it, even though I must admit I've never heard of Would You Rather Be a Bullfrog? before. I unreservedly adore The Digging-est Dog, which I've been looking for for ages. It was a childhood fave, and then I was so happily reintroduced to the Perkins-Gurney tag team through Hand Hand Fingers Thumb when Jackson was little(-er). Also, I found two neat Little Golden Books: an early '90s Sesame Street environmental book called From Trash to Treasure by Liza Alexander, and Four Puppies by Anne Heathers, which is about the changing of the seasons as seen by four collie pups.

Under the Bodhi Tree is a pretty illustrated storybook about the life of Siddhartha from the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association; A Little Pigeon Toad is one I have already (love Gwynne's wordplay books!) so this one is for resale; and a Sesame Street counting book called I Can Count to Ten and Back Again by Linda Hayward, since this is going to be numbers-counting year with J.

And last but not least, Snow Lion by David McPhail, and Bicycle Bear, both of which I got on the strength of the Parents Magazine Press brand. And then, last but not least, I was thrilled to come across the adorable and important I Am a Bunny tall book  illustrated by Richard Scarry!

I have one other special treasure from Savers that I need to show you, but it's so fun (for me at least) that it'll get a stand-alone second post. Happy thrifting everything!

"Quiet! There's a Canary in the Library" by Don Freeman - A Special Thrift-Store Used Children's Book Discovery

"Quiet! There's a Canary in the Library" by Don Freeman was first published in 1969.

Don Freeman dedicated this copy to a young reader named Michael, complete with portrait!

I believe this is a first edition of this little-known but charming Don Freeman book, Quiet! There's a Canary in the Library, and that's not all...It's also dedicated to a young fan, complete with original illustration and autograph! Don Freeman is known for writing and illustrating great children's books like Corduroy (and A Pocket for Corduroy), Dandelion, Norman the Doorman and Fly High, Fly Low.

Thrifting: Used Children's Books

I bought Weslandia without even reading it because I'd heard such good things and having now read it, I feel entirely satisfied with my purchase: the accolades are totally deserved; An Egg Is Quiet is the loveliest kind of science, and after See Inside an Egyptian Town I'm very much looking forward to finding other books by R.J. Unstead. One of the reasons I loved used books is the serendipitous introduction to great resources I would have never otherwise found, and this Unstead fellow is a perfect example of that!

Books by James Marshall, Bill Peet, Steven Kellogg and no one else would be a perfectly sufficient reading life for a child.

Another Pigeon book, whee! * I adore Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel more than almost any other children's book. I used to have a Burton treasury but it was too big, and the board book version is too small (abridged!), but this paperback is just right.  * We've borrowed Click, Clack, Moo and I Read Signs from the library and they're both fantastic. I Read Signs and the rest of the Tana Hoban photographically illustrated children's books should be dated and creepy but both J and I both responded quite favorably.

So excited to find a non-un-PC version of Seven Chinese Brothers, and by Margaret Mahy no less! Plus, one of the several Miriam Cohen-Lillian Hoban collaborations, a William Steig and a Mercer Mayer.

I was suspicious of this Kevin Henkes fellow at first, but after reading a few of his books, I've discovered he's not as saccharine as I first suspected, and he actually reminds me of early Rosemary Wells, which can only be a good thing.

Our first introduction to Pat Hutchins was through my purchase of used edition of her book, Good-Night, Owl. Owl was an overnight sensation in the Arrow household, and the widely acclaimed Rosie's Walk was borrowed from the library to similar audience reaction. Finding Rosie plus two more Pat Hutchins books at the thrift shop made today a good day.

The Funny Little Woman is from the team that produced the children's classic Tikki Tikki Tembo; illustrator Blair Lent also did this Caldecott-recognized African folk tale retelling When the Sun and Moon Live in the Sky. 

One of my book-buying rules is to get everything published by the Parents' Magazine Press and they haven't disappointed me yet. School for Sillies has fabulous '70s-vintage illustration, but I also like the moral of the story.

Richard Scarry basically writes preschool textbooks, and that's fine with me.

Bought for resale if anyone will have it, but even I must admit the illustrations in this novelization (picture-book-ization?) of Walt Disney's Pinocchio are pretty lovely.