Vintage Books

I love books, and I like that we have a nice collection of children's books in our home. However, we are far from what I would consider book collectors. Actually I'm somewhat leery of hanging onto too many books. My father is a serious book collector. He amassed a collection which by anyone's standards would be considered a respectably sized library. As a pastor, many of his books were about religion, but by no means was this the collection's exclusive focus. He always had an office at his church as well as at home, the walls of both of these offices were completely lined with books. Than there were the multiple sets of bookcases in our living room and other parts of the house, as well as boxes of books stacked in the garage. I actually always loved that we had so many books in our home growing up, but I also remember moving that collection multiple times. Word of advice here, DO NOT use big boxes to pack books, liquor boxes work well (still heavy when fully packed) and while my parents never had hard liquor in the house there were always countless liquor boxes in the garage.

Now I try to be very selective about what books I keep. If I don't think I'll read it again it goes. I don't hang onto books as trophies. I'll keep reference books if I think they aren't going to become dated, and I like having classic literature around if I think it fits either of the above categories: something I might read again, or useful for reference purposes. Children's books have been the one category of our collection that has swelled beyond the others. This is mostly because as a teacher, Tina finds these a valuable resource to hang onto, and Kai and Shen have certainly benefited from this. Still, since I read to the boys every night at bedtime we end up with some books in heavy rotation. Fortunately we're moving into "chapter books", but we still read at least one picture book every night. So lately I've been trying to add to our library. A couple weeks ago I picked up a handful of titles at Goodwill, and today we went to a school fund-raiser rummage sale where I found a few more good titles.

I know I have only a few years in which I can control what books the boys will be exposed to, so I try my best to choose carefully. Often nostalgia guides my selection as I choose titles I remember fondly as a child myself. Todays finds included The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Grey Bridge (1942), A Fly Went By (1958) and a nice hardback of The Incredible Journey (1960).

The real find though, was a set of 4 slim little pamphlet style books, each one profiling a child from a different country. I told the woman running the cashbox that I wanted these sold as a single item, which meant I paid 50¢ for the whole set. None of them bore a copyright date, but I knew they were old because one of the titles was Chula of Siam. I had to look it up on Wikipedia to see when Siam became Thailand, it was 1939. But it wasn't their apparent age that caught my eye, it was the volume titled Ching Ling and Ting Ling with a picture of a little boy and girl in traditional Chinese dress holding a kite.



Here are the other color images from this book...










Here are the covers of the other three books...







As one might expect, the content is not only dated but a bit ethnocentric and racist as well. One line in Ching Ling and Ting Ling refers to "Ting's small, slanting eyes." The line I really like though is from Maria and Carlos of Spain: "As they drove along (in their mule cart), Maria and her father munched on ripe olives. Like all Spaniards, they like to eat olives wherever they go." Consequently, these will not make it into our bedtime book rotation, but the artwork in them was so pretty and quaint that for 50¢ I couldn't pass them up.

Now for my Antiques Roadshow moment, with just a little more googling around I discovered these were published in either 1936 or '37, and I found copies of them selling on eBay for as much as $30 a piece! Almost makes me want to spend more time garage-saling!