Never look a gift library sale in the mouth...

I have a funny thing about library sales. I tend to be of the camp that if you are not there at the start, then you may as well skip it as anything of interest will be gone after the first 10 minutes or so. Add to that my disdain for those who rush in, grab armfuls (or bagfuls) of books and then go "sort" them later in a corner...and I'm often pretty willing to pass unless I, A) need some things to read for fun (no place like a library sale for trashy reading) or B)my ever so brilliant wife tells me to stop being a putz and go with her. She is, as always (and annoyingly), correct.

We went to a smallish sale this morning. We bought about a dozen books or so (including a small set of ten). We spent about $30. Three or four items were for reading/schoolhouse placement...most of the rest are individually worth more than we paid for the lot. The treats, however, were extreme: Islands of Hawaii (Ansel Adams and Edward Joesting, warmly inscribed by Joesting); a truly lovely set of the 1922 edition of Journeys Through Bookland (10 volumes, complete, in Near Fine condition) and (my personal favorite) Twopeny's, English Metal Work (1904, first edition, Fine). Simply lovely things. They made my day...not so much the bargain they were...but rather that such lovely and slightly off the beaten path material would show up in such a funny place.

I doubt the Journeys will leave the house. They are, if you have not run across them before, a set of literature for children. I have just picked up Volume 9 at random and scanned the table of contents. Among the 35 stories/essays in this volume are works by Charles Lamb, Charles Dickens, Plutarch, Shakespeare, James Boswell, Edgar Allan Poe, Theodore Roosevelt, E. S. Creasy, Francis Bacon, Robert Louis Stevenson, William Cullen Bryant, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Patrick Henry..among others. It ends with a section on the pronunciation of Proper Names. This is just Vol. 9 (clearly a largely "non-fiction" volume). Our president has stated that it is his "goal" that every 9 year old in the country be able to read.

My 8 year old reads on a high school level...I am unclear as to whether his reading is genuinely advanced or if our expectations of high school achievement has fallen so low that a marginally sharp 8 year old can exceed them. I want to see my son's 3rd grade teacher's face when he turns in a summer reading list that includes Francis Bacon.

Have our expectations fallen so low that we are pleased when our kids will read *anything*...so Captain Underpants is not Plutarch, at least it is ink on a page (mind you, CU is quite funny...in that nonsense/theatre of the absurd sort of way). Can Goosebumps and Magic Treehouse really share a shelf with Dickens, Hawthorne and Hans Christen Andersen? Should they? There is not doubt that there has been a tremendous surge in genuinely good juvenile, thanks in large part to Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket and all those who followed...clearly some publishers have come to the conclusion that not all children's lit needs to be pablum (or, worse, some strange ink-on-paper extension of Nickelodeon programming). Kids *love* being challenged...they like the big words of Snicket, the scarieness of Spiderwick (or Grimm). hmmmm....I'm ranting...I will stop now. I need sleep.


I think I will read Journeys with the small ones...better yet, have him read them to me. It was a great library sale. A wonderful day (pancake breakfast, book sale, parade, beach, ice cream, lobster dinner, fireworks...does it get better than that?!?). I hope yours was pleasing as well.