Riese’s Team Pick:
The blog Vintage Books My Kid Loves got born a long time ago (in internet-time), but I just discovered it last month and became instantly obsessed. Burgin Streetman, a writer and mother from San Antonio, Texas, has apparently been scanning or photographing stacks upon stacks of vintage children’s books for her blog, which also hosts giveaways and spotlights various children’s authors, since 2007. She also maintains a formidable tumblr and pinterest situation and etsy store. It’s hard to know where to begin.
I read Tell Me a Mitzi eight thousand times. Were the characters Jewish? I feel like they were. As a young budding Jew, I seem to recall reading lots of books about Jewish families who lived in New York on the Lower East Side (like in this book), Brooklyn or The Bronx. Mitzi was precocious and independent and also a bit foolish, like I was and still am, and she had a little brother too, just like I did and still do.
Tell Me a Mitzi
Lore Segal ~ pictures by Harriet Pincus
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970
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In the 70s, Carole King and Maurice Sendak put together the musical Really Rosie, which was based on Sendak’s books Chicken Soup With Rice (below), Pierre, One Was Johnny, Alligators All Around and The Sign on Rosie’s Door. The soundtrack to Really Rosie, which we had on a record album, was the best thing I’d ever heard in my life, especially the song about Pierre who didn’t care and then got swallowed by a lion. Rosie has this song where she goes “You better believe me, I’m a great big deal, I’m Rosie, Believe Me, Believe Me…” and sometimes that’s what it feels like to be a writer. The way that chorus sounds. Believe me, believe me.
Chicken Soup with Rice // Maurice Sendak ~ Harper Collins, 1962
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Where Did I Come From was the first thing I ever read about sex, which judging by the pictures I was 100% sure I did not want to have.
Where Did I Come From? /written by Peter Mayle
Illustrated by Arthur Robins / Designed by Paul Walter Lyle Stuart, 1973
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Oh, this, though, A Child’s Garden of Verses. Just poemy things. There was a copy at my grandmother’s house. I really loved the way children’s books were designed in the 50’s and 60’s, like they were designed to calm children into a meloncholy literary state whereas now a lot of children’s book covers look like Kool-Aid.
A Child’s Garden of Verses
Robert Louis Stevenson ~ Gyo Fujikawa
Grosset & Dunlap, 1957
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Anything Sesame Street, everything Sesame Street.
The Sesame Street Bedtime Storybook
Tony Geiss, Emily Perl Kingsley, David Korr, Jeff Moss, Robert Oksner, Patricia Thackray; pictures by Tom Cooke, A. Delaney, Joseph Mathieu, Marc Nadel
Random House, 1978
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We owned every Berenstain Bears book I could get my hands on. Highlights included The Berenstain Bears Go To Camp, The Berenstain Bears and No Girls Allowed (formative feminist text) and The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Birthday. This book is legitimately how I learned about most of the basic aspects of silence:
The Berenstain Bears’ Science Fair
Stan and Jan Berenstain ~ Random House, 1977
So you know… check out this blog. What are your favorites?
I’m not sure if it’s on there but as a kid I (and probably every other Canadian here) must have read The Hockey Sweater by Roch Carrier about a million times.
Also, Love You Forever by Robert Munsch makes me cry to this day.
I’m getting teary just THINKING “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always…”
oy!
as long as I’m living my bb you’ll be!
OMG!!! I was just talking about that book thismornin’. Granma and I couldn’t think of the title. Thanks to Annie, Hana, and Lauren, I recognized the rhyme.
oh dear lord THAT BOOK
robert munsch, do you even KNOW all the tears you have made me cry over the years with that book?!?!?
but it’s okay because all the joy i got from “purple, green and yellow” totally made up for it
“super indelible never come off until you’re dead and maybe even later coloring marks”
anyone else read that one??
Did you know he wrote love you forever after his wife had stillborn twins? I think that makes it even sadder.
Berenstain Bears books may as well have been my bible as a kid, I read all of them many many times.
It is so amazing to see that other people know Really Rosie! I’m seventeen and that was like the soundtrack to my childhood :)
It was a lion that ate Pierre, wasn’t it? (And Pierre said, “I don’t care.”)
Oh my god, yes, I LOVED Tell Me A Mitzi! I’ve never met anyone else, other than my siblings, who’s read it!
My feeling is that the characters are Jewish, too, but I don’t know why.
Oh man, I love this blog already.
Just commenting to say that I clicked on this link because I saw Blueberries for Sal, a great memory from my childhood. In a world where everything I had was first filtered through my older sister, this was the one book that was mine, all mine. I can still eat blueberries by the carton.
I only know Pierre because of The Dresden Dolls. Anyone else?
FYI this is what I was referring to.
I just loved Blueberries for Sal. If Sal were a real person, she’d own a blueberry farm in Maine with her partner where she also sells blueberry wine. Fan fiction!
Bert is looking hella perplexed about how the California King with 1,000 thread count egyptian cotton sheets turned into those kids twin beds.
memories ….
The Giraffe Who Went to School. It was one of my first books, and my mom recently bought me a copy over eBay. It’s falling apart because it’s a 1950’s edition (and because sometimes I still flip through it, don’t judge.)
Truth: I did a huge presentation and class discussion on how amazingly engrossing and profound the opening of Peter Pan is. Not the entire book, just the opening. I read it once a year, usually around the time some deep, weird life changing shit happens.
If we’re talking picture books though, it’s the Girl Who Loved Wild Horses. I still have the original copy my folks got me when I was like, five. http://www.amazon.com/The-Girl-Loved-Wild-Horses/dp/0689716966
My sister and I had that! I pulled it off the shelf the other day and wondered if anyone else had ever read it…
Little Critter series, anyone? I always had a competition with my dad to see who could find the cricket and the spider in every illustration first.
Yes I loved those! And the cricket and spider were so adorable omg.
Oo, I love that blog already and I’ve only clicked on two entries. My first favorite book was I Am A Bunny by Richard Scarry. I still have my copy from when I was a baby; the cover is missing and the rest of it is taped together with packing tape but I will never throw it away. My mom gets all the babies in the family a copy of this book, so my daughter has her own too.
P.S. – The first book I had that taught about sex was this book (that I just spent way too long trying to find online): http://www.amazon.co.uk/Your-Works-Usborne-Childrens-World/dp/0746023006
It illustrates the systems of the body as machines. Pretty creative and interesting approach, although I still vividly remember the illustration of the “Dad machine” shooting “seeds” into the “Mom machine” in the part about how babies are made. Yeah, that wasn’t terrifying to a 6-year-old or anything…
Hahahaha same here! I was totally into the book and then it got to that part and I was like ‘..the fuck is this’
I was totally obsessed with the little books by Beatrix Potter – “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” et al. Maybe because they made me feel less like a little person with the teeny size of the books!
YES THIS. Those books were absolutely precious and beautiful.
Berenstein Bears CONTROVERSY! oooh…
http://www.queerty.com/berenstain-bears-try-to-avoid-chick-fil-a-hateration-publisher-not-so-much-20120731/
I had a copy of A Children’s Garden of Verses! I also had lots of Berenstain Bears but I hated the brother bear so much. He was the worst, ugh.
I was such a shy awkward kid you guys. All I wanted to do was read. Where The Sidewalk Ends, Little Bear, Where the Wild Things Are and Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne. Those were the best.
I liked the Berenstein Bears as a kid, but working as a librarian now, most children’s librarians seem to hate them. They don’t encourage much creative thought and are pretty preachy/moralistic. But I always loved them! I liked the right or wrong perspectives of the books when I was that age.
Of course, now they’re written and published by bigots so its pretty moot.
Goodnight Moon, Where the Wild Things Are, Berenstein Bears and Frog and Toad.. Read them all the time! I started collecting my old favorites this past fall and I have big plans to get a WTWTA tattoo..
I didn’t see them listed, but I was seriously obsessed with the Boxcar Kids books (owned most of them, read all of them). Apparently, I wanted a twin and an eccentric uncle and to have adventures (preferably without the dead parents).
I was also obsessed with Boxcar Children. Orphans and mysteries!
Oh man, I belonged to some Boxcar Children fanclub, I had a membership card and everything! And the books came in a little boxcard cardboard box!
memories
My friends and I used to play Boxcar Children on the playground in 1st grade. I was always Benny, because screw the gender binary.
I have a copy of A Children’s Garden of Verses, but all the pictures are by Thomas Kinkade, I like yours much better.
Also, the Berenstain Bears once had a TV show, and bullies actually said to Sister Bear, “What kind of name is Sister?”
Best line of anything ever.
They still do have a TV show, I think! I only know this because the kids I babysit watch it.
Tim Mouse Visits the Farm. Best book EVER.
Also also I had Dandelion by Don Freeman memorized. And I loved all the Bill Peet books! Wump World, that one about the peacock with the monster tail, and the mountain goat with ski-horns… Beatrix Potter, A.A Milne poems (and Winnie the Pooh!)… I could go on forever. Now I’m getting nostalgic. So many memories and warm fuzzy feelings!!!!
I LOVED Katy and the Big Snow… Probs because in the last 26 years my hometown has had a total of 2 big snows, so for me it was a magical idea just to NEED a snow plow.
http://www.amazon.com/Katy-Big-Snow-Vol-2/dp/0395185629
ROALD DAHL everything
I loved everything Roald Dahl, and also The Phantom Tollbooth, because they were so unapologetically ridiculous, but in an intelligent way. One of my biggest gripes about kids’ books nowadays is that I feel like they dumb everything down more than necessary. Kids are smart, and funny. Give them credit for it.
I loved Ferdinand the Bull, All Dr. Seuss, Peter’s Chair by Ezra Jack Keats (settled many an argument with little sister, by forcing me to love my little sister)Mean Soup by Besty Everitt (cured many a bad day) and Amelia Bedelia.
Blueberries for Sal, One Morning in Maine (the sequel to Blueberries for Sal! Clam chowder for lunch!), Mirette on the High Wire, The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush, The Legend of the Blue Bonnet, The Talking Eggs, Now Let Me Fly (heartbreaking story of an enslaved woman and her family), Your Dad Was Just Like You; Sam, Bangs, and Moonshine; Jane and the Dragon, Love You Forever, Children of the Earth and Sky, Children of the Wind and Water (series of five stories about days in the lives of Native American children from different tribal groups), Song and Dance Man
The Bicycle Man, Lon Po Po, basically every Caldecott Medal winner ever
ahhh, i love this so much. watching my kid fall in love with the books i loved is one of my favorite things. i could sit and explore that blog all day.
LOVE the “Chicken Soup With Rice” song. I still listen to it sometimes…
Does anyone remember Patricia Polacco? She’s an amazing author and illustrator, and her books were some of my favorites.
Also, “Something From Nothing”- does anyone remember that? http://www.amazon.com/Something-From-Nothing-Phoebe-Gilman/dp/0590472801
My mom, my sister, and I used to go to the library every week (this continued through high school) to check out books and VHS tapes (and when I was older, DVDS). To this day, I would rather read a children’s book than any other.
It’s really good to know anyone else ever owned a copy of the Really Rosie musical. Most people I know, even people who actively love Rosie in her video and book forms do not even know the Broadway musical existed. It is my favourite thing ever, and as a Brooklyn baby exiled to other places, an important bridge to my childhood. Also, everything about Vintage Books My Kids Love makes me smile.
Anyone ever read “Max the bad talking parrot”? That was a fav for me.
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day; A Light in the Attic, Roxaboxen and a book about these two obviously gay dinosaurs who broke up and then got back together… but I can’t remember the title.
Did anyone else notice that the Berenstain Bears house never had the same number of steps? My dad and I would always count them.
As for other amazing children’s books…
Blueberries for Sal/One Morning in Maine/everything Robert McCloskey ever did (specifically Homer Price, oh my goodness Homer Price), There’s a Hippo in My Bath!, some book about sisters and mud pies that my sister and I had…I could go on but I can’t bring all the names to mind.
ROOTABAGA STORIES.
I had a small pretty copy of A Child’s Garden of Verses which I used to hide under my sweaters in my closet so no one would know where it was but me. And then when I felt like a bit of magic, I’d take it out and read something and tingle a little, and then put it back, just for me.
childrens books, ESP illustrated, are why i fell in love with reading, and with art. i passed a lot of things on to my kid sis and cousins, but not my fave books. those are boxed up tight for my own library and eventually my own kids. i wept REAL tears when shel silverstein died and more recently leo dillon. he and his wife did amazing art work. and silverstein is my favorite author, for ANY age. i wrote & illustrated 1 kids book for a final and my prof said to get it published. Sadly picture books are hardly getting made anymore as the rush to get kids farther ahead even in preK means preschoolers with chapter books, less illustrated books getting published.
Best part of my grandmother being a teacher is that i got some REALLY vintage kids books from her home, like printed in the 60s, Danny and the Dinosaur my fave among them.
My mom used to read Chicken Soup with Rice to me every night when I was very small, but I had forgotten all about it!
OMG! I thought I was the only one in the world who had read Tell Me a Mitzi. My favorite kids’ book and I really wanted her snowsuit.