The summer I became a morbid 10-year-old

This goth-y bibliophile would make a great gift. On etsy.

My friend Jen over at Custom-Built Life posted recently about rereading the Ramona books with her daughter and it sent me on a journey of nostalgia. After I stopped crying like a Gilmore Girl, I decided to share some of my favorite books from childhood.

Now, I did enjoy the old standbys, very much.

I was a huge Judy Blume fan, loved Ramona in every Pest-y respect - I even got into that whole posse of kids - Henry Huggins, Otis Spofford and so on - great world-building, Beverly Cleary! I read a lot of Nancy Drew and even better, to me, Trixie Belden, all the Babysitters' Club I could get my hands on, and eventually moved into a somewhat more shameful period of Sweet Valley High and anything with a dorky guy with feathered hair on the cover.

I dabbled in some sci-fi like Something Wicked This Way Comes and I snuck in a little Stephen King from my dad's bookshelf on occasion (The Body still resonates). I read stuff we had to read in school, too, and liked most of it, especially Vonnegut, half of which was mysteriously absent from our school library, but I digress.

Anyway. I liked to read a lot. But for whatever reason, in between reading books that most of us would agree were at least "age appropriate", I was drawn to the most depressing stuff at the library even at a young age.

For example:

A Summer to Die by Lois Lowry. Yeah, that pretty much sums up this book. It's all about a girl whose summer is spent watching her big sister die from leukemia. Don't get me wrong. There's a place for books like this, and I'm very glad this sub-genre exists (and Lois Lowry was a big part of my emotional growth for years).

But for me, this book sent me on a not-so-whimsical summertime obsession* centered on Death. Specially, Young Death. I had nothing good to say when I entered fifth grade in the fall in response to "What did you do this summer?" I was all, "Oh, me? I contemplated the fragile nature of existence and came to fully understand the idea that all of us, including you, and you, and you, are but one mutated cell away from death at any given moment. Oh, and we went to Sea World."

*See also: A Taste of Blackberries, Bridge to Terabithia...

First Day of School Bust

We were so ready. We were going to kick things off with a visit with friends to the Cincinnati Nature Center Playscape Tuesday morning, have a little brainstorming in the afternoon about rivers and so on and hit the riverbank this morning to gather up mud-covered gross things for neat art projects. Instead, I woke up to a small voice saying "Mommy, the back of my throat, well not really the BACK of my throat, hurts really bad and I want to sleep in your bed." Doh!

Here's poor Andy taking his first sick day from school, on the would-be first day of school.

At least I didn't have to call anybody! Yay for flexibility. Pushing things back a few days will really make little difference and I'm reminded of one of those cool intangibles - he's not missing anything and can take his time getting better without that added stress. Now, here's to hoping his germs aren't the extra-friendly kind. Little brother is just fine so far.

In the meantime, I have a ton of organizing to do after hitting up the Half Price Book's 20% off sale over the 3-day weekend. Wow. I managed to score a ton of great books, including several that are part of series we have started, and all in the clearance section. 20% off $1.00 or $.50 is an incredible deal, and for non-fiction kids books, HPB is a treasure trove. There were tons of DK Eyewitness books, beautiful almanacs and visual dictionaries, great science books with pull-outs and posters, workbooks, etc. Probably my favorite find was a stack of Cricket and Muse magazines at $.50 a pop before the discount. These magazines are $35 a year for 9 issues, ad-free, and really wonderful.

We also hit up the Cincinnati Friends of the Library annual warehouse sale with a 50% off everything coupon for being members. Let's just say we had to carry those out in a couple boxes. They actually had all kinds of art supplies, and lots of fiction with library binding and dust jackets, which means super durable books, super cheap. I picked up some DK books there, too.

So for less than $50, I could fill another bookshelf. I was really pretty picky about what I bought, but knowing how much they both click with book learning and how often picking up a random book around here leads to amazing, rich learning experiences, it was hard to resist the bargains. I'm positive once everything is on the shelf, there will be hours and hours spent in there just pouring over books and endless "Mommy! Look at this!" moments. $50 well spent.

Here's to hoping we'll have some Ohio River experiences to report on soon. Down with germs!