One really great thing about books is that they are just as good used as they are new. As long as you can read the print and the binding is in one piece, they aren’t of any less value at 100 years old than they are brand new.
Last weekend, we went to a giant consignment sale. This particular one happens twice a year, and I always look forward to it. A lot of the items end up being overpriced, but usually I find at least a couple really great deals on clothes for the girls.
Not this year. The clothes all looked ten years old and the few things I did find were not worth the hour long line in the clothes building. So we went over and browsed the toys and books, and there we hit the jackpot.
It’s particularly fun for me to shop used books because they are the only kind of books I can buy used. I’m allergic to the (invisible) mold on older books, but luckily this mold seems to bypass board books and even children’s paperback books. Chapter books are sadly a different story.
Anyway, we went kind of crazy in the book section.
This made me so happy, and we have pretty much been reading nonstop ever since. The girls have pretty much gone crazy over these books.
Their favorite is The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear.
Magoo was all excited when she saw this book because she said her preschool teacher has it in their classroom. We got it home, and it was one of the first ones she asked for. I finished reading it and thought it was a big dud, and I was sure Magoo must have thought the same. After all, there wasn’t even a bear in the book!
Well… I was wrong. Very wrong. Both her and the Goose have asked for this book a dozen times a day since we got it on Friday. They fight over the book; they both run over to my lap as soon as I take this out; the Goose brings it over to me repeating “ba ba ba” over and over again which is her way of saying book. And I’ve started to enjoy it too. There are quite a few places for dramatic reading which makes me quite happy. All in all, it’s a hit.
I was also excited to find this Look and Find Book for toddlers.
We already have a handful of these books — Baby Einstein, Dora, Princesses, Elmo — but I’m always on the lookout for more. They are perfect for little people. The pictures are bright and colorful, and they are excellent for introducing new vocabulary. This is a bit early for us, but they are also perfect potty training books because once babies are about 18-24 months old, they can “read” these books by themselves, keeping them entertained for hours on end on the potty.
This one is particularly exciting because I have been wanting to start working with the Goose on her colors and shapes, and that is the primary focus of this one. (By the way, if you are looking for any of these for your own home library, I recommend the discount section at Barnes & Noble or the book section in Kohls. Both always have a great selection of these books, and they are almost always “on sale” for about $8.)
And of course, no book buying expedition would be complete without some Fancy Nancy.
I am a huge fan of Fancy Nancy and not just because I live with her…
For those of you who don’t know, Nancy is a young girl who insists on doing everything the fancy way. She dresses very extravagantly with a lot of feathers and sparkles, and she always tries to use big words and French words because she thinks those are all much fancier than plain old boring English.
We have quite an extensive FN collection, but it wasn’t until this weekend that we had the original Fancy Nancy book, and I must say that it is my favorite so far as Nancy tries to teach her whole family how to be more fancy.
We started out reading this series about a year or year and a half ago. I bought the early reader books at that time because I find those short sentences are perfect for little kids who are just learning to listen to longer stories. Now that Magoo is older, I usually buy the full stories because they have much more elaborate drawings and the stories are better.
We bought quite a few other books, but these are the highlights. I really do thoroughly enjoy reading and discussing children’s books, so hopefully we’ll find some more gems within this set and I’ll be able to share those with you in future weeks.