(no subject)
While trying to decide if the library should keep the New England Agricultural Economics Council Prodeedings (1956-71) I opened one of the books to review its content and was instantly taken back to my childhood. Not because I spent a lot of time reviewing whatever it is that people decide at agricultural councils, but because the smell was the same as that of my old ChildCraft books that I spent hours in, just as my mom and her siblings had before. When I was 7 or so Mom and Dad agreed with the door-to-door sales men to purchase the World Book Encyclepedia. I'm sure that it wasn't hard to convince them to also buy the latest ChildCraft editions for a special discounted price. This books, in full color and completely updated, didn't satisfy me like the ones that had sat on the shelf--on my mother's shelf--for so many years before. A few years ago when we were downsizing there was a discussion on which set of ChildCraft we should keep. I opted for the old ones. It saddened me to think that my own children might never experience the joys of the vitange books. In the depths of the black and white pictutres, I remember wanting to be a scientist, stumbling over the words of the Star Spangled Bannner and reading Humpty Dumpty aloud. Its a smell of musk that satisfies me so. Perhaps ChildCraft is what first inspired my love for the aestetics of books.