This is another easy one, a kind of warm-up for the overloaded
shelves to come. As I mentioned yesterday, I am short, so I tend not to
crowd too much onto the higher shelves. So here again, one of the
living-room bookcases, second shelf from the top.
First we have a stack of books lying flat on their sides. Working from the bottom up:
Our nice big family Bible, a beautiful wedding gift from one of Scott’s cousins.
The Mary Frances Housekeeper
in hardcover. Why is that way up there where no child can possibly see
it, much less use it to learn to keep house? Must remedy this.
Uh-oh, an overdue sign language instructional DVD from the Deaf Missions Video Library. Must get that packaged up for tomorrow’s post-office run.
Next to this stack, filling the remaining two thirds of the shelf:
A bunch of Math-U-See DVDs.
Our Maud Hart Lovelace collection, or most of it anyway. When the Betsy-Tacy books began to go out of print, sob,
I rounded up our copies and shelved them here, up high, on purpose, to
ensure that they will not be lost or scattered. This explains why the
children’s bathroom stepstool is very often on the floor in front of
this bookcase. These are some of our most beloved books, and it seems
someone around here is nearly always in the middle of one of them.
What’s on the shelf right now:
Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill
Emily of Deep Valley (my favorite; I posted about it here)
Winona’s Pony Cart
(yes, a second copy, this one in hardcover—my editor at Harper knew
what a fangirl I am and sent me some extra copies she had lying around)
(So it looks like Betsy Was a Junior is in circulation somewhere.)
The first four are the "young Betsy" books—she starts out five years old and is, I think, about ten in the fourth book. (Isn’t Big Hill
the one where they sing "O Betsy’s ten tomorrow and then all of us are
ten! We will all be ten tomorrow; we will all be ladies then…" to the
tune of The Battle Hymn of the Republic?) The Winona book belongs in
that time frame; the girls are around eight years old, I think; but
it’s a stand-alone story and I like it better after Big Hill.)
Then come the four high-school books, which are a deep delight, and then Great World and Betsy’s Wedding.
The books about Carney and Emily come before Betsy’s wedding in the
Deep Valley chronology, but they were written later and once again I
think it’s best not to break up the flow of Betsy’s own narrative. Carney
is a fun treat afterward (especially the brief glimpse of her college
life), because you get to go back in time a few years and see a summer
of the gang’s life that wasn’t portrayed in detail in Betsy’s books,
and then, well, there’s Emily of Deep Valley to put a soul-satisfying coda on the whole series.
Back to the shelf. Next to the Lovelace treasures there are some
DVDs. Chris Rock, Monty Python collection, two Bruce Springsteen
concerts (detect a trend?), The Office, Bob Newhart, Schoolhouse Rock.
So that’s where Schoolhouse Rock is. I was looking for it.
That’s it for shelf #2. And now I’m in the mood to go read some Betsy-Tacy.
I LOVE the Betsy-Tacy books!