Have
you ever pre-ordered a book and then forgotten you’ve done so? And then
months later you get the shipping notice, and it’s like a little piece
of Christmas in your in-box? That’s what happened to me the other day
when a certain online book retailer notified me that my copy of Alicia
Paulson’s long-awaited Stitched in Time: Memory Keeping Projects to Sew and Share was on its way. It’ll be here today. (You may know Alicia from her delightful blog, Posie Gets Cozy, which was the very first handcrafts blog I ever subscribed to.)

Hurry on over, Mr. UPS Man; we can’t wait to get cozy with this book! (Good thing I got all caught up on my Cybils
reading yesterday. I can’t peruse any more nominees until the next
batch of library holds comes in, or until another nice fat packet
arrives from a publisher. Which may well be today. We’ve been keeping
Mr. UPS Man hopping lately. And may I just say he is one of the nicest
guys you’ll ever meet? One day he brought us a bag of clementines from
his neighbor’s tree—he said he’d been given so many he couldn’t eat
them all and he thought maybe my kids would enjoy them. Don’t think I’m
unaware this is all Rilla’s doing: she charms him daily with her warm
reception as he jogs up our driveway with packages stacked high. "Hi
dere! You ’liver dat for me?")

Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. Hardly
needs annotating: the comparative mythology classic, massively
influential on literary analysis. I’ve only read chunks of it, never
the whole thing. I took a college course called "Men’s Images in
Literature" which examined different roles and types of male
protagonists, and it was one of the best classes I ever took. We read
Hamlet, Goldfinger (yes, a James Bond book!), The Maltese Falcon, Bill Bradley’s autobiography, Malcolm X,
and I’m trying to remember what else. I remember how disappointed I was
the following year when, after a transfer to another college, I took a
women’s lit course and it was nothing like the Men’s Images class.
Instead of unpacking archetypes and discussing the nature of the hero
(or heroine), the professor took us on a bitter, angry stroll through
the Norton’s Anthology of Women’s Lit (which is full of amazing
reading, by the way), expostulating upon the way in which each and
every piece in the anthology demonstrated the oppression of women
through the ages.

I have digressed. Anyway, my point was that my primary experience
with the Joseph Campbell book was in the men’s images class, as we
examined how the various heroes in our texts did or did not bear out
Campbell’s ideas on the journey of the hero. I think we own the book
because I always meant to read the whole thing at some point.

How the Irish Saved Civilization. I remember picking
up this one as a freebie choice in a book club. Had heard much about
it, and have continued to hear much about it over the years. And
haven’t read it yet.

Don’t Know Much about History by Kenneth C. Davis.
Scott brought this one to the party, if I recall correctly. Like the
book above, I think it’s been on my TBR list for about fifteen years.
Sheesh.

Mystery and Manners by Flannery O’Connor. This was
required reading in one of my college creative writing classes, and I
was blown away by it. It’s a collection of Flannery’s essays on writing
and other topics. I think I like her essays better than her stories, to
be perfectly honest.

Amo, Amas, Amat, and More. A collection of Latin words
and phrases often used in English discourse, with succinct explanations
of their meaning. A useful resource for those of us who did not study
Latin in our youth.

Storybook
Travels: From Eloise’s New York to Harry Potter’s London, Visits to 30
of the Best-Loved Landmarks in Children’s Literature.

Socrates Cafe.

The American Sign Language Phrase Book. Spine much creased from frequent use.

Women’s Work. I picked this up as a reference
during the early days of my Martha & Charlotte research, then later
met the author at a friend’s dinner party.

Brush Up Your Shakespeare. Fun collection of commonly used phrases which come from the Bard.

The Big Little Book of Irish Wit & Wisdom.

Little Book of Gaelic Proverbs. "A cat in mittens won’t catch mice." "A ‘thank you’ doesn’t pay the fiddler." "Beauty won’t boil the pot."

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. Love, love, love.

BBC Music Guide: Mendelssohn Chamber Music. Say, this must be a Scott book!

Phantastes by George MacDonald, and next to it my ancient, raggedy copy of his The Golden Key and Other Stories.
Ah yes, now we’re coming into a section of favorite children’s classics
(interspersed with other odds and ends). Gosh, I loved The Golden Key.
I see it in frequent circulation among the kids these days, too.

Black Beauty. Copy from used book store: I’ve never read it.

The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss. Board book version: what’s it doing on that shelf? Too high for little people to reach.

Mitten Strings for God. Newish, haven’t read it yet.

Eats, Shoots, & Leaves. Lots of fun.

On the Back of the North Wind, George MacDonald.

The Light Princess, George MacDonald. Detect a theme?

What do you know! The Complete Fairy Tales of…George MacDonald!

Now comes a full set of Little House books. Laura’s, that is.
This is the fancypants edition with the nice slick paper and the (sob)
colorized Garth Williams art. My sweet editor used to send me a new set
every time Harper came out with a reissue. We have a good many sets
scattered around this house…

The Iliad for Boys and Girls by Alfred Church. You can read it for free at The Baldwin Project.

The Odyssey for Boys and Girls by Alfred Church. Ditto.

Drawing Textbook by Bruce McIntyre. Terrific little paperback how-to-draw manual.

An unnamed songbook full of hymns and folk song lyrics with chord changes.

My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George.

Stray hardcover copy of The Road from Roxbury.

My Father’s Dragon and Elmer and the Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett. Favorite series of every six-year-old to grow up in this family so far.

The Story of the Greeks by H. A. Guerber. Another Baldwin Project book.

Chesterton’s Heretics.

Shakespeare Stories by Leon Garfield.

And a lovely hardcover copy of The Wind in the Willows. Phew. That was quite a shelf.

Click here for the first three shelves.

Posting this helpful advice from Lindsay: (and bolding the reason I thought it should be bumped up from the comments) :

Just responding to something (the other?) Melissa wrote.
If you can’t get Melissa Wiley books at your local library, do ask them
to get them for you through Inter Library Loan. I used to hesitate
about this, thinking ILL was something reserved for scholarly work, but
I’ve heard librarians from various libraries enthusiastically encourage
its use. I think it’s one of those things that the more it’s used,
the more “the authorities” will see that it is needed, and consequently
keep up funding for it. Also, one can hope that the more specific
titles are requested, the more likely word will filter back to
publishers to keep them in print! (We’ve also gotten Shakespeare and
opera DVDs and CDs through ILL. It’s a great resource.)

The kids will be awake soon, so I won’t have time to do a whole
shelf, but Scott (of all people! he sees these shelves every day) has
been clamoring for another bookshelf post, so here goes.

Same bookcase, third shelf down:

My Charlotte Mason series: her six books, shelved here for easy access. I return to these over and over again.

A boxed set of Edward Eager novels: Half Magic, Knight’s Castle, Magic by the Lake, The Time Garden.

Not that I can actually see any of the above right now, since Scott
has a bunch of music CDs stacked in front of them. But I know they’re
there.

Then comes one of the several Lord of the Rings sets
we own. Scott and I both brought copies into the marriage, but I think
this set is much newer, a Christmas gift to one of the girls a couple
of years ago.

An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott.

And then my favorite Alcott, Little Men.

Mystery Train by Greil Marcus, "generally considered
the first truly scholarly exploration of rock and roll, its history,
its importance, and its uniquely American properties," says my husband.
I haven’t read this one, can you tell?

A biography of Richard Wagner by Robert W. Gutman. Scott’s read it, I haven’t.

Elvissey by Jack Womack. Has a library sticker on the
spine so must be something Scott picked up on the discard pile. He
reads a lot about music, as you can see.

Rowan of Rin by Emily Rodda, the first book in a favorite series of my girls.

The Brownie and the Princess, a collection of stories
by Louisa May Alcott. I’ve not read it yet. Jane enjoyed it. She says a
couple of the stories are set during the Revolutionary War. The title
story, she says, is very sweet.

Exile on Main Street and In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,
two books in a series called 33 1/3, which is a collection of small
books, each by a different author and about a single record album.
Scott has really been enjoying these lately. I’m seeing them all over
the house.

Latin for Children DVDs.

And then a sideways stack of craft and home arts books:

Mrs. Sharp’s Traditions by Sarah Ban Breathnach.

Festivals, Family, and Food

Crafts Through the Year by Thomas and Petra Berger.

Knitted Animals

Magical Window Stars

Catholic Traditions in Crafts

The Nature Corner

Rose Windows

I’ll try to come back later and add authors and Goodreads links and
maybe some commentary to these titles, but morning has broken* and I
need to get a move on.

*Whoops, glanced at this hours later and see that I never hit ‘publish.’

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-Tacy

Betsy-Tacy and Tib

Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown

Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill

Winona’s Pony Cart

Heaven to Betsy

Betsy in Spite of Herself

Betsy and Joe

Betsy and the Great World

Betsy’s Wedding

Emily of Deep Valley (my favorite; I posted about it here)

Carney’s House Party

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.

In the comments of this post,
Patience mentioned that she’d like to know what books were on the shelf
behind Her Majesty. I have often thought it would be fun to do a whole
series of posts that went shelf by shelf through the house, talking
about the books on each one. Of course, an awful lot of migrating goes
on, so that what’s on certain shelves in high-traffic areas of the
house changes day by day.

Still, it strikes me as a fun (long-term) project. One of my
favorite things about visiting a friend’s house is getting to explore
her shelves. I don’t think you really know a person until you know her
taste in books, do you?

I’m sitting on the living-room couch right now. There are three
bookcases in this room (two big and one small), plus two more in the
adjoining dining area. And a stack on the piano, but those are not
supposed to be there. :::glares sternly at husband:::

Beyond the piano is the hallway that leads to the bedrooms. There
are three more bookcases lining the wall there, making for a somewhat
narrow squeeze when you need to take the vacuum cleaner out of the hall
closet, opposite the bookshelves. There really isn’t any spare wall
space at all in this house: we’ve got bookcases crammed everywhere one
will fit, and sometimes where they don’t fit.

So this "one shelf at a time" project could take me a while.

But it’ll be fun. (And maybe I’ll finally get my Library Thing catalog finished while I’m at it.)

I’ll start at the top: there are seven shelves on the tall bookcase
directly opposite me. The top one is easiest to catalog because only
half of its contents are books. The rest of the shelf is taken up by
cloth cases full of Signing Time DVDs, some Bruce Springsteen concert
DVDs, and our Star Trek and Star Wars DVD collections. Important stuff,
is what I’m saying. Also a funny little statue of a mandolin player
(well, it looks like a mandolin, at least, but I bet it’s called
something else) from Thailand, a gift from our world-traveling friend
Keri; a bowl of rosaries; and Scott’s electric guitar tuner, which I
stick up on that shelf because I am too short to see it lying there, so
it’s handy for him but I don’t get grumpy about clutter. I suppose
there are advantages to having a short wife.

Anyway, the books on that shelf:

The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry,
because you never know when you might need a dose of Eliot or Auden,
and also because that was the textbook for one of Scott’s very best
college courses, and I know firsthand how great it was because I sat in
on it a few times even though I had graduated the previous spring. It
was taught by the great Dr. Susan J. Hanna, whose booming voice and
infectious enthusiasm for poetry made her one of our favorite
professors ever. As a matter of fact, Rilla’s (real, not blog) middle
name is Susanna in her honor. (Sue Hanna, get it?)

Home Comforts,
the giant tome that compiles everything anybody ever needed to know
about the practical art of housekeeping. This was a housewarming
present from my friend Elizabeth when we moved to Virginia seven years ago. It taught me how to fold a fitted sheet nicely, which is a grand thing.

A threadbare copy of That’s Good, That’s Bad,
a picture book by Joan M. Lexau, illustrated by Aliki. Long since out
of print (it was published in 1963), this was Scott’s favorite book as
a little boy. We keep it on this high shelf because it’s too rickety to
stand up to everyday use and must be saved for special daddy-read-aloud
occasions. It’s a charming little formula story: Tiger happens upon
exhausted Boy slumped on a rock in the jungle. Tiger is puzzled because
Boy does not spring up and run away. "I have no more run in me," says
Boy—a phrase which has become an integral part of our family lexicon,
as in: "I should really put that laundry away, but I have no more run
in me." "That’s bad," says Tiger, and so the back and forth begins. Boy
recounts a tale of narrow escapes ("That’s good!") and harrowing
dangers ("That’s bad!) as he finds himself scrambling to stay a step
ahead of a very cranky Rhino. And now he’s too tuckered out to run away
from Tiger, who plans to eat him. That’s bad. Very, very bad. I don’t
want to give away the ending, but it’s Good.

A fancy leatherbound edition of Douglas Adams’s The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide: Five Complete Novels and One Story, which I believe was a graduation present to Scott from a brother and sister-in-law. It is a thing of beauty.

And finally, the rest of the shelf is taken up by a boxed set of four mammoth leatherbound volumes: collections of the work of Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens (not his complete works, of course—that would take up the whole shelf), and The Complete Sherlock Holmes.
That is, there’s a hole where the Holmes is supposed to go. Jane laid
claim to Mr. Holmes two years ago and the book hasn’t been back in the
box since.

So that was the easy shelf. Only eight books. It’s when I get to the
picture book shelves that this becomes challenging. And I’m not even
going to attempt the shelves full of comic books in the garage. Too
skinny: too many.

What are the Cybils, you ask?

The Children’s & Young Adult Bloggers Literary Awards!

The
call for nominations for the best children’s and YA books published in
2008—nine categories of books, from easy readers to poetry to
nonfiction to novels—will begin on October 1st. The tireless Cybils
organizers have worked hard to assemble panels of judges for each
category. Each category has a team of round I panelists—people to read
all the nominated books and compile a shortlist in each category—and
round II judges, who will choose the winning titles from those
shortlists. For more details, and to see lists of Cybils winners from
2006 and 2007, visit the Cybils website.

I’m a Round 1 panelist for the Fiction Picture Books category
this year, and I am really looking forward to reading (and sharing with
my children) all the nominated books. So start thinking about what
picture books bowled you over this year (published in English between
January 1st and October 15th, 2008) and watch for the call for
nominations at the Cybils site.

My fellow team members in the Fiction Picture books category:

Category Organizer

Pamela Coughlan,  Mother Reader

Panelists (Round I):

Cheryl Rainfield, Cheryl Rainfield

Stephanie Ford,  The Children’s Literature Book Club

Travis Jonker,  100 Scope Notes

(and me!)

Round II Judges:

Erica Perle,  Pajamazon

Emily Beeson, Whimsy and Deliciously Clean Reads

Maureen Kearney, Confessions of a Bibliovore

Anne-Marie Nichols,  My Readable Feast

Stefan Shepherd,  Zooglobble

To see the judging teams in the other categories, visit the Cybils site.

Books we’re reading and books I’ve recently read:

A Murder for Her Majesty
by Beth Hilgartner. Middle-grade novel about an 11-year-old girl hiding
from her father’s murderers. She witnessed the crime and has reason to
believe the killers were acting on orders from Queen Elizabeth.
Half-dead from hunger and cold after making her way from London to
York, young Alice Tuckfield encounters a group of amiable choirboys
(most of them are amiable, at least) who take her in and convince her
to hide out in the boys’ choir, as a lark. I thoroughly enjoyed this
suspenseful tale, which I read before giving it to Jane so that we
could have the fun of discussing it. I think Scott is next in line.
He’ll like the setting: much of the action occurs in and around the
York cathedral choir.

The King’s Fifth by Scott O’Dell. Next
on my list of read-before-Jane-gets-hold-of-it. She has so much more
reading time than I do that if I give it to her first, she’ll be miles
away from it before I ever turn a page. Also, I bought it, so ha-HA, I
get first dibs. This is another compelling and fascinating read. A
young Spanish cartographer sits in a prison in New Spain, awaiting
trial for failing to give the King of Spain his share—one fifth,
following the precedent set by Cortes—of the treasure he is believed to
have discovered in the Seven Lost Cities of Cibola. The young man, only
seventeen years old, relives his adventures on the trail with Coronado
and his army in search of the fabled cities where the streets are paved
with gold. I’m only halfway through and am completely captivated. Very
suspenseful, vividly detailed. The kind of historical fiction I love: a
"respectfully imagined" (to borrow Gail Godwin’s phrase) rendering of
real historical figures and events.

Secret of the Andes by Ann Nolan Clark.
Will I ever get into this book? This is my third attempt at reading it
aloud to children. First attempt was years ago, when only Jane was old
enough to listen. After three slow chapters, I gave up on the "aloud"
part and just handed it to her to finish. And she loved it. Last year,
I tried again, this time with Rose. Stymied once more by those opening
chapters. And yet, glutton for punishment optimist
that I am, I’m giving it a third go-round, this time to Rose and
Beanie. (Rose never finished reading it last year.) You see, I’ve put a
lot of faith in Jane’s enthusiastic recommendation. Any minute now,
it’s going to pick up steam. It won the Newbery in 1952, for Pete’s
sake!

For now, at least it has generated a lot of discussion about the
Incas, the Spanish conquistadors (happy coincidence!), and llamas. The
main character is a young Indian boy, Cusi, who lives in an isolated
mountain valley with his elderly guardian, Chuto, and a herd of llamas.
There have been all sorts of hints in these quiet opening chapters
about Cusi’s heritage (which he knows nothing about) and Chuto’s
occasional mysterious journeys away from Hidden Valley with some of the
llamas—journeys from which he always returns alone. Cusi wears golden
earplugs, which a wandering minstrel recognizes as a sign of royalty.
And now Chuto is going to take Cusi on a journey out of the valley for
the first time. There’s a brooding sense of "the time has come" in the
air…you see why I don’t want to give up on it? There is rich story
potential here—if the characters will just get past the
preparing-to-travel stage (and the singing to the llamas, oh my
heavens, enough already with the the interminable singing to the
llamas!) and get on with the actual traveling. Not that I’m impatient
or anything.

Some books just don’t lend themselves well to reading aloud. I’ll
give this one two more chapters before I decide, for once and for all,
that this is one of them.

Would it surprise you to hear that this was the declaration of my
amiable thirteen-year-old daughter—about one of my favorite books—and
her words delighted me?

Because what Jane meant, what she followed this adamant statement with, was that she wants me to read the rest of Sense and Sensibility
to her, because she so enjoyed hearing the first two chapters read
aloud this afternoon. I admit I’m a bit of a ham and I tackle the
accents with immense relish. (Former drama major, what can I say?)

She hasn’t read any Jane Austen yet (I think she tried Pride and Prejudice
a year or two ago and it didn’t grab her at the time), and I had a
hunch that if I read a chapter or two aloud to her she would get sucked
in and devour the rest, and then we could have all kinds of girlish
gabfests about Elinor and Marianne and that absolute pill, Fanny. And I
was mostly right: Jane howled in all the right places and we had
ourselves a fine old time. So fine that she wants to continue on as
we’ve begun.

Which is aces with me, because I can’t wait to try my hand at Lucy Steele.