I was cleaning off a hard-to-get-to shelf when I ran across this book that had been stuck back there for years. When I saw it, nostalgia hit me in the head like a hammer.
We didn't have a lot of books when I was a kid, but this was one of them. My parents read it to me (and probably to my sister and brother) over and over. After I learned to read, I read the stories dozens of times. 
We were hard on books, and the cover and copyright page are missing on this one, so I don't even know the title of the book. What I do know is that the illustrations are as familiar to me as the backs of my hands. It was a real treat to see them again and to read a couple of the stores. My favorites when I was a kid were "The Brave Little Tailor," "Thumbelina," "Tom Thumb," and "Jack and the Beanstalk." There's no question in my mind that these stories are a part of what made me who I am. How could they not be. I'll probably read all the stories again before I put the book back on a shelf.
8 comments:
I love to find "forgotten" books that have fallen off shelves or have been misfiled for years!
WONDER TALES OF GIANTS AND DWARVES retold by Janet Murtaugh, illustrated by Florian, Random House 1945.
Sorry, the cover has it as DWARFS...I guess Murtaugh or Cerf or someone wanted to be a modernizer of spelling...
That's odd. I swear for some unknown reason the song "Thumbelina" just popped into my head a couple of days ago. I guess when we were young my sisters listened to it over and over, but that was over 50 years ago. Weird.
My mother read fairy tales to me as a child and I loved them. I think I still have a couple of books of my favorite fairy tales on my shelf. Maybe I should go back and reread them, too.
Thanks, Todd. I might have to buy a copy with a cover now that I know the title.
What a great find!
My mother used to read to us at bedtime from that book, or one similar. I wish we had kept it.
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