has brought me the sweetest book to read! I am speaking about my bookworm #2, my middle son.

He is in the sixth grade, and the children are allowed to not only check out books from the library, but, also from the teacher. He saw a book in his teacher’s room that he thought I would like and he brought it home to me.

The teachers provide these books for the kids, so that they can read them – and he brought it home to me! How wonderfully sweet!

The book in question follows:

Isn’t that the sweetest thing?  My son knows how much I love horses, and he brought this book home to share with me!

GO READ A BOOK!

Hello bookworm friends! I made an exciting book discovery this morning!

I just love it when that happens! Often it is a book that I have long forgotten about, perhaps one I used to read to the children when they were inky-winky munchkins – or it could be an old book of mine that I forgot I still had and was excited to get to read again.

Now that my children are older, however, they will every now and then have a book in their own collections that I don’t know about. When they were little, I knew every single book of theirs, often by heart. I spent countless hours cleaning up and reorganizing their book shelves, as well as reading to them. You will often come into this house nowadays, however, and find all five of us with our noses in our own books.

What also comes into play here is the Annual Richardson Independent School District book fair at Valley View Mall. Every year, thousands upon thousands of books are sold and the proceeds pay for scholarships for a handful of lucky seniors, and also teachers. Let me tell you, the Roberson crowd eats this UP! We will go and all meander about, looking and looking and looking at the unbelievable amount of books. A few times, we have been lucky to catch the ‘bag sale’ – $10 for all the books you can stuff into a paper grocery bag! Yeehaaawww!! And well, when that happens, I just don’t get to see all that the children come home with. (I started that sentence with ‘and’ and ended it with a preposition! I hope there are no grammar police hiding behind any of these billboards! eek!) Anyway, we all come home with our own bags and find a spot on the floor somewhere to dump our loot and paw all over our new treasures!

I try to go around and see all of the books the children have come home with, as, after all, children’s books are one of my biggest weaknesses, but, I just miss some of them in all the hullaballoo.

Eventually we find some place to put our beloved stockpiles, and then we go on about our business.

Fast forward to August, we have moved to Alabama, we don’t have as much storage space in this house, so we are still living with boxes. Fun. I am going from room to room trying to get my little creatures out of their beds to get ready for school. Lined up in the hallway are some boxes whose contents have already been pillaged, so their lids are askew. I happen to lean over one and take a peak, and I see some of the boys’ books. I delve a bit further, seeing books I am already quite familiar with, until….there it is….

A really cool book that I am sure I’ve never laid eyes upon! “Whose is this? Where’d this come from? This is so cool!”

“Huh, Mom? Wha?,” sleepy voices murmur.

“This book! Whose is it?” Silence. I swipe it and off I go to my desk to sit and wonder at this great book whose acquaintance I’ve until now been deprived of.
The book is called, The Kingfisher Treasury of Giant and Monster Stories, chosen by Jane Olliver and illustrated by Annabel Spenceley. There are fourteen stories, some of which are familiar, and the rest which are not so everyday. The illustrations are black and white and very whimsical and sort of have the text wrapped around them in some places…which I think adds to their whimsy.

It is just all in all a really neat book. And was such a lovely treasure to start my day with this morning.

My daughter eventually came into the kitchen and told me that it was my son’s and he got it from the RISD book fair and I realized, “oh, ok, that makes sense” as so many of those books get missed by my prying-mother-bookworm eyes.

If you are in the Dallas area in February, you really should check out the RISD bookfair – it is quite a treasure itself! People come from all over the country to shop for books each year. Remember – Valley View Mall, you could just keep an eye out for it on the RISD website: www.risd.org

I was also so excited that with this post, I could finally use one of my Amazon links I’ve yet to use. And then I discovered the link for this wonderful book has no graphic with it! What? The cover is great, too – that’s nuts!

Well, here it is:

GO READ A BOOK!

Well, we are all moved to Alabama now. We ran into one snag after another – we did actually make it to Alabama, but, we just couldn’t move into our house for several weeks.

Now we are finally in our house, and the kids are finally back in school, so I can get some work done around here! They actually started school quite early this year, but, it turns out to be good for them as they can meet more kiddos that way and good for me so that I can get this house put together!

I have one more box of books to set free! My books are not, however, organized – yet. I will get to that – and I can’t wait! I love to have them organized just how I like them – in their own little sections! Self-help, angels, horses, etc.

I don’t even have my kitchen or my bedroom or even my bathroom all the way unpacked, but, it just feels so GOOD to unpack my books. It is almost insanely comforting – like a ‘woobie-on-a-shelf’! Yes, that’s silly – but so VERY TRUE!

GO READ A BOOK!

Yes, I am haunted, haunted by books. You see, I go out shopping for my precious nephew fully intending to buy him something other than books. And no matter what I do, I buy the child more books.

I have bought this poor child so many books, along with, of course, the hand-me-down-books from my children that he simply must have!

He just turned three at the end of May and once again I headed out to shop for him. I intended to go to Target and look at clothes or toys and then I realize there is a Michael’s in this shopping center and he has been enjoying arts and crafts recently. What a great idea — a care package of arts and crafts goodies! Yeah! So, off I go to Michael’s…

Well………did you know they sell children’s books at Michael’s? Yeah, me neither!

I wandered, I meandered, I perused….and wound up stuck on the books aisle!!!!! Man, oh man!

I am just destined to be this boy’s ‘Provider of Books’…hahaha!!

Well, I found some really great ones, though! Even a Wiggles one in there, as he is ‘The Wiggles Fan’ — I believe he’s the president of the North American chapter of their fan club!! Hahaha!

I just love books, that is all I can say. I love books, they love me, and I love my nieces and nephews….and if I stock their bookshelves – really – how much of a crime is that?

GO READ A BOOK!

I am moving from Garland, TX to Jacksonville, AL on July 1st and therefore I am exhaustedly packing and cleaning up my house. I just did this two years ago – I can’t believe we are moving again – so soon!

We are going to buy a nice house in view of the Talladega National Forest and near all of my husband’s relatives.

This afternoon I am in the middle of packing up all of my precious books. I find this so hard. Hard. Hard. Hard. I have been putting it off, telling my husband that I needed to organize them first….right! I believe I just didn’t want to do it.

My books are my soul – and you want me to put my soul in a box? What? A box?

This is definitely difficult. Silly, I know, but, my soul just doesn’t belong in a box. Nope. Nope. Nope.

I can’t wait until we get there and I can take them all out and organize them in a new and wonderful way – knowing where each lovely one rests on the shelf. That part will indeed be fun, but, to have them in boxes – that part is just sad.

I am indeed a book-lover.

And I just don’t want my books in boxes!

Well, I had better get back to it now…ugh…

GO READ A BOOK!