"When you read a book as a child, it becomes part of your identity in a way that no other reading does."

Kathleen Kelly from the movie You've Got Mail has about twenty boatloads of one-liners, and that one about reading is one of her truest. I don't presume that Toby and Sue will grow to have enormous significance in my kids' lives, but these books are some of Calvin's favorites lately. I am grateful to have them, and to know that Calvin's great-grandma Patti read them and probably laughed at Sue's funny lopsided dress hems and the children's idea that their mother would rather have wild baby bunnies for her birthday than a bouquet of flowers.

I have tried to collect several of the really significant books from my early childhood and youth, such as Hop on Pop (a classic!), Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day, and The Witch of Blackbird Pond. I don't yet have any Babysitters Club, but I've got about a truckload of Nancy Drew, and by the time my dad's done gathering them, I'm sure we'll have them all. This is not to say that my kids will be interested in reading any of these obviously superior books, however; I know of my mom's distinct appreciation for the "girl and her horse" genre, absolutely zero of which ever interested me. (That seems a shame to me now, because it is such a charming genre, but at the time they would have been age-appropriate for me I couldn't be persuaded to even go near them.)

I would really love to know the significant books in my predecessors' lives, the further distant the more so. What were yours?

1919

On December 15, 1919, Hannah Hanson wrote in her ledger journal,

"The weather is still very cold, the 17th is when the world is coming to an end. I think it will be an end to some folks if they haint got a good warm house & plenty of coal." 

On the 18th she wrote,

"Well today is the day after the world come to an end but we are still here the coldest weather we have ever felt. We are all well."

Apparently an astrologer named Albert Porta claimed that there would be six planets in alignment that day, which would cause too much magnetic energy and cause the world to explode. Obviously Hannah wasn't too into astrology or astrologers that Wikipedia doesn't even have on file.

By the way, unrelated except I noticed how thick the ink was during that entry, her book is handwritten with ink. In some places it's pretty faded and looks like pencil, but it's an ink pen. Here is her handwriting: