Children, Books and Christmas

Books and children, what a wonderful combination. My granddaughter and I have spent many hours together looking for and reading books. When she was younger we read The Bobbsey Twins and books by Lucy Fitch Perkins, as she has gotten older we moved on to The Lamb Shakespeare books, Trixie Belden and Bluebonnet series. Along the way an amazing thing happened she began to ask questions and learn about the way things were in the olden days. The Bluebonnet series is an obscure girls series about a teenager who lives on a ranch in Texas during the 1920's and the Trixie Belden series is about a girl who lived in the 1950's each shows how different girls lives were from what they are now and always gives us a starting point for an interesting conversation.

The language used and what was expected of girls and women is vastly different from today. When I first told her that when I was in school I really wanted to take shop but girls were not allowed to instead we got to take Home Economics, she was dumfounded. She is beginning to understand that many people had to fight on many different levels so that she could do something as simple as take woodworking classes in school.

If you are an aunt, uncle, parent or grandparent give a book and take the time to read it with the child. I know that the electronic and glittering toys are more fun but a good vintage book doesn’t need batteries and it lasts forever. Come take a look www.pecantreebooks.com if you don’t find anything that sounds interesting than drop me an e-mail or check out E-bay or Amazon. The long winter nights are a perfect time to read, talk and get to know each other.