Wednesday 20 February 2013

Guest Post: Beautiful Clutter on Vintage Children's Books

Welcoming my good friend, fellow tea supper and collector of pretty treasures, Jem, of Beautiful Clutter...





Charity shops in general can be treasure troves for magpies like me, but charity bookshops are fantastic places!  Books have been my chief addiction for as long as I can remember, as a child it didn’t take me long to work out that by hunting for the books I wanted in the local charity bookshop my pocket money would stretch that much further.  Today these are where I tend to find most of the vintage and retro children’s books I come home with – especially with jumbles and car boot sales thin on the ground in my area.



My reading diet is generally a mixture of classics, contemporary fiction and fantasy – so the old children’s books I find are a brilliant palate cleanser between lengthier reads, besides which they put me in such a cheerful mood. I recently re-read my whole Beatrix Potter collection – one of the many things Anna and I have in common is a love of Miss Potter – as a January blues beater, and it worked! I think the NHS ought to look into handing out bundles of half a dozen childhood favourites to everyone having a miserable time in hospital, I can’t testify to their effectiveness as a painkiller but as a mood-booster they score very well!




With anything second (or third, or fourth!) hand comes a quirk or two; I’ll often find an exuberant crayon annotation, dog-eared pages, or a handwritten dedication on the inside front cover. Once I found a perfectly flat daisy, obviously left over from a flower-pressing experiment, in the middle of an Enid Blyton book, which made my heart sing.  These little things just add to the charm, because in general old copies of children’s books are beautiful things – the vivid covers, the illustrations inside, even the typography - are all wonderfully nostalgic. It seems funny to say that when most of the books I pick up were printed decades before I came into the world, but I’ve always felt I was  born into the wrong era!



There is a line in one of my favourite films ‘You’ve Got Mail’ from Kathleen Kelly (played by Meg Ryan) the owner of The Shop Around the Corner. Her children’s bookshop in New York is under threat of closure with a behemoth of a discount bookstore opening across the street, she said something that has always stayed with me:

‘I started helping my mother after school here when I was six years old. And I used to watch her. And it wasn’t just that she was selling books, it was that she was helping people become whoever it was (that) they were going to turn out to be. Because when you read a book as a child it becomes part of your identity in a way no other reading in your whole life does . . .’ 

To my mind she hit the nail right on the head, and I think that goes some way to explaining why children’s books are so very special!






Thank you for taking the time to read my ramble! Another thank you to Anna for having me, I hope she is having a lovely time of her well-earned break!

Jem xXx


Oh Jem, you write so poetically about the wonders of these childhood delights! A whole world within each, with many more memories besides. I'm off to lovingly stroke my Enid Blyton collection. Thank you for sharing your lovely collection with us.



11 comments:

  1. I just love old children's books Anna ,,, Wandering Horace looks intriguing ...

    Love Claire xxx

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    1. Vintage children's books often have simple yet intriguing titles, don't they. Jem's collection is magical. x

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  2. Lovely post. I have recently rediscovered Enid Blyton' s The Secret Seven which I loved as a child.
    X

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    1. I've got a yearning to re-read all the Famous Five, but need to spend some time with The Secret Seven because I never read those as a child. x

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  3. What a magical post! I absolutely adore children's books. In fact, I tend to read more children's books over other categories. Seeing books beautifully printed in the flesh makes me wonder how anyone can ever use a kindle...but that's a personal point of view...plus, I'm kinda bias being a Librarian by day!

    Jo :-) x

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    1. Some people think I'm a little...juvenile when I proudly announce that I still read children's books, but I think they're fantastic, and a good way to re-connect with childhood and what it means to be a child. Plus there are some brilliant kids' books being published every year and I don't want to miss out just because I'm supposed to be a grown up now! x

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  4. I often loose myself in old children's books, you have a wonderful collection
    Thea x

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    1. Jem is refreshed my enthusiasm for hunting them out next time I'm thrifting. Unfortunately my local charity shops favour modern children's books so it's rare to see older ones, but if that gets littlies reading I suppose I'm all for it! x

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  5. Illustrations from children's literature are just exquisite, especially the classic vintage ones :) Such as inspiration for me! I do love reading vintage children's books too, it takes you away to another world, away from all of life's worries :) xx

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    1. You have the perfect excuse (not that you need one!) to enjoy collecting children's books! x

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  6. One of the great things about becoming a parent has been revisiting all the books I loved as a child (though he's only 2 so there are plenty to come!) Rather shockingly I have been known to by vintage children's books that are falling apart and cut them up & turn them into other things... it always feels bad at first but the designs (the letters too, not just the images) are so lovely to use for craft projects! I also have quite a few that are intact, however, so that my kids will grow up, as I did, surrounded by books from the past as well as the present. My favourite books from my mum's collection are the Orlando books - divine.

    I'm also a fan of reproductions & have bought a number of Little Golden Books & the French equivalent for my boy.

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