vintage children's books- Story And Verse For Children

Best vintage children’s books- Story And Verse For Children

My Grandma used to read me stories until I was a big teen girl from this book.

Always the same stories.

Always the same way.

“I think it’s the books that you read when you’re young that live with you forever.”—J.K. Rowling

My requests never varied. Little Orphant Annie and The Old Woman and Her Pig.

Grandma would start slow and build up momentum, and my heart would beat faster thinking of poor Annie! And then…she’d grab me and tickle while saying,

An’ the Gobble-uns’ll git you Ef you Don’t Watch Out!

I loved that part.

If I was lucky I’d get two in the same night.

An old woman was sweeping her house, and she found a little crooked sixpence. “What,” said she, “shall I do with this little sixpence? I will go to market, and buy a little pig.” As she was coming home, she came to a stile: but the piggy wouldn’t go over the stile.

This book sits on my shelf today, carefully tucked in snugly where it’s binding won’t be further damaged. It isn’t just special to me; if you open the cover you’ll find a bookplate.

It is inscribed with my great- grandfather’s name.

Perhaps he read those to my Grandma as a girl, unaware that someday those stories would be passed further through the generations.

“A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.”
—C.S. Lewis

When I open the pages, it is easy to remember the feel of laying on the bed with her. I can see the details of the room around me and feel the shadow touch of long ago, those hands tickling me. That special voice reading to me.

A few years ago, after moving to the Midwest, I went on a tour of a poet named James Whitcomb Riley’s house. As I observed his things, there was a plaque commemorating one of his works.

Little Orphant Annie.

I had no idea he even wrote it, yet here I was in his living room.

The man who wrote the backdrop of my memories.

I love surprises like that.

Have you ever experienced a connection like that, completely unexpected?

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” – Albert Einstein