If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Butter and a butter knife (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Why Would You Put Butter In the Well? You would put butter in a well if you had no electricity and lived too far out in the country for a weekly purchase of ice to keep everything cold. June Pair Kilpatrick’s memoir about growing up in the 1930s and 1940s, Wasps in the Bedroom, Butter in the Well: Growing Up During the Great Depression, describes this low point among the 21 places she lived the first 21 years of her life. “While my parents,… no doubt, wondered... (Read More ...)

Learn more about the stages of childhood at WikiMommy.com (Photo credit: Wikipedia) How to Do Nothing with Nobody. Robert Paul Smith, Author of How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone By Yourself, cherishes the long, lazy days of his childhood. He and his friends made up things to do with materials at hand – spools, bits of leather, cedar cigar boxes, chestnuts, peach pits, and wishbones. The 2010 reprint of his 1958 book includes this warning to parents about the activities he describes, as many of them use knives and ice picks: “Parental Advisory: “This book describes activities that may... (Read More ...)

Tales from Fern Hollow A hot air balloon in flight at the Mid-Hudson Valley balloon festival along the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, New York (Photo credit: Wikipedia) It was 1983. My son was four. In my mother-in-law’s neat, teacher’s hand, she wrote his name on the inside frontispiece, under, “This book belongs to:” That is probably my favorite part of a book. It is a personal statement. Someone loved you enough to give you this book. You can share it. But, it will always be yours. Later, a companion book came from his grandparents. In this one, a child’s uncertain hand printed his... (Read More ...)

Where Did You Go? Out. Storm drain (Photo credit: Wikipedia) “Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing” is an ode to a childhood in the 1920s. Author Robert Paul Smith was born the same year as my father-in-law, 1915. My father was born in 1918. His book must have been much like their childhoods. My father was surrounded by friends and cousins. His father walked to work at General Electric in Schenectady, New York and walked home for lunch. When I visited my father’s old neighborhood, I found the hill a couple blocks from his house that was closed to traffic for sledding much... (Read More ...)

Peekaboo with the Moon  Meyerheim: Three children playing "hide and seek" in a forest (Photo credit: Wikipedia) One of my son’s favorite books was one published by Weekly Reader’s Children’s Book Club in 1984. It is now one of his six-year-old son’s favorite bedtime stories. Moon Game was written and softly illustrated by Frank Asch. What Is the Story About? The story is of a little bear in the forest playing hide-and-seek with his friend, the bird. After the sun went down, the bird went home. The little bear decided to play hide and seek with the moon. Everything was fine,... (Read More ...)