strange and random happenstance

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Published by: Educa Books
Publication Date: June 26th, 1997
Format: Hardcover, 368 Pages
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

I like to brag a bit about my mom being way ahead of the curve with regard to Harry Potter. Harry Potter was just starting to get buzz stateside by the fall of 1999 when Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was released, following swiftly on the heals of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets which was released that June in the US. By the time Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was released in 2001 they were having midnight release parties at bookstores and everyone was awaiting the release of the first film, a deal sealed in late 1998. Summer of 1999 my mom spent every minute talking about owls delivery mail and magical ceilings that reflected the night sky. Prepping for displays for her library when school started in the fall our dining room became a veritable owlry. We had so many stuffed animal owls pictures from my 21st birthday have A LOT of owls in them. Thankfully my friends were really good at doing owl impressions so it's a cherished memory. I personally didn't get around to reading the first three books until I got sick over the Christmas holidays. I remember as the new century dawned I was ensconced in my bed reading about "The Chamber of Secrets" and totally understanding for the first time why my mom subjected us to the summer of owls.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling, Owls, These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster
Published by: Everyman's Library
Publication Date: 1912
Format: Hardcover, 224 Pages
To Buy

Here we go people! Another orphan story! Can't say my mom wasn't consistent! She liked unconventional families, be they big and rambling, or the families you found after being an orphan. And isn't it the time of year for orphans? It's very bleak Dickensian Christmas to be one... Anyway, my mom became obsessed with this book because of the 1955 film starring Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron. Now usually it's me that falls in love with books after first seeing the movie, but I guess that turns out to be hereditary... The thing is she had issues with the movie, she thought it odd that a young girl would fall in love with her benefactor and the age difference she found creepy. So she read the book to see how much was changed and fell in love with the book, which is quite different and told in a wonderful epistolary style. In fact she was so obsessed with Daddy-Long-Legs that when she learned there was an out of print sequel, Dear Enemy, she spent months scouring shelves of used bookstores for a copy. So one year, for Christmas, I found a copy online, a first edition inscribed "Christmas 1915" and gave it to her. I think she liked it. She oddly didn't read it for quite a few years. I think by that point she was worried it would disappoint her and then it came back into print and I found her reading a paperback copy one day but she wouldn't comment on it being good or bad. So I at least know the first book in the series is a classic... the second is up in the air.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Charles Dickens, Christmas, Classic, Daddy-Long-Legs, Dear Enemy, Families, Family, Film, Fred Astaire, Jean Webster, Leslie Caron, Orphan, These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

Saffy's Angel by Hilary McKay
Published by: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Publication Date: 2001
Format: Paperback, 256 Pages
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Again, leave it to my mom to fall in love with another series that is impossible to find stateside. In fact, despite being an Anglophile myself there's a strong likelihood that the majority of my overseas book purchases over the years have been down to my mom. Once again it's a large rambling non-conventional family and the adventures they get up to, this time in the wake of their grandfather's death and his bequests to the Casson family. What my mom loved most about this series is that all the children are named after paint colors. Or should I say colours because this is a British series? My mom was always going back and forth between books and art and loved when the two commingled. Though what I am most grateful for is that this series didn't come out until long after I was born. I don't think I could be a Saffron or a Cadmium or a Indigo and definitely not a Permanent Rose! It's a very cool concept for a fictional family, but I don't think it would work without a few raised eyebrows in the real weird. But if you want to escape for awhile into a family that you wish you could be a part of, quirky names and all, then start with Saffy's Angel, because this series might just be for you!   

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anglophile, British, Cadmium, Casson Family, Family, Hilary McKay, Indigo, Permanent Rose, Saffron, Saffy's Angel, These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

Heidi by Johanna Spyri
Published by: Everyman's Library
Publication Date: 1880
Format: Hardcover, 384 Pages
To Buy

Before my mom moved into a nursing home for some reason she became a little orphan obsessed, Anne of Green Gables, Heidi... many of our Children's Classics pulled off our library shelves and read and oddly reshelved all dealing with orphans. The reshelving is actually how I found out what she was reading. My mom was a wicked fast reader so I often didn't know what she was reading at any given time as a book could be picked up and completed in an afternoon and if I hadn't checked on her in awhile, well, the book was already done and dusted when I checked in on her. I have actually not read Heidi, I know, an oversight on my part but in fairness the beautiful Everyman's Library Children's Classics edition was just published last fall and I picked it up when at a Joe Hill event in Milwaukee. But I was mildly obsessed with Heidi when younger because I was a TV addict and the old movie stations would air it a lot. I'm not sure if it was the original Shirley Temple version or the later sixties version, I just remember being obsessed with the Alps and the gorgeous house. When I was little I often didn't care about story, it was all about setting for me. Could I lose myself in the sets and the place? Well yes I did. Perhaps that's why to this day I think the settings in books are so important, and give me a big country house any day and I'll be happy! 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alps, Anne of Green Gables, Children's Classics, Everyman's Children's Classics, Heidi, Joe Hill, Johanna Spyri, Milwaukee, Orphans, Setting, Shirley Temple, These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
Published by: Bullseye Books
Publication Date: 1936
Format: Paperback, 281 Pages
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Fun fact time. My mother wasn't a fan of ballet. Extra odd because she was a Russian major and I know studied the Ballets Russes. So either she didn't like ballet because of her studies or it was just something she said to me because she didn't want me to do it. In fairness I would have been a horrible ballet student and she was just heading off a battle before it started. But here's the thing, I couldn't care less about ballet. I never wanted to take ballet, the shoes just transfixed me the first time I saw them in a store window at West Towne Mall. So if my mom's outward dislike of ballet came about because I was eyeing those shoes, I feel bad that we couldn't unite in our dislike. Despite her "dislike" of ballet she adored Ballet Shoes. In fact, she adored any book written by Noel Streatfeild, an author that is shamefully underrepresented on US shelves with only a handful of her many "shoes" books available here. In fact I had to often order her books from England for my mom because she couldn't get enough of her writing! Thankfully Noel Streatfeild's books are a little more accessible stateside after the adorable 2007 adaptation of this book staring Emma Watson. So if you're an author whose books aren't showing up on the shelves just get a movie adapted of your work staring someone from Harry Potter and you're set apparently! As to why it's a favorite of my mom's? She loved historical fiction about children foisted into situations meant to test their mettle. Extra points if they're an odd conglomeration of a family with lots of quirks and ambitions. And if that's your jam this book will be up your alley too.   

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Ballet, Ballet Shoes, Ballets Russes, Emma Watson, England, Family, Harry Potter, Historical Fiction, Mall Rats, Noel Streatfeild, Russia, Shoes, These Are a Few of My Favorite Things, West Towne Mall

The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall
Published by: Yearling
Publication Date: June 14th, 2005
Format: Paperback, 288 Pages
To Buy

If you haven't been paying attention you might not have noticed a trend in my mother's favorite books. That trend is a love for big families and summer vacations that seem to last forever. My mom has four siblings. Two of her three elder sisters were married when my mom was young, making several of her nieces and nephews closer to her own age than her sisters. Family was always around, be it her nieces or nephews or cousins, her love of a large family unit was born through her experiences as a kid. As for idealized summer vacations... from what I've gathered any vacation usually was an excruciatingly long ride to somewhere only my grandfather was interested in, often insisting everyone stay in the car while he went off and did what he wanted to do. Alone. I can picture my mom in all those cars dreaming up a vacation worthy of a family like the Penderwicks. So I think it's easy to say that she longed to have the perfect family summers that books, like The Penderwicks, encapsulated and she devoured by the shelf. When this series was first published it was obviously going to be an instant favorite with my mom, I mean, seriously, just look at the cover and the fact that it's basically combining Magic by the Lake with The Secret Garden. Timeless tales of youth and a golden summer that she dreamed of having. Well, if you can't have it in life at least you can have it in literature.    

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Edward Eager, Family, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Jeanne Birdsall, Magic by the Lake, Sisters, Summer, Summer Vacation, The Penderwicks, The Secret Garden, These Are a Few of My Favorite Things, Vacation

The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Published by: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: 1967
Format: Paperback, 240 Pages
To Buy

My mom has always been a fan of Zilpha Keatley Snyder. She's one of the few authors I was allowed to order from my school book program. I have an old Scholastic copy of The Egypt Game and I was obsessed with that cover. In fact, I had many books when younger that I was meaning to read which instead I would just look at the cover and make up my own story in my head. I was convinced that The Egypt Game would be too scary. This was probably due to my Dad and brother. While me now has a deep abiding love of all things Egyptian, I literally can not get enough, me then was convinced mummy curses were real and they were coming for me. Actually I still think mummy curses are real, they're just not coming for me because I'm not stupid enough to mess with them. But I remember going to Chicago to see King Tut. It was a big family trip where we were meeting up with my cousin and Aunt who lived down there and all going to The Field Museum to see Tut. We got there and my Dad and brother informed me that if I looked on the boy King I would get the curse. I spent the trip in the stairwell crying. Therefore reading a book called The Egypt Game that I got around this same time seemed dire folly. YOU DO NOT MESS WITH MUMMIES! Though I'm glad I didn't read the book then, just making my nightmares worse, because now I can enjoy it with hindsight and the knowledge I'm reading yet another book my mother loved.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Chicago, Curses, Egypt, King Tut, Mummy, Scholastic, The Egypt Games, The Field Museum, These Are a Few of My Favorite Things, Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Basil of Baker Street by Eve Titus
Published by: Whittlesey House/ McGraw Hill
Publication Date: 1958
Format: Hardcover, 96 Pages
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Basil of Baker Street is a long lost book in that it's been subsumed in the wake of Disney's The Great Mouse Detective. I'm glad that everyone got to watch the adventures of Basil on the big screen, and no one could have been happier than my mother who audibly told me she was so glad to not have to see another My Little Pony or Care Bears film, I was only seven at the time and my brother was four, so those type of films were kind of our wheelhouse, but we got on board with Basil. It's not just that it's a clever reinterpretation of Sherlock Holmes for a younger audience, if you hunt up the books which were just re-released in a beautiful boxed set, you will see what a gifted author Eve Titus was. She was able to create a gripping mystery as well as a loving homage to Conan Doyle. This series combined the great literature loves that my mother instilled in me, a love of mysteries and a love of anthropomorphic animals. It's murder meets Wilbur and Charlotte! Though Charlotte's Web is already a little bleak... and the adding of murder would kind of skew it towards Animal Farm... but digression aside, these books are my jam. My mom and I spent hours pouring over the shelves in used bookstores trying to find all of Basil's adventures. I remember one time I was out and found a copy of Basil in Mexico at Half Price Books in one of those paperback boxed deals and when I got home my mom was beyond excited I'd found a missing Basil! Though ironically not Basil and the Lost Colony.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Animal Farm, Arthur Conan Doyle, Basil of Baker Street, Care Bears, Charlotte's Web, Eve Titus, My Little Pony, The Great Mouse Detective, These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Published by: Everyman's Library
Publication Date: 1910
Format: Hardcover, 318 Pages
To Buy

Here's a not very secret secret I'll let you in on, I hate The Secret Garden. Love the concept, love most of the adaptations of it, hate the actual book and the pompous little shits Dickon, Mary, and Colin. They are spoiled obnoxious brats who happen to be cruel and taunt the locals by imitating their Yorkshire accents. So if you're into books with kids who have cold-blooded superiority in their hearts this book is for you! And yet it is easily one of my mom's favorite books. I'm not saying she necessarily found the children's bad behavior amusing, though that could have been a factor, I know it would have bemused my paternal grandmother, I'm saying she loved it for the garden. My mom loved her garden, an inheritance from her own mother. She spent years getting it perfect, making it all the more sad when her Parkinson's made it impossible for her to work in it. When we were recently moving I found several photo albums of our garden during different years. All those flowers brought to life and loved, from those that were at the house when we moved there to those transplanted from other family gardens and loved for their ancestry. Therefore her love of The Secret Garden makes sense, a perfect garden tucked away that is all your own. She collected many editions because she adored the illustrations of all the different flowers. Her favorites were those done by Tasha Tudor and Inga Moore. At one point I suggested culling her numerous editions and she agreed as long as we kept the ones with the best illustrations. I think maybe one left our shelves that day.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bookshelves, Classics, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Gardening, Gardens, Illustrations, Inga Moore, Parkinson's, Tasha Tudor, The Secret Garden, These Are a Few of My Favorite Things, Yorkshire

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Published by: Everyman's Library
Publication Date: 1908
Format: Hardcover, 256 Pages
To Buy

The Wind in the Willows has always been odd to me. There's a disconnect between the animals being occasionally very animal like and then occasionally being anthropomorphic with Toad and his car. Unlike many of my mother's other favorite books she never read The Wind in the Willows to me, just bought me a lovely slipcased edition and expected me to read it on my own, which I don't think I did until I was in my twenties. Therefore I think I was too old to gloss over the more annoying characteristics of Toad and suspend disbelief. The result of this is I have been drawn to the art more than to the story, something that helped enable my mom's love of buying beautiful editions of all her favorite books. There's our edition illustrated by Michael Hague, a little cartoonish but nice, the newer Robert Ingpen edition, the anniversary Ernest H. Shephard edition, cohort of A.A. Milne, my slipcased edition illustrated by Inga Moore, Everyman's Library's Arthur Rackham edition, and favorite of all, the Charles van Sandwyk edition. Charles van Sandwyk is a Canadian artist whom everyone should know. He has the technique of Rackham but there's more richness and humor than Rackham was ever able to capture. Sadly this edition during various moves has been misplaced. So the least we can do to honor my mother is buy myself, buy yourself, this edition and try to suspend disbelief and go along for a ride with Mr. Toad.  

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A.A. Milne, Anthropomorphic, Arthur Rackham, Charles Van Sandwyck, Ernest H. Shephard, Illustration, Kenneth Grahame, Mr. Toad, The Wind in the Willows, These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

Magic by the Lake by Edward Eager
Published by: Turtleback Books
Publication Date: 1957
Format: Hardcover, 208 Pages
To Buy

My mom had one mandatory author I had to love and that author was Edward Eager. Thankfully things worked out or who knows, I might have been disowned. But these books consumed me, as did the artwork by the amazing N.M. Bodecker. Sometimes aspects of a book have so inspired me I've tried to make them real. After reading The Time Garden I was obsessed with planting thyme anywhere my mom would let me in the hopes I'd be able to time travel. As an aside woolly thyme is adorable. I also would imitate Bodecker's style in my artwork creating a Romeo and Juliet comic in high school. The only problem is Edward Eager only wrote seven books, three duologies, two of which are linked, and a standalone. That is not nearly enough! I will always be eager for more! Yes, I know that's a groanworthy pun, but it felt necessary. Interestingly enough until a Christmas where I hunted up all seven first editions for my mother as a present she only had one of Eager's books, Magic by the Lake. This was chronologically the second book in the series though released third and followed Martha, Jane, Mark, and Katharine's further adventures as they went on vacation. While I always loved this volume because it seemed plausible on one of my many trips to Door County that I'd run into a magical turtle I think it was my mom's favorite because of a very bad vacation she took with her family. I don't remember what year it was but when my mom was younger the whole extended family rented a cabin and it was going to be the best summer ever, instead they were trapped inside all day by rain. The one picture that remains is a portrait in misery or great hilarity depending on if you're viewing it from my mother's POV or her dad's, the photographer. I believe that Magic by the Lake became her favorite Eager book because this was the summer vacation she dreamed of and never got. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Door County, Edward Eager, Magic by the Lake, N.M. Bodecker, Photography, Romeo and Juliet, Summer, Summer Vacation, The Time Garden, These Are a Few of My Favorite Things, Thyme, Vacation

The Borrowers by Mary Norton
Published by: Harcourt, Brace and Company
Publication Date: 1952
Format: Hardcover, 180 Pages
To Buy

In our library we had a few volumes of books that were my mom's treasures from when she was little. There were many random volumes of sets cribbed from her siblings, but there was one whole set, Mary Norton's The Borrowers. This was easily my mother's favorite. One of my first bookstore memories is going to Pooh Corner on Monroe Street when The Borrowers Avenged was released. The memory is so vivid in my mind it's amazing that looking up the publication date that I was only four years old at the time! But I remember my mom's joy at a new volume in this beloved series published almost twenty years after the previous volume. I know at some point I read The Borrowers for school because our much loved copy has the outlines of a book report in it, but my biggest memory of this book is the fact that I totally thought it was real. I BELIEVED that Pod, Homily, and Arrietty lived in our walls. We had an old laundry shoot that had been closed off so when you opened the door in the downstairs bathroom there was a little platform, or as I thought, a little room just perfectly sized for the Clock family. My mom indulged me and let me build them furniture and even put food in there. I was so amazed that the food was always gone in the morning and my parents insisted they never took it. Of course that meant we had some really well fed mice for awhile, but I will always have this memory whereas those mice are long gone.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Arrietty, Bookstore, Homily, Library, Mary Norton, Mice, Pod, Pooh Corner, Siblings, Stolen, The Borrowers, The Borrowers Avenged, These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

My mom died earlier this year after a long battle with Parkinson's. If you knew one thing about my mom you knew she loved books. She also loved gardening and musicals and NCIS, but above all, books. She had different books she was reading in each room of our house. She'd be reading about genealogy in the living room and her latest obsession which would most likely turn into a display at the school where she was the librarian in the TV room and she'd be reading murder mysteries up in her bedroom usually until right before she went to sleep, which could be late in the night depending on the quality of the killing. Really the only way to celebrate my mom's life was to share her favorite books with everyone. Because what we love, what we read, informs us and becomes part of our DNA. Therefore for November and December I'm going to share with you the books she shared with me in order to mold me into the reader I am today, even if I tend to usually give the credit to Timothy Zahn and his Star Wars books over anyone else. The truth is my mom was there from day one, sorry Timothy, reading to me and making me watch The Sound of Music on Christmas while I lay on the couch with the chicken pox, because I had to see her second favorite musical, her first being My Fair Lady. That's when I was eleven. But there's also the time I was nineteen and she shoved Harry Potter at me long before he became the sensation he is today. And the time I was so young that I can't remember how old I was but she let me put food in the wall for the Borrowers because I got it out of a book she loved. So here's to my mom and her love of literature.     

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Books, Chicken Pox, DEATH, Gardening, Genealogy, Harry Potter, Librarian, Libraries, Literature, Mom, My Fair Lady, NCIS, Star Wars, The Sound of Music, These Are a Few of My Favorite Things, Timothy Zahn