Recently, I was at the register and a customer purchased a Presto Chango color pencil. Do you remember these? I do. I had a few as a kid, the thicker kind, without an eraser, that I used for special projects. I'm not sure why I loved it so much; I think because carrying around a single pencil felt more grown-up than carrying around a box of crayons or color pencils. I love when I stumble across something in our store that reminds me of childhood. I sent one of these by mail to a close friend and she got a kick out of it, and posted this picture on Instagram.
In that spirit, here are some pictures of a few of my favorite Booksmith finds that remind me of being a kid, and a few other doses of nostalgia.
Up until the age of thirteen, I lived in the Bay Area in California. My mom had an extensive fruit and vegetable garden and a honeysuckle plant that lined the kitchen window. We bought mesh bags of ladybugs at the store and let them loose on the garden so that they could kill the aphids, and even though there were ladybugs everywhere, I still loved trying to catch them in my insect-friendly Bug Bottle. I was pretty excited to see that nearly 20 years later, they still make The Bug Bottle.
Balmy summer nights on the east coast are the best. Though, living in in the city, I miss seeing stars. I had this exact chart, and stars up on the ceiling above my top-bunk bed. Spend a late night outside of the city this summer and take one of these star charts with you, or, and if you're a city dweller, make your own night sky.
We went on a lot of road trips up and down the California coast. When the trips got long, my parents would sometimes make us play the "quiet" game. When we weren't pestering our parents or trying to play quiet, we quizzed each other from Brain Quest. There are so many questions packed into this deck, and I loved that the questions went beyond the academic. It looks like they make one now specifically for car trips. Maybe my parents were on to something.
Whenever we went into San Francisco's Chinatown I always came home with a different fold-up fan. We just got these in, in blue, purple and red for only $1 apiece. Here's a picture of my co-worker and fellow blogger, Natasha, posing with one in the Used Book Cellar.
I saw the spine of this book poking out of our children's nonfiction section and was so excited. I thought this was one of those random picture books that only I read. PEOPLE by Peter Spier is full of illustrations of people from around the world. My favorite is the beginning, where sections are devoted to the vast variety of of eyes, noses, body shapes, hair, etc.
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Up until the age of thirteen, I lived in the Bay Area in California. My mom had an extensive fruit and vegetable garden and a honeysuckle plant that lined the kitchen window. We bought mesh bags of ladybugs at the store and let them loose on the garden so that they could kill the aphids, and even though there were ladybugs everywhere, I still loved trying to catch them in my insect-friendly Bug Bottle. I was pretty excited to see that nearly 20 years later, they still make The Bug Bottle.
Balmy summer nights on the east coast are the best. Though, living in in the city, I miss seeing stars. I had this exact chart, and stars up on the ceiling above my top-bunk bed. Spend a late night outside of the city this summer and take one of these star charts with you, or, and if you're a city dweller, make your own night sky.
We went on a lot of road trips up and down the California coast. When the trips got long, my parents would sometimes make us play the "quiet" game. When we weren't pestering our parents or trying to play quiet, we quizzed each other from Brain Quest. There are so many questions packed into this deck, and I loved that the questions went beyond the academic. It looks like they make one now specifically for car trips. Maybe my parents were on to something.
Whenever we went into San Francisco's Chinatown I always came home with a different fold-up fan. We just got these in, in blue, purple and red for only $1 apiece. Here's a picture of my co-worker and fellow blogger, Natasha, posing with one in the Used Book Cellar.
I saw the spine of this book poking out of our children's nonfiction section and was so excited. I thought this was one of those random picture books that only I read. PEOPLE by Peter Spier is full of illustrations of people from around the world. My favorite is the beginning, where sections are devoted to the vast variety of of eyes, noses, body shapes, hair, etc.
Speaking of books, I can't help but bring up this one. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes won the Booker this past year, and is about the power of nostalgia, and the crazy things it makes us do.
And finally, I highly recommend the new Wes Anderson film, Moonrise Kingdom, now playing at the Coolidge Corner Theater. It captures childhood beautifully
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