Friday, April 15, 2011

Fond Memories of My Childhood at My Local Library - EtsyBloggers Blog Carnival

"The Sonnet" by Thomas Baker

When I was a little girl I loved going to the local library with my twin sister, Andrea (she now has an Etsy shop too: Storybook Artifact), and picking out a big stack of books as big as I was...they were all filled with magical, imaginative illustrations and fanciful fairytales.

The EtsyBloggers Blog Carnival topic of the month that I am choosing is the following question:
"What fond memories do you have of your public library and reading?"
My fondest memories of reading and my local library take place in a small Oklahoma town called Sperry where I grew up with my best friend and twin sister Andrea. Probably my favorite memory of the library was when we went to a small book review event featuring the collection of American Girl books. This was Andrea's and my favorite collection of stories and characters; we read many of the books in the sets and related well with each American Girl whose life took place in a different time period. I identified with the character "Molly" and Andrea felt the same about the character "Samantha"; however we both had a favorite character that we identified with the most "Kirsten". This was back when the American Girls book series was based on ten-year-old girl characters that focused on various periods of American history from the viewpoint of girls; now the stories are expanded to share the tales about contemporary girls.
I enjoyed learning about American history, the different vintage styles, and the fascinating tales about these adventurous little girls. Andrea and I had a recipe book featuring the American Girl Felicity that we loved; it was filled with delicious 18th century colonial dishes. We enjoyed playing in the kitchen with our grandmother and making these from-scratch recipes.
Getting back to the American Girl book event that was at our small town local library, only three girls showed up at the little event: myself, Andrea, and a friend of ours from school, Cate. We all got our picture taken and it was featured in the local newspaper (I remember thinking this was the coolest thing). Like the American Girl characters, we were all about ten years old. During the book review we shared our thoughts about the book series, got to see an American Girl doll (this must have been when the dolls first came out and became part of the product line), and we got to make one of the American Girl crafts (I always wanted one of their craft books...if I have a little girl of my own someday, I'll have to get her one). ;-) We created little dolls made out of yarn with button eyes and yarn pigtails; this craft is featured Kirsten's Craft Book.
This was a delightful time in my life...I look forward to reading each of the books from the American Girl series; and couldn't put them done til I was finished. I highly recommend these books to any little girl, to broaden her horizons about American History and tickle her imagination!

Speaking of libraries, it was a year ago this month that I posted a blog article titled "Free Marketing for Your Etsy Business at Your Local Library!" Check it out...you just might start hanging out at your local library again! ;-)

1 comment:

Artifact Andrea said...

Loved reading American Girl books! What an adventure it was to have a sense of my ancestors' daily living at such a young age. :-) Kids eat this stuff up!!! When our history brings on imagination, we know that we're doing something right.

_Andrea