Vintage Book Finds

Yesterday Neil and I wandered around the local Salvation Army thrift store for awhile. We found a bunch of great books—even though I was just there a few days earlier and found a bunch of great books then. The first one that caught my eye was Donkey-donkey by Roger Duvoisin. The cover didn't look familiar at first, but then I opened it. WOW! I know this book! This was one of the books I loved as a kid. I'm pretty sure I got it from a book club. As I flipped through the pages, I realized the illustrations were practically embedded in my mind. Did you ever have a book you loved as a child that you read and studied over and over? This was one of those books. It was originally published in 1940, but the copy I have reads 1968. Oddly, on Amazon I see some "new" copies of the 1968 book starting at $27.00. Then there are 2007 editions that are listed as much as $87.88. Weird. All I know is that I had this book when I was younger and LOVED it. Sadly, there are 4 pages torn out, but it was still worth buying. When I tagged it on Instagram, I saw another person had found this book at a yard sale, but was disappointed that ALL of the pages were missing. She still bought it for the cover. It's that neat.

When I came across the book above—The Cat and the Fiddler—I was taken back again. I'm pretty sure this was also from the book club I belonged to one summer. I don't know for certain if I had this particular book, but I am family with the illustrator, Lionel Kalish. He published my all-time favorite picture book as a child, which was The Sheep of the Lal Bagh. I recognized his work as soon as I picked this book up. His illustrations are incredible. If you've never seen these books, I highly recommend you get copies of them.