Friday Forays in Fiction: Story Fed Child

I've been scrounging Mom's house for things with childhood memories attached. Today it seems appropriate to share pics of a few of the books that shaped my early years.

Above are two of the first level readers my Mom read to us with her trademark pointing at each word as she said it. It was how I learned to read before kindergarten. Though it wasn't until late in second grade that they all learned that I had never learned to sound out words. I had just learned to recognize them as pictures with names. Like ideograms or hieroglyphics. I recognized them from any angle.

Based on the styles in clothing and furniture in I Have a Secret it must have been late forties to early fifties but Mew-Mew, Bow-Wow was from 30s which was when my Mom w as learning to read.

I should have opened them up and snapped a couple shots of the pages.



These are from the sixties and were bought for my baby sister and I remember reading them to her from when I was 8 until my early teens. She started kindergarten when I was in sixth grade.


These three shots are of my Dad's Audubon's Birds of America. This was published in 1950 and first belonged to my Mom's aunt who must have given it to Dad. I am assuming this as Aunt Marie's name is stamped inside with one of Dad's address labels stuck just below.

The dust jacket is falling apart and I laid the remaining pieces together for this picture but they are kept inside.



I loved looking at the pictures of the birds from an early age and imagining stories for the birds in them. As I learned to read well enough to sound out the names and info I tried to memorize it.

I always loved the cover under the jacket and could stare at it endlessly.