Book Keepers

Some days when I walk into my favorite treasure finding stores, I head straight for the book section.  Although never planned, I always seem to spend the most time in the children's section.  My boys are entangled around my feet, pulling books off the shelf, settling in on the hard linoleum floor to flip through pages of brightly colored pictures.  They stop after each one to decide which ones they'll ask to get, and which ones can be crammed back onto the shelf.  In those moments we are connected, I too begin to pull books off the shelf, thumb through the ones that look interesting, and then place the ones I will enjoy in the cart.  Later the boys will add their keepers.  Often I find a book that is in pretty bad shape, but the pictures are so sweet, or the title so great, they still manage to find the keeper pile.  So now what?  What do I do with all these books?  Here are some ideas some friends and I have come up with.

This past weekend one wanderer at our gathering preview walked away with a Raggedy Ann Pennant. She remembered the story from when she was young.  Hopefully now it graces her own daughter's wall as a piece of her own childhood passed from mother to daughter.  It's hard to cut up cute old books, even the ones that are in bad shape, but turning them into something new seems to breath a bit more life into them.