One of the best things about living in the future, as I refer to the 21st Century, is access to information that has come before. And I in my feminist way, of course, am referring to the bits and pieces of daily life that get lost along the way to posterity, notoriety, and history… the daily stuff of the lives of families, women and children.
I love being able to flip through the pages of a catalog or a Ladies Publication from 100 to 150 years ago. These acts give me a sense of connectedness to the culture of my foremothers. My maternal grandmother was born in 1883. She began having children in 1910 with the birth of my Uncle Carl. The last of those children, my Aunt Alice, passed away early in September of the year at the age of 92.
How on Earth can I convey the sense of connectedness and continuity of family to my 4-year-old grand daughters when the generations in my part of the family tend toward the long side?
I can read to them from children’s literature of the time when my mother was being read to by her mother, 100 years ago. My mother was born in 1914.
This morning I surfed on over to archive.org and found A Book of Cheerful Cats. I downloaded a PDF of this delightfully illustrated tome to read to the twins when they visit. I will also print out copies to color, cut, glue, glitter and with which to generally have fun.
Somehow I find the search for images from other times and childhoods to be relaxing and rewarding. When I was little I would look through my mother’s tattered memorabilia from her childhood. I was the fifth kid of my mom’s who pawed through her stuff, and it was worse for the wear. While the tactile experience is gone, the rich content of books from those times, minus the allergy inducing dust and mildew, is out there waiting for new generations of family and rainy or snowy afternoons.
What a marvelous and clever way to share family history with the next generation! Very creative.
Why thank you, Cathy!
I just saw an exhibit of The Little Golden Books, which reminded me of childhoods past!
Sometime I will find a copy of my favorite GoldenBook, I believe it was called Bobby the Dog. He was a cosmopolitan dog, shopping for bread, wine and cheese via cobblestone streets. It was so very European.
What a great idea! I am so going to check out archive.com. I love old things, particularly old children’s books.
Thank you for this wonderful post!
You are most welcome! I like to use out-of-copyright graphics as the base level of blog graphics at times and that is how I started digging into it.
Nancy, I love this post. I too am the 5th and also remember enjoying books that had been my mother’s when she was a child. when mom died last year I inherited her “My Book House” collection, the illustrations alone make me want to create T-shirts. Glad to have the link to archive.org too.
Elin, I want to read a post about “My Book House.” Hint, hint.
What a lovely idea. Do you remember the cloth books? I remember paging through them over and over.
Oh yes, and I wish I had mine and my brothers! The different styles of illustration intrigued me. I have to do a patch to my daughter’s first cloth book that one of our dogs nibbled.
I still have all my old Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew books, which I can’t seem to get rid of. It’s fascinating to look back on old children’s books, and I’m definitely checking out archive.org, thanks!
I still have a Nancy Drew set that I read as a kid. I don’t know which cousin or aunt was the one it was handed down from, but they are blue cloth covers, published in the 40s maybe as all the cars had running boards. My first best friend and I read them all, between her set and mine, traded them back and forth, took them out from the school library and the public library. The twins are only 4 and not yet ready for Nancy Drew.
Oh I just love this idea! My grand niece Maddy, is coming to visit next week (she is 5 and she is hanging with me while her mom is at a conference during the day) and I think I will try to figure out something like this to do! Her great grandfather (my husband’s grandfather) was an amazing innovator — he was, among other things, a clock maker. This piece inspired me to help Maddy make that intergenerational connection!
You will find a ton of stuff to look at, download, print and work with. I is a good way to teach kids to do research too! Let me know how it goes.
I love looking at old stuff from generations past. I know I would have loved living in some of those simpler but grand times! I much rather prefer vintage books too.
I think times were different, but simple is not easy and I don’t know that I would like all the work, the lack of access to fresh food.
Very clever! I don’t think anyone has the old books of my childhood. My nephew who is in love with books should never read this but I think they all just got passed down and around and gone.
This is what happened to mine too. That is why I love archive.org and the open library project.