One Hit Wonders #1

I was born smack dab in the middle of the 1970’s and grew up as a child of the 1980’s.  I’m sure that many of you reading this right now are conjuring up favorite books from your 80’s childhood – something by Shel Silverstein, perhaps…

…or maybe Judy Blume. 

Well, not me.  All of the books that I remember best from childhood were written in the 1960’s.  Why?    During my childhood, my mother was, as she liked to refer to herself, a “garage-saler”.  You read that right – garage s-a-l-e-r.  Trust me when I tell you that there wasn’t a single Saturday of my childhood that my mother did not hit at least three garage sales. 

While this had somewhat tragic results for my and my sibling’s trousseau, it did mean that over a childhood of summer Saturdays, we amassed a rather obscure book collection.  These were not popular series books, or Disney spinoffs.  These were the One-Hit-Wonders of the children’s publishing world.

The first one I’d like to share with you is the Teeny Teeny Tiny Giraffe.

Teeny Teeny Tiny Giraffe is a Rand McNally Junior Elf book.

These tiny tomes measure just 4.5 in wide and 6.5 in long.  They fit perfectly into children’s hands and were sold for the retail price of .49 cents!  I loved this book because of the rich illustrations.  I don’t recall ever actually reading the words in this book, and yet it remains an important part of my literary history. 

Which brings me to my point: a book’s value does not lie solely in its words.  Sometimes you just want to look at the pictures – and that’s ok too.