Sunshine and Light

Woohoo!

No, that isn't the name of a book or movie. As you can tell from the tenor of the blog up to now, I'm a book-a-holic. Two years ago (has it been that long?) my brother called to tell me of some friends of his who were homeschooling and looking for some books. There are 7 or 8 children in their family, and there are two other families that sort of pool resources, for a total of 21 families in all. So I set up a wish list on Amazon (search wish lists for "Homeschooling Project"), and with the help of some friends, we've managed to send over 200 books in the last two years. (One friend and I were sending books off of the wish list every month) Actually, we've probably sent a lot more books than that. I know a good friend has just sent all of her childhood books as a great way to purge her house, plus help someone out. As one friend put it, we always complain about the direction that the culture is going today, we should help out people who are raising their children to be decent, upstanding citizens.

Have I mentioned recently that I have AWESOME friends?

Anyway the reason for my big woohoo is that the local library is wrapping up their annual used book sale, and today is bag day - as many books as you can shove into a Borders bag for $5. I'm sure it won't surprise anyone if I tell you that the place was PACKED. At first I was really disappointed, all of the kids books were really picked over. The religious books seemed a bit iffy (the families are Catholic, and really like getting books on Catholicism, the Saints, etc). But I did find Christmas in Britain, Christmas in Italy, Christmas in Sweden and Christmas in Colonial America. Cool. Very timely. Then I went in into the next room and (cue angel choirs) there were the literature and history books. There were three books on plays by a Catholic nun (SCORE!) and a Henrik Ibsen 3-play book (I don't know why, but I love him), some books of poetry, some Shakespeare, and Robert Louis Stevenson. The history selection while interesting in general was probably too detailed for this point in the kids education. But I picked up a book called "Shapers of Africa", a book called "A Compact History of Mexico". For me I showed restraint, picking only "The Last Plantagenets" by Thomas Costain and "Christmas Gift!" by Ferrol Sams. I staggered out of there with 35 books. I then cursed myself as I walked home 4 blocks in the rain.

Labels: Charities

posted by MyHusbandRules @ 1:44 PM