The Thrifty Reader

Being married to a vintage fashionista has its advantages. One, she always looks pretty damn awesome. Two, I spend a lot more time in thrift stores and, subsequently, walk out of said thrift stores with some fairly wonderful book finds. The downside is that I spend money I should be using to pay off my now ten-year-old school loans and continue to add to the stacks and stacks of pulp in the house.

But those downsides are nothing compared to the joy I receive from getting myself nice and mellow and paging through something like this:

Yes, it's an elementary school book, but hey, it's just the kind of book I would have found in the library of Sierra Vista Elementary in lovely Upland, California, and yes, I have an insanely nostalgic streak in me that makes the characters in Springsteen's Glory Days look like serious "live-in-the-now" kind of folks.

Just listen to the music of the book's opening paragraph:

"Mexico, our sister republic on the south, is an enchanting land of mountains and deserts, golden sunshine and purple shadows, dense evergreen forests and tropical jungles."

Ahh... Such lush pictures do enter my head! I feel like I'm floating in a wee boat, lost in the cool air, hypnotic song, and dazzling bedazzledry of It's a Small World. Any moment now we'll pass through Polynesia, into the brilliant sunlight, and back on our treck toward the Storybook Land ride, soon to be swallowed whole by Monstro the whale.








Enchantment of America
Mexico
By Frances E. Wood
Illustrations by Katherine Grace
Copyright 1964 CHILDRENS PRESS, CHICAGO