Beloved Books from My Childhood

To coincide with a link party happening over on Kelly's Korner Blog today, I am sharing a quick blog about some of my very favorite children's books.

This is not known to many, but as a child I was obsessed with books. The credit is not mine; it is my mother's. She brought us to The Berkshire Athenaeum (Pittsfield's public library) ritualistically. It was a part of every single week for us - heading to the library to spend a couple of hours going through shelves and shelves of books, picking out 15-20 of them to bring home in the huge, special canvas library bag that my mother carried. We were such enthusiastic patrons of the library that our family was even selected as "Library Family of the Year" once. True story - our family name is there on a plaque as we speak.

I loved opening a book and flipping through its pages, breathing in the very distinct smell. Sometimes we'd bring home a brand new library book - those ones smelled especially fresh and delicious. To this day, the scent of a children's book brings back fond memories. And yes, the smell of a children's book is noticeably different than the smell of any other kind of book, in case you were wondering.

Here are some of my favorite books from my childhood... Please note that these were the ones that immediately came to my mind when I began to think about writing this blog. If I sat and thought about it for longer, I'd no doubt come up with a list of books that's WAY too long to be suitable to make you read through.

Caps for Sale

by Esphyr Slobodkina

There's a Wocket in My Pocket 

by Dr. Seuss

Heidi
By Johanna Spyri
(This particular Great Illustrated Classics version is the one I owned as a child.)

The Twits
by Roald Dahl

Mrs. Rumphius
by Barbara Cooney

Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters: An African Tale 

by John Steptoe
(Incredible illustrations in this one!)

My favorite book series included:

Sweet Valley Twins - I feel like every young girl should read these books. The main characters were well-behaved, polite girls who were both intelligent and curious - with lots of different interests. Good role models for pre-teen girls, #IFYOUASKME.  My favorite was this special Christmas edition:

Boxcar Children - Well this is sort of dark but these were stories about a whole family of orphaned children who lived out of an abandoned boxcar in the woods. Mystery-solving and adventures ensue. Obvi.

Encyclopedia Brown - These were stories about a young prodigy named Leroy (aka Encyclopedia aka Big L.Roy aka E-Breezy aka YA BOY E!) who solved crimes and mysteries using acute observational skills and facts he'd learned while poring over texts and books, as boy geniuses do. I swear, the Encyclopedia Brown books taught me everything I needed to learn about critical thinking and observation skills in day-to-day life. To this day, I find myself being intuitive about certain things or picking up on certain details because of knowledge I'd acquired in those books. I'm definitely going to #make my kids read them, too. Just because I don't want them to be dumb idiots.

Nancy Drew - Now here's a bitch who knows how to solve a mystery. Wow, actually I guess a lot of my interests as a child involved me sharpening my detective skills via the books I was reading. Guess that panned out really well for me, career-wise.  #CommunicationsDegree #DoesFacebookStalkingCountAsBeingASleuth?

I'm not a big reader these days. Oh, who am I kidding? I don't read at all nowadays except for lots and lots of stuff on computer screens. But reading was a huge part of my childhood and there's no doubt in my mind that it helped me become a sharper thinker, a better writer, and a better communicator in general. Not to mention it inspired me to be creative - both by honing my appreciation for illustration in picture books and strengthening my imagination by forcing me to visualize characters and settings myself in non-picture books.

Thanks to Kelly's Korner Blog for inspiring this blog post! Head to her blog today to browse through lots of others' blogs about their favorite childhood books.

Day Hike on Mt. Seymour

From Vancouver, the view of mountains in the not-so-distant distance is pretty alluring. Mt. Seymour is just one of the several mountains visible from Vancouver, and last Sunday we took advantage of the non-rainy weekend weather to head out of the city for a day hike.

Dave's friend-slash-colleague Evan had agreed to be our hiking buddy for the day, so we scooped him up around 11am and headed north to Mt. Seymour. The drive takes less than an hour - one of the many benefits of living in Vancouver is how quickly you can be in the mountains!

We parked in Mt. Seymour's lower parking lot, got ourselves booted up (plus I threw on some snowshoes for good measure), and began our hike!

.  trailhead  .

The Seymour Main Trail for winter hiking/snowshoeing goes up alongside the alpine ski trails of the mountain, so we could see/hear skiers and snowboarders along the way. Also - views on views on views:

.  view of the alpine ski trails  .

.  snow  .

.  where we stopped for lunch  .

Mt. Seymour supposedly has three different peaks to reach, the third being the true summit at 4,754 feet.  It's a bit confusing to tell where the first peak is, though, IF YOU ASK ME. For awhile we had ourselves convinced we'd already reached the first peak - in record time, mind you - but apparently we'd made that announcement a little prematurely. Or a lot prematurely. We hit the actual first peak about an hour and a half later. And then we called it quits, because although we could see both of the next two peaks from the first one... it was apparent that our views would be best from the first. 

.  finally at the first peak, behind me  .

.  view from the top of the first peak, looking northwest  .

.  top of the world  .

.  looking south from the first summit of mt. seymour  .
.  view of vancouver and english bay  .

Coming down a snowy mountain on a beautiful day is a lot more fun than climbing up it, because you can glissade down!! Glissade is mountain-lingo for "slide on ya bum." You can't slide down the entire mountain, obviously, but you can do it in certain parts. It saves time and #LetsBeHonest it's fun as shit. We even scooted off the trail to purposely climb up another trail... just so we could slide down it. Here's some of that happening:

.  glissading!!  .

.  whooooooo  .

Sidebar, this will make your ass hurt. I still have that "there should really be a bruise here" feeling in one large area of my bum/upper thigh. Worth it.

.  very approximated version of our trail - except ours was under snow  .
.  click for larger view  .

. the three ALLEGED summits  .

Hopefully I'll end up on Mt. Seymour again this summer to see what it's like sans snow. There are lots of other trails around the mountain to explore as well, so maybe we can even make it one of our go-to weekend hiking spots, since it's so close to Vancouver!

March's Draw By Night in Vancouver

On the Wednesday before I left for my visit to Massachusetts back in mid-March, I went to my second Draw By Night event in Vancouver. Draw By Night is a group I came across on MeetUp.com and it meets once every two months to simply draw together around Vancouver. Both times I've gone, it's been hosted in the Vancouver Film School building downtown.

The theme for the March 16th Draw By Night was "The Profound Squonzeling" (??) and we'd all be drawing "fictional medical diagrams and fantastical anatomy charts," which would sort of tie in with the animated film project of the evening's guest artist, James Braithwaite. James joined us via Skype on a big projection screen at the front of the room, so he was drawing with us the entire time as well.

People can bring their own materials or use the markers provided instead. Every table is covered with big rolls of white paper, so everyone is free to take a seat wherever and then just begin drawing right on the paper tablecloth. At the end of the night, you can either leave your drawing (as most do) or rip it off and take it with you.

There were probably about 50 people there this time - a bit fewer than the first one I went to in January, which had 70-80 people in attendance. Food and snacks and coffee were also provided!

I had a really nice time chatting with the people around me, and it was once again really incredible to see the kinds of creative things that the talented people in the room were drawing. I took several pics of my own doodle, but failed to take any once it was all actually finished. Below are some photos of my drawing, mid-progress:

I walked around the room to capture some of the others' work, too:  

.  please forgive the camera shadow  .

.  i imagine this one having a very peculiar voice  .

They obviously all make my picture look like it was drawn by a first grader, but that's fine by me. I've always enjoyed drawing and coloring - the fact that a bunch of adults (and a few kids too!) are all getting together to do just that... well it's pretty sweet, hmm?

You can view a few more pictures, as well as a more official write-up of the night, here: Draw By Night #28 The Profound Squonzeling 

I assume the next meet up of Draw By Night will happen sometime in May, since it meets every two months. Whenever it is, I look forward to it and will definitely be there! You should come too :)