Discovered while weeding

While straightening the 398s this morning, I came across a fascinating old relic.  It's titled "The Space Child's Mother Goose" by Frederick Winsor, published originally in 1958, this copy was from the fourth printing in 1967.

This is a collection of nursery rhymes that have been shot into the space age.  Well, the 1950's space age.  As surprised as I am that these oldie-but-strange titles can still be found in here, I'm always delighted to find them.  Here are a few of the space age verses written for the 1950's space child:

Little Jack Horner

Sits in a corner

Extracting cube roots to infinity,

An assignment for boys

That will minimize noise

And produce a more peaceful vicinity.

Ah, gender bias in children's books!

A Follower of Goddard

And a rising Astrogator

Were agreed that superthermics

Was a spatial hot pertator.

They reached a Super-Nova

On a bicycle named Beta

And I'd tell you more about it

But they fused with all the data.

That one kind of left me scratching my head.

Hey Diddle Diddle

Distribute the Middle

The Premise controls the Conclusion

The Disjunctive affirms

That the Diet of Worms

Is a Borbetomagic confusion.

???????

This little pig built a spaceship,

This little pig paid the bill;

This little pig made isotopes,

This little pig ate a pill;

And this little pig did nothing at all, 

But he's just a little pig still.

I'm guessing the little pig that ate the pill woke up and unplugged himself from the matrix?  The next one gets a little dark:

Embryonic, zoonic,

Tectonic, cyclonic,

We humans are never humane.

Explosion, erosion,

Corrosion, implosion-

And back into Chaos again!

Occasionally, the author offers 'definitions' in rhyme, like this one:

Quantum: The Quantum is only a tittle or jot: On a little theory hangs a lot.

There is a real glossary at the end of the book, however, where we learn that Borbetomagic pertains to the ancient city of Borbetomagus, now Worms.  So now that verse makes perfect sense.  

UPDATE: Apparently, there is a new limited edition currently available.  I'd love to have new copy of this for the library if anyone would like to donate it.

Keeping it fresh.

I decided it was time to change the cover photo on the Marshall Lane Library Facebook page.  It used to be this:

This is the fiction wall showing mainly the shelves containing FIC C through FIC H.  This picture was taken in February of 2005.  Books were in circulation but even at the end of the year, the shelves were not completely full.  There are lots of old books on these shelves. Most notably the top shelf on the right  side of the picture are the Betsy books by Carolyn Haywood. These titles are from the 1940's and '50's. I'm sure these were reprints, but probably from the 1960's.  

Here is a picture I took today.  I tried to take it from the exact same angle.

This is the same section of the fiction wall.  Books are in circulation but the shelves are so impacted that I have to keep books on display on top of the shelf because they don't fit.  Poor Carolyn Haywood is nowhere to be seen.  She got weeded.  Anthony Horowitz now sits in her place.  Quite a number of other dusty old shelf sitters have been replaced by new titles that kids want to read. 

When I stand back and look at the fiction shelves, I feel very proud of what I've been able to accomplish, especially considering how much my budget has shrunk since 2001.  Non-fiction, not so much.  However, with the Common Core Standards coming, non-fiction is going to need some serious attention.

 Here are some fun facts about the collection:

In 2003, the average publication date of the general fiction collection was 1980.  Today it is 1997.  Still not ideal, but better.

The total number of books in the library in 2003 was 11,535 (21.36 books per student).  Today it is 14,525 (25.32 books per student).

Little Gems

Weeding the shelves is sometimes like a treasure hunt.  Within the dusty covers of long neglected books, little gems can be found.

I pulled this book titled Come Away From the Water, Shirley, by John Burningham (1977) because it hadn't been checked out in a decade.

The title and the accompanying picture looked rather ominous to me and I wondered what this book could be about.  The picture makes me think some dark tragedy is about to occur but it turns out not to be the case.  A young girl with an active imagination plays at the beach while her parents lounge on the shore, lazily barking orders at her.

I came across one illustration that hit a little too close to home though.

Father sleeps under his newspaper while mother knits and drinks (presumably) coffee from a thermos.  The only thing that separates this picture from Mr. Richards and I is father's pipe parked on the ground next to him.