My daughter was out with my husband the other day. When she came home she immediately came to find me, with something in her hands. I couldn't quite see what it was when she called out: "Mommy! Something died!". I thought maybe they had seen a dead animal by the side of the road or something. But no. The "something" that had died was her copy of the Anne of Green Gables graphic novel by Mariah Marsden and Brenna Thummler. Apparently after the book sat in the heat in my husband's car for some period of time, the glue binding the pages together gave way. The book fell to pieces in my daughter's hands. She was devastated!
We've all been there, mourning a ruined book. I'm still sad over my copy of The Scalawags of Oz, which was lost to water damage in my basement bedroom when I was young. In this case, I did put the pages back in order, but it was going to be pretty tough to read the book. [I find that difficult enough with unbound picture book ARCs.]
Of course, this is the age of eCommerce. My daughter begged me to order another copy. Immediately. And while I really am trying to teach her that not all whims need to be immediately granted ... this was Anne of Green Gables! Coincidentally, the very next page of the book that I was reading at the time, Sarah Clarkson's Book Girl, waxed rhapsodic over the original Anne books. And so ... one more Amazon delivery came to our house this week. Anne with an e was restored. We kept the fallen apart copy to use for projects.
A small price to pay for a child who loves books, I say. My daughter later rewarded me by remarking: "What I love about Anne is how great her vocabulary is." Then she quoted me a line from took.
One day, I hope that she'll read the original. But for now, it's enough that she loves Anne enough to genuinely mourn damage to a book.
© 2019 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. You can also follow me @JensBookPage.