bookish valentines

When you were little, did you decorate shoeboxes and paper bags for Valentine's Day? I fondly remember how much fun it was to make them with construction paper and glue and to watch the pile of thin white envelopes and little candies accumulate.

That was the idea behind the Sweets to the Sweet: a box of bookish valentines swap that I hosted. I thought it'd be fun to decorate and fill a box with cards signed by children's book characters, so everyone was asked to pick cards and write short messages that might've been chosen by characters they liked.

I wrapped and glued a cracker box in pretty red and white wrapping paper and then put on a few graphics so it looked sort of candy box-ish. I then printed out vintage cards or images that I found online, and embellished some of them with bits of glitter and ribbon.

I found a penny valentine with a worm on it that was perfect for Ramona Quimby to send to Henry Huggins, since of course she proposed to him with a worm wrapped around her finger; I printed out a Nancy Drew silhouette and pasted it to a doily for a card from Ned; and more penny valentines from Joe Willard to Betsy Ray, from Sheila Tubman to Peter Hatcher, and from Jules to Ella of All-of-a-Kind Family. The only two that weren't real "cards" were the one from Harriet the Spy to Sport and the card to Emily Byrd Starr from Teddy Kent, because he would of course send her something he'd painted himself. I always loved that Teddy had "the trick of putting [Emily] into every portrait that he painted," so I took the liberty of attributing A Meadow Flower to him. (Apologies, Mr. John White Alexander!)

I also used a few cards I scanned and printed from the box of 100-year-old valentines my mother-in-law sent me, including ones from Gilbert Blythe to Anne Shirley, from Mr. Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet, and from Peter Pan to Wendy Darling. It actually made me really sad to re-read the end of Peter Pan again; it'd been years since I read it, so it brought tears to my eyes when Wendy tells him she doesn't remember how to fly. Such a bittersweet ending.

Anyway...I put everything in the box with some candy, and I hope my partner will enjoy opening it. I'm looking forward to getting some bookish valentines of my own to read, too!

tomboys

Were you a tomboy when you were little? I sure was! Nowadays I'm a little bit more of a lady, but there are times when I wish I was still an adventurous little kid, complete with scraped up knees, toting creepy crawly things and forever up in trees.

I still have a soft spot for rough and tumble little girls, and I've always loved the Ramona Quimbys and Trixie Beldens and Turtle Wexlers of the world. These kids were fiercely independent and stood up for their ideals, but beneath all that bravado you knew there was just a scared, uncertain little girl who was just desperately trying to find her way in the world. So for a swap I recently hosted, I invited participants to write a letter about their favorite tomboy heroine, and to send some small related trinket along with the note.

I received a letter yesterday which absolutely floored me. My partner Shandymink sent me a long letter about Harriet the Spy, who of course is one of my absolute favorites! She watermarked the letter with an image of a black and white composition book and wrote about her memories of the lending library she frequented during her family's camping trips, when she first discovered Harriet and her nefarious activities. It's so wonderful to read a letter like this, which is so full of love and remembrance for a very important part of childhood, especially when I happen to love the subject, too.

The "trinket" my partner sent was actually not a trinket at all, but an infinitely precious present. Shandymink drew a Harriet the Spy paper doll for me, which as you might guess, I just LOVE. Harriet comes complete with a spy belt, her favorite comfortably worn spy clothes, a pen, and of course, her all-important notebook. Love love love! I would never have imagined that something so special would come from a simple swap like this, and I'm so grateful to my partner for this wonderful present. I have to find a suitable way of displaying this, because it's much too wonderful to keep hidden away.

I can't share what I made my own partner quite yet, but I will as soon as she's received her package. I actually have quite a few days' worth of posts and photographs to share, which is good since I'll be away from home for a few days, likely without creating very many new things. But you never know...there's inspiration everywhere.

bookish

A trip to the library, a trip to The Iliad Bookshop, and a delivery from Amazon all on the same day? I must have been a very good girl indeed.

The loot by mail this weekend included the latest Coralie Bickford-Smith designed Emma (it's beautiful! And it's from Penguin, my favorite publisher!), season one of the Canadian television series Emily of New Moon (which I've been dying to see for literally years--they're finally all available here in the U.S.), darling little Labels and Stickers from The Small Object, and Sarah Water's fabulous gothic mystery, The Little Stranger, which I never got to finish when I had it from the library.

At Iliad, I also came away with the sequel that I didn't know existed to Harriet the Spy. I'm not referring to The Long Secret or its better follow-up Sport, but to a book released somewhat recently in 2003 called Harriet Spies Again by Helen Ericson. Although it was written with permission of Louise Fitzhugh's estate, and was presumably timed to the film adaptation I never saw, I tend to look upon these things with a great deal of suspicion.

But of course, I had to read it--and it's actually pretty good so far. The author does a nice job of echoing Harriet's muttering and suspicious thought patterns, which made the character such an original, as well as in illustrating the loving but careless interactions between Harriet and her parents or Cook. I'm only about a third of the way through, so the major plot devices have yet to really take shape, but thus far it's been a very pleasant surprise.

Books are full of such great promise, aren't they? I'm very much looking forward to diving into this pile.