As September comes to a close and students are reaching the point where they are fully settling into the routine of school, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at three school books from three different decades. Because I’ve been rather busy (hence the silence all month), this is going to be a picture heavy post.
First is Best Stories From the Best Book from 1900. I love the beautiful
illustrations in this one.
Next we have The
Common Word Speller: Book Two from 1921.
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| Here we learn that "Oysters are good to eat in the winter." |
And finally, we have English in Action from 1955. This is one of my favorite textbooks because, despite the title
it really has a lot more in it than just English and largely because it came
with a rough draft of a letter tucked into it.
The letter reads as follows (with no
corrections made other than connecting the fragment on the left margin to its
sentence):
Dear Mrs. Sullivan,
From
toe shoe’s to riding boots is often the quick change I make. I have been taking
ballet lessons for about seven year and I have just been promoted to the
professional class. I’m really proud of that, though I don’t know how that
happened, I never practice. We are rehearsing for a ballet right now, three
times a week.
I am also quite a fiend about horses. I simply adore to go
galloping across an open field on my favorite horse, Troubadore, with the wind
blowing in my face. Every week I go riding more often when I can. I’m always
getting thrown; one of these days I’m going to break my neck. “You smell like a
barn,” is my mother’s comment when I come home covered with mud,
Swimming
is fun in the summer and I’ve always wanted to water ski one of these days.
I
love clothes and I’m always on a diet? My diets are really a scream. I’m
always eating-about 2 ice cream sandwiches a day and eating between meals
constantly.
These are some of the things that
help to fill my idle hours.
One of these days I’m going to research the
teen who wrote it (I just noticed her name was in front cover hidden under a
label with a later owner’s name) and the woman who she was writing to (whose
address is in the front cover). Even if I don’t find anything, though, it’s
such a lovely treasure to have.♥
OMG I love the letter!!! It sounds like it could be an old children's book!! I love finding stuff in old books. I found a photo in a book from the 30s that I knew belonged to the books owner because the person in the photo was sitting in front of a shop with her last name on the window. I also just bought some girl's scrapbook from the late 20s. What sold it was her page of saved Christmas gift labels, which is something I do!
ReplyDeleteIt does sound like it could be from an old children's book, especially the part about being a fiend about horses (which is actually my favorite part of the letter because you'd never hear that phrase anymore)! How to cool to have found a photo, I have yet to find one in one of mine! So far aside from that letter, I've found a postage stamp, an article on putting mayonnaise in your hair (with note written on it asking if the recipient wanted to try it) and most recently an envelope of unused embroidery transfers. I also have few books with poems written in the covers and a medieval history book with WWII airplanes sketched into the illustrations.
DeleteThank you for following, by the way! :)
Haha I wonder if the person did try the mayo! A few weeks ago I bought a whole basket of old letters from the 1930s-50s for only $3!! I haven't had a chance to read them yet but I want to scan them and post them on my www.solidmoonlight.blogspot.com blog, or maybe start a new blog especially for old letters! (even though I can barely keep up with the ones I have)
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