On Some Thrift Store Finds

A a little over a week ago, I decided to have a "fun" shopping trip and venture out to one of our local thrift stores. And while it was a little stressful, I mostly browsed the media section and happily came home with a few treasures.

Having an adoration for old Scholastic paperbacks (really, I could write a whole post about how much I like them), I was delighted to find a few. My elementary school library had a lot of older children's books, many which I still love, and among these were the Miss Pickerell books, which I promptly snap up when I see them. Mr. Pudgins is another title I remembered and how could anyone forget that cover!

I know absolutely nothing about The Ghosts Who Went to School or The Moonball, they just sounded fun and I'm looking forward to including them in my summer reading. 

I also found newer editions of some Roald Dahl books, some which filled gaps in my collection like The Magic Finger and Esio Trot (one needs a romantic tortoise story sometimes), a nearly complete set of Tove Jansson's Moomin books, which I'm very much looking forward to reading, and a few more contemporary reads.

Aside from the book section, I really love going through the albums at this store, since they're only a dollar and found some 45s I'm excited about, which is kind of unusual for me as the bulk of my record collection is made up of the larger sizes.

The cover of this Waltzes From the Classics box set got my attention and the fun surprise upon opening the box to check them in the store was that they're red! (the only other colored albums I have are a pink My Fair Lady soundtrack and a golden Hymns one.)

For the fun covers, I bought two Peter Pan records: "The Pied Piper of Hamlin" and "Nursery Rhymes". I'm looking forward to getting to listen to these two!

Additionally, I've long been a fan of what I think of as "mood music sets" because it's fun to see what's been chosen and, as a bookworm, finding this little two album set "Music for Reading" is pretty fantastic, in my opinion. 

I also bought the accompanying two album set, "Music for Courage and Confidence". Not as fond of the songs on this one, but still fun to think that someone chose it as a mood music theme and the inside cover contains encouraging quotations to provide an extra boost of courage and confidence (the reading one has a bio of the orchestra leader). 

By the time I was done looking through those, I really wasn't up for much more, so I did a quick glance through some miscellany and ended finding these small wooden Pilgrims to add to my Thanksgiving decorations, which upon seeing them I realized consists mainly of leaves, turkeys, and pumpkins.

I probably won't be venturing out again anytime soon for something like this, but it was nice to be able to do a little treasure hunting for random vintage finds rather than just doing a search online! 

♥ ♥ ♥

On "The Thousand and One Ghosts": A Book Review

Title: The Thousand and One Ghosts
Author: Alexandre Dumas (Translated by Andrew Brown)
Genre: Fiction

About the Book...
After having just had his own ghostly encounter, the protagonist joins a group of men to dine and participates in an exchange of stories pertaining to other ghostly and supernatural encounters they've had. First published in English in 2004 and then revised in 2018, this is a review for the later edition.

What I Think...
I really had no idea what to expect from this book as Dumas tends to veer in various directions when it comes to subject matter and his other supernatural book Castle Eppstein is not among my favorites. This wasn't that bad, though.

I love that it follows the group gathered around the table exchanging stories frame format similar to that of The Canterbury Tales, The Decameron, and, of course, as the title indicates, One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. 

The stories while somewhat predictable in most cases are engaging and I ended up reading through this is fairly short order (I might add that it is under 200 pages). They vary in setting and tone, with some a little darker than others and one moving into the subject of vampires. The first story was probably my least favorite, but I found that they improved as the book continued. Some of the stories are more politically focused, mostly pertaining to the French Revolution, but not so much that if you aren't up to snuff on your French history that you'll miss out on anything and a Notes section is included at the end to provide at least a little clarification.

To Sum it All Up...
A little uneven at points and not the best (but certainly not the worst!) Dumas book I've read, but overall an intriguing and interesting read that I can see myself dipping into again! ♥

On Kanga and Roo!

Kanga and Roo have hopped their way into the 100 Acre Wood and are the latest creatures to join the bunch of characters I've been making from the patterns in The Pooh Craft Book!

These two weren't done quite as quick as I would have liked, but I still breezed through making them in a relatively short time frame. I had a little difficulty deciding on color for them, debating between reddish brown and dark brown and then trying to decide if Roo should be a different color than Kanga. I think the reddish brown with cream belly suits them both really well, though!

Four down (technically five counting little Roo) and just three more to go, then I'll have the full set of  felt Winnie-the-Pooh characters! 

Meanwhile, Mary Poppins is proving a marvelous baby-sitter for them while she continues her wait for a coat and bag as I still have not found just the right fabrics for them. 

♥ ♥ ♥

On "The Queens of Animation": A Book Review

Title: The Queens of Animation: The Untold Story of the Women who Transformed the World of Disney and Made Cinematic History
Author: Nathalia Holt
Genre: Non-Fic, History

About the Book...
In The Queens of Animation, Nathalia Holt tells the stories of the few women who worked in the story and animation departments at Disney studios during its golden years, their struggles working in a male dominated sphere, their involvement in the films, and the impact and influence they had on future generations.

What I Think...
This was a fantastic book! I really loved that this focused on the women outside of the Ink and Paint department and the role they played in the creation of the classic Disney films.

Those who worked in the story department such as Bianca Majolie, Grace Huntington, and Sylvia Holland were women I had never heard anything about and really enjoyed finding out the contributions they made to some of my favorite Disney classics both in terms of shorts and feature films. I loved learning that the Nutcracker scene in Fantasia was created by a team of women headed by Sylvia Holland, since the men in the department wouldn't draw the delicate fairies. Mary Blair, not unexpectedly, is also given a considerable amount of attention and as always was fascinating to read about. 

This book didn't come across at all as biased or following an agenda, even though it does focus on matters that would have made life more difficult for women. It has a good balance between what was going on internally with the studio and external world factors as well. I liked that the stories of the women were integrated with one another rather than giving each woman an individual chapter. I was far more interested in the earlier chapters, as that time frame interests me more, but the book really kept my attention from start to finish.

Also, as a fun note, the book has delightfully movie related movie titles to correspond with the subject of each chapter and works it's way up from Snow White all the way to Frozen.

And because I can't resist, some of the fun facts I learned while reading this book:
-To get Tinker Bell's glow they used Asian ox bile.
-Sleeping Beauty was the first film to ever use CinemaScope.
-Art was an event in the Olympics until 1946.
- Dodie Smith wrote The Hundred and One Dalmatians with the idea that it could be made into an animated movie.   

To Sum it All Up...
A great book for anyone interested in Disney animation history! ♥