meet the library pocket totes (and a question for you)
Summer. Hot sun. Keds. Pulling my little brother behind me in his wagon. A purple bike complete with banana seat and white wicker basket. Walks to the neighborhood library for books. Stopping at the Burger Dairy corner store for popsicles. Walking home and curling up on the orange-flowered cushions on the screened-in porch with a stack of books…The Yearling, Trixie Belden, The Boxcar Children. Adventures await...
This is a peek into the summers of my childhood. I remember carrying a small rectangular tote bag with a rainbow on the front during these walks to and from the library.
With these memories in mind, I designed this tote for the summer reading of my adult life. It will hold adventures where I might:
Have a picnic at Pemberley
Take a walk in the gardens of Green Gables
Have tea in Cranford
Solve mysteries in Sleepyside
I can't wait.
I would love to know some of the places you visited while reading through your summer reading lists of the past...or the present. Where have you had a picnic or solved a mystery or twirled with laughter? I would love to join you there...and a bet a few others would too.
Share your favorite summer reads with us...
(I have added a few of these and some simple selma totes and some aprons to my etsy shop)
liz lamoreux
Reader Comments (15)
As a kid we lived too far from the library to walk, especially in the Texas heat so I convinced my mom to let my brother and I ride the public bus. I scheduled my trip perfectly so that the young kids storytelling time would coincide with our trip. Searching for the perfect books with a five year old bothering you was no fun. I went through many phases, I wanted to grow up fast. I had the year of Danielle Steel followed by Stephen King and Dean Koontz. I remember the summer of biographies, one of the most memorable on Grace Kelly. Sad to say I haven't changed much, last years marathon was on historical fiction, Phillipina Gregory and the likes. My trend this year seems to be with getting back to nature, Eat, Pray Love and Animal Plant Miracle. Today I'm going to set off to find one called The Last Chinese Chef.
we couldn't walk to the library
but we made our way to the
bookmobile
once a week...
it was a long hot painful walk
dragging at least 3 younger siblings
who so did not care about the
bookmobile
but oh...i needed the bookmobile.
when i was younger, i read alot
about wars...which is strange for
me because i am such an anxious
child...and pilgrims...and definitely anne...i read all of those.
and it makes my heart skip a beat
to think of you thinking of green gables...if you visited green gables, you could visit ME!
heehee.
seriously, you have to send me your address...i know i had it before
but i know there are some anne suprises here that i would love to send you...
just {kindred spirit} because.
teehee
uh..yeah...
and i meant i WAS such an anxious child...
{i can't help but think
freudian slip with the AM such an
anxious child...}
heh.
There was a bookmobile that set up by our corner store. That was the only time we lived somewhere with any kind of library other than at school. I used to go there with a boy (!) and I used to get teased for going there with him - but nobody else was going, and we both valued it. And it paid off too, because he just beat me at Scrabulous!
This summer so far I've been... weeding for my dinner in Virginia (with Jacki above)... rowing To The Lighthouse... and meeting the Fremen on Arrakis.
I was a bookmobile girl too - it would come once a week and I would check out as many books as my bicycle basket would hold. I was also a Trixie Belden fan! In fact, a few years ago, I managed to find the last one I needed to restore my 16-volume set.
we used to bike to the library every second day, books in a canvas bag in my basket ... reading in the sunlight of the laundrymat, the clink of orange crush pop, laying in a field of dandelions, under the scent of a lilac tree, the sun on my scratched knees, chewing on grass and my little flashlight under the covers as day turned to night ...
gosh, i read so much, looking back, i realize i had such the luxery of time ~ am looking forward to my vacation time, a week spent lazing about the garden reading the stack of books that have been piling up in anticipation :)
oh and those totes are absolutely darling ... LOVE !!
I loved Trixie Belden and Anne, too! Also, the Beany Malone, and Katie Rose & Stacey Belford books--did you read those? They're set in Denver in the 50s and 60s--I just adored them! What else? Nancy Drew, of course. Beverly Cleary's books--the young adult stuff. Oh man, is this bringing back memories--good times!
As a girl I loved loved loved Pippi Longstocking. I so wanted to be her. She has chutzpah. I have always like biographies. I remember way back when in junior high-reading about Amelia Erhardt, Ben Franklin and the Wright Brothers. People are so fascinating....never got into that romance novel stuff......
Love your work!
Oh my God! Trixie Beldon! Absolute favorite!!! I still wish I had the whole set of those stories. Maybe I'll start getting them. . .
i read books about animals, like "misty of chincoteague" and "brighty of the grand canyon" (both by marguerite henry) and "born free". also adventure books like "21 Balloons" (or something like that) about children escaping a volcano eruption on krakatoa and "harriet the spy".
thanks for the post, which brought back lots of happy memories of childhood reading. :)
We had an old filbert orchard that was overgrown and unkempt behind our house growing up. My best friend Heather (may she rest in peace) and I had a favorite tree we called the Jonathan Tree ( I don't remember why). We would sit in that tree and read. Mostly any book that had anything to do with horses but sometimes we would read poetry to each other. Ogden Nash was one of our fav's. As I got older I would read just about anything I could find. Romance, History, Mystery, Biograhpy, Horror. Sci-Fi and Fantasy were always at the top of the list Andre Norton, Merecedes Lackey, Tolkein. I don't read as much as I used to....but when I do I usually finish within a few days. I love the escape and feels like a mini vacation sometimes.
I love Trixie, Honey, Di and the gang. I could not read the stories fast enough. Before they were re-printed a few years back, I was buying them on e-bay for my children. We started with the first one, and I felt like I was there again. Those were the perfect summer books for me.
Now I am on a Memoir binge, although I did finish a Fannie Flagg novel, for the fun of it.
Today I picked the most perfect strawberries, made strawberry shortcake and had corn on the cob, grown down the street. It does not get more summer for me.
LOVE the tote. Perfect for books on a trip.
I had a shady reading spot under a huge bridal wreath spirea in our garden when I was little. Grass didn't grow under the spirea, so I spread a cotton blanket on the cool soil and lounged in the "cave" formed by the low hanging branches. I could hide and read during the hot part of the day all summer long. I always had a snack with me (heh!) -- apple slices, a piece of rice krispie treat, or a rootbeer. Yumm -- all stuff I can't eat anymore...
and our black cat, Fuji, curled up next to me in the coolness ...
summer reading? Nancy Drew, Little House on the Prairie, Gone with the Wind, Little Shepard from Kingdom Come, The Yearling ... lots of others. I always had a stack of books.
What a reminiscence, Liz. thanks for the inspiration,
My dear old dad was a naval veteran and always put his ship hammock up between the maple tree and the clothes line post in our backyard. I loved to drag my white quilt with red polka dots to the hammock and read my books....usually anything about horses or animals...but mostly I remember feeling very grown up when I read "To Kill a Mockingbird"...changed me forever.