I never in my life thought I would run across a find like this. It's like a Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot sighting. I mean, you've heard the legends... but you never thought it would happen to you. I found this book, and I couldn't believe my eyes.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me present,
by E. Joseph Dreany
Maxton Publishers
1958
This is a book about the natural sciences, written before manned spaceflight. It's not a bad book at all. It's in surprisingly good shape! There's a small tear on the upper right hand corner, but otherwise is in perfect condition. Our World covers a fairly broad spectrum of topics. Dinosaurs, erosion, earthquakes, planets, each get a page or two. Black and white illustrations are alternated with bright, saturated full-color pictures. The sentences are short and easy to understand. I'd put this at a third to fifth grade level. It's hard for me not to imagine the book being narrated in the deep, sonorous tones that typify the 1950's
voiceover.
Much of the information in the book is correct, but it is amazing how many of our ideas have changed, and how many new discoveries have been made since that time. For example, my favorite dinosaur, the Brontosaurus is now known as an Apatosaurus. In this book, Pluto is still a planet, of course. The book references "man" throughout, when today, we'd probably use the term, "humankind" or something similar. There are quite a few pages about harnessing the world's resources, and exciting new developments in plastics. Here's a picture of a scientist.
It is not probable that there is life, as we know it on the other planets... Only Mars seems likely to permit some form of life, but it is much colder than our earth and has little air and moisture. If life does exist there, it is perhaps in a different form than on earth.
The second quote I'll share is from a portion titled, "How Man Hopes to Conquer Space"
No one has yet seen the world from outside its atmosphere. Now, scientists are planning to send a rocket ship to great heights and build a "space station" that will travel around the earth.
I love that "space station" is in quotes. There's a picture of a very, very phallic looking rocket. Opposite that is a full page color picture of the Earth.
Notice anything missing? No atmosphere! It's a very map-like globe, not the beautiful blue and white marbled sphere that is so familiar to us today.
I enjoyed this book tremendously. A few of my older colleagues were a little miffed, I think, to hear me laughing and gasping in amazement while poring over this title. They reminded me that they remembered seeing the moon landing. No disrespect was intended! I think Our World is an amazing piece of history. The optimism, the enthusiasm for science of that age really come across in this volume. The sense of the inherent rightness of progress is interesting too. Does it belong circulating on the library shelves? No! A thousand times no. There are far, far more current titles for children today.
I borrowed this book from the library.
Unlike most library branches, we have a little bookstore on the second floor, run by our Friends group, and so we have used books for sale available year-round, not just twice yearly at a big sale as other branches do. Because of this, a lot of our patrons know they can drop off boxes of books (and they frequently do) for us to either add to the collection, or sell.
I don't know if it's because of the recession, but our book donations seem to have quadrupled recently. Maybe folks are downsizing or getting rid of their rented storage space? Sadly, we get an awful lot of items that are completely beyond saving. People just can't bear to see a book go on the recycling heap, so they bring it to us, hoping we can do something with it. I've seen plenty of books water-damaged, cobwebby or covered in mold, and once someone even brought in a box of books their cat had peed on, saying, "You work in a library! Do you think you can you fix this?" (I didn't have the heart to tell them no... I just snuck the box into the trash once they'd left.) It's heartwarming, in a way, to see how much respect people have for the written word.
Once in a while, after sorting through the usual "junk" that we get, I run across a treasure like this one. Someone must have tucked this away and never used it at all as it's in near perfect condition. Betty Crocker's Cookbook for Boys and Girls was first published in 1957, and it's full of wonderful two-tone vintage illustrations throughout. There are several full-color inserts which have a very saturated technicolor look. Best of all, are the quotes from children that caption the end of recipes. There are a number of quotes from boys eager to assure us that cooking is not too feminine an activity; "Baking is as much fun as my chemistry set. And you can eat what you mix up." - Eric. On a page of cake recipes: "I made one for Dad's birthday. It was Spice Cake with Caramel Fudge Frosting and Dad said it was keen." - Peter. Meanwhile, Elizabeth tells us, "If I were a mama, I'd cook all day."
The recipes actually look pretty good. Only a few of the ingredients looked unfamiliar to me. The recipe for "American Pizza" which the book carefully explains is a kind of "Italian Pie" calls for a half pound of "nippy cheese" whatever that is. A lot of recipes use mixes and other prepared foods to speed things along. A great deal of them feature food decorated to look like smiley faces, which I know I loved as a kid. I found the whole book to be a kitschy pleasure... I think whoever buys it out of our bookstore is in for a real treat.
