The Island of Unwanted Books

One part of maintaining a library's collection is to find books that no longer have relevance to the users and to remove them. The professional euphemism for this is deselection, but more commonly we call it weeding. Basically, it means removing the really old books that are no longer useful to anybody. In some cases, the books may be downright dangerous. For example, I once removed an old gardening book from our collection because it recommended using DDT for pest control.

The children's fiction books are not weeded as aggressively as other areas, because in some ways, stories are timeless. But there comes a time when even these books have to go the way of the dodo. I was shelving some children's books that had been recommended for deselection when I ran across a few that made me laugh out loud. They truly belong to another time.

This book was 92 pages. What joy they seem to have after getting their boots. "A little boy, who wants most of all to own a pair of copper-toed boots and a dog, works hard to earn his boots and finds a dog too." I don't see a dog. I'm not sure what the tree stumps have to do with anything. It almost looks like they've been kicking over the trees with their new boots. But maybe the wooden fence and wooden houses were made from the trees. So instead of frolicking in the forest, the boys get to frolick among the stumps.

If I had been so excited about copper-toed boots when I was young, I might never had cut my foot open when I jumped barefoot in a ditch.

Some books just jump off the shelves, begging to be read. Others don't. Doesn't this look exciting? Actually, my first thought is that the boy with the panda-bear eyes has no friends, and he would befriend the cabbage, but the phrase "Nobody Plays with a Cabbage" keeps going through his mind (perhaps he hears his nagging mother and a taunting schoolmate repeating the phrase in his head). So he is sadder than ever, which would make it a precursor to the young adult problem novel, which became so big in later decades.

Nowadays, a title like this wouldn't make past even the most brain-dead of editors. Now that I think about it, perhaps I should keep this book and put it on display so that kids can make fun of it.

They could make fun of this one too. What is it that Merrylips does? Is she causing scandal in her Puritan village?

Also, what is up with these authors' names: Beulah Marie Dix, Meindert DeJong, Walter de la Mare? I don't care if he wrote the next Harry Potter, I don't think anybody could buy anything written by someone named Meindert DeJong.

Another strange thing is that I took these pictures with the books on the same table. How the table became different colors is beyond me.