Avi

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Birthday gifts

As a kid, and an adult, I have always enjoyed my birth­day. When much younger it was a day I always shared with my twin sis­ter. Still is—as least by phone. Our birth­day was near Christ­mas, which added to the excite­ment. And, more often than not, I did not have school, the day being tied to the start of the Christ­mas hol­i­day. Even if there was school, no work was done. Par­ty time!

I love my birth­day for anoth­er reason.

Arabian NightsOn that day, I almost always received at least one book as a present. Ear­ly on, it might have been a Gold­en Book such as The Poky Lit­tle Pup­py. (How I loved that one.) But what you see here is the book I received when I was ten years old, which is to say some six­ty-eight years ago. The Gros­set & Dun­lap books, The Illus­trat­ed Junior Library, were texts of clas­sics, very well illus­trat­ed, and my guess is that it cost some­thing like $2 50. I have anoth­er ear­ly one, a copy of Robin­son Cru­soe.

frontispageBut this one, inscribed to “To Edward from his friends—Susan  Biff   John  Ann Eliz­a­beth  Decem­ber 23, 1947” is my old­est, and my favorite. Edward of course is me, my school name, Avi being as yet only a fam­i­ly name. Yes, the book might have cost $2.50, but in today’s terms that means it would cost $26.60. No won­der four fam­i­lies chipped in to make the purchase!

I would like to tell you who Susan, Biff, John, and Ann Eliz­a­beth were. Such 1940’s names! They were prob­a­bly classmates—but that is all I can guess.

It was a great gift.  It still sits on my shelves—wherever those shelves might be. Hap­py birth­day indeed.

What’s the old­est book—birthday or otherwise—that sits on your shelf?

7 thoughts on “Birthday gifts”

  1. I have a copy of The Poky Lit­tle Pup­py, too, but the old­est book, giv­en as a gift, on my shelves is a copy of Sir Wal­ter Scot­t’s Ivan­hoe, with a beau­ti­ful­ly gild­ed cov­er, that a one-time room­mate gave me. It’s from the mid-1800’s but it’s the inscrip­tion that cap­tures my imag­i­na­tion, “May a book always be your best friend.” I’d love to know the sto­ry of the per­son who orig­i­nal­ly bought that book and gave it to some­one with that sen­ti­ment becom­ing a part of the book for all time.

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  2. What an amaz­ing sur­prise! You and I (and your twin) share the same birth­day! Hap­py birth­day to a great writer! Yay for Decem­ber 23!

    Weird­ly (and I promise, I am not mak­ing this up) I pulled out my favorite child­hood book this morn­ing (Tiger is a Scaredy Cat, by Joan Phillips). How­ev­er, I am not sure if I received this for my birth­day. I do know it was a present.

    I had a real­ly hard time learn­ing how to read as a child. My fam­i­ly is rife with ear­ly learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties. I learned on Tiger is a Scaredy Cat at the ripe old age of 8 years old, almost two years after my class­mates learned.

    This made my day! Thanks, Avi!

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  3. Hap­py birth­day, Avi! I don’t have some of the ear­li­est books I can remem­ber but I do have some of the Three Inves­ti­ga­tors series, which I loved to read and read again. I was about 9 or 10 when my aunt Fran gave me a month­ly sub­scrip­tion to a sci­ence-based, non-fic­tion book club. I don’t remem­ber any of the books specif­i­cal­ly but I do remem­ber dis­cov­er­ing the prac­ti­cal­i­ties of trav­el­ing to the moon (very fresh back then!) or div­ing into the Mar­i­ana Trench to find exot­ic sea crea­tures in the deep­est part of the ocean. Those books opened my mind to the lay­ers of life on our plan­et and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of look­ing beyond Earth, too. Good gifts, those books.

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  4. The old­est book on my shelf is The Lit­tlest Angel by Charles Tazewell. My aunt would read it over and over to me (by my request) until I could recite the entire book by heart. 

    I still get it out every Christ­mas and read it. I LOVE you that book!

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  5. Not so much from my child­hood but from my chil­dren’s child­hood is the Swedish book I would read to them the day before my birth­day every year, HURRA, FÖR PAPPA ÅBERG! by Gunil­la Bergström. 

    When six-year-old Alfons Åberg asks his father what he would like for his birth­day tomor­row, Pap­pa sim­ply states, “There is only one thing I would like to have: Nice chil­dren, of course.”

    I guess by read­ing this sto­ry, it was my way of not-so-sub­tly remind­ing my kids what I, too, would enjoy hav­ing on my birthday.

    Hap­py birth­day, Avi! Even though your kids are all grown up, I’m sure they have been nice to you on this spe­cial day.

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  6. Hap­py birth­day! That illus­tra­tion is beau­ti­ful, it must be a love­ly book. My copy of Ara­bi­an Nights looks pret­ty bland in comparison.

    My old­est books are Andrew Lang fairy tale col­lec­tions, print­ed round­about 1920. Most of them were gifts from my moth­er, hand­ed down out of her library, but I love them so much I always keep an eye out for more.

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