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If By Yes

Tag Archives: bargains

The Best Little Find In The Library Discard Pile

08 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by IfByYes in Life and Love

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

bargains, books, can lit, canadian authors, Canadian Literature, children's books, Children's literature, first edition, great finds, jean little, kate, library, library discards, mine for keeps, signatures, signed books, signed first editions

So, we were at the library, and on our way out we stopped to browse the discard pile because we can’t help ourselves. It’s a sickness.

Anyway, I made a couple of good finds, including another Indian In The Cupboard book that I never knew existed: The Key to the Indian. I had always thought the story ended with The Mystery of the Cupboard in 1992!

We were also horrified to find a book on “Healing Homosexuality,” which we decided to buy just so that no one else would.

And then, just as we were about to go to the cash, I spotted a Jean Little book.

I love Jean Little.

Her books are a little dated, in that her characters go to church and don’t use computers (somewhat ironically since she has used advanced voice recognition software to write all of her books since 1985), but the warmth and the heart in them is timeless.

If you’ve read any of her books, you probably know Mine For Keeps, a book about a girl with Cerebral Palsy who gets a dog and gains some self confidence in learning how to train it.

She wrote it because she was tired of books like The Secret Garden and Heidi, where the disabled character miraculously gets cured for no obvious reason.

She wanted to write a book about a kid with a real disability, who overcomes it without being cured.

That’s the kind of person she is.

I grew up on her books, as well as her autobiography, Little By Little, in which she describes what it was like growing up during World War II with severe vision impairment and a passion for books.

She talks frankly about the teasing she received and speaks honestly about her own personal flaws – hesitancy, fear of new experiences, a compulsive love of books despite being legally blind, and even occasional flights of fancy verging on dishonesty.

Jean as a child was someone you could love and bond with – someone fallible, but also someone deeply special. I always thought of Jean Little as a friend, growing up. I would love to meet her some day, but considering that she lives in Ontario, that opportunity has never arisen.

Anyway, this book was called Kate, and was the sequel to a book I already own. I remember Jean talking about it in her second autobiography, The Stars Come Out Within, in which she documents the loss of her remaining sight and the joy of getting a guide dog.

So of course I glommed onto that book in two seconds or less and handed it to PH.

Jean Little books aren’t always easy to find. I’m still trying to get my hands on a copy of Willow and Twig, one of her newer ones and also one of my favourites. Book stores rarely have it in.

“Uh…” PH said, flipping through the book. “Look.”

He held it out, open to the frontispiece, and I saw that someone had scribbled on it with marker, making a happy face and some barely legible words.

“That’s okay, it’s not on any of the other pages,” I said.

“No, look at it.”

I looked.

20130331-133632.jpg

Did the last two words say… Jean Little?

“I think this book is signed by the author,” said PH.

“I doubt it, that looks more like a kid’s scri… Oh. RIGHT.” I felt like an idiot. “She’s blind.”

We stared at the scribble and the happy face. Was this a kid scribbling about Jean Little and drawing a happy face?

Or was this signed by JEAN EFFING LITTLE, a woman who is now completely blind and can’t even see the paper she is writing on?

We bought the book and left clutching it possessively.

When we got home we did some googling.

We couldn’t find any pictures of recent signatures. I did find this picture:

20130331-133621.jpg

That is a signed first edition of Mine For Keeps, clearly signed when she still had some sight.

But compare the two signatures. Sure, mine is a lot messier, but the J is the same, and the L, and the words are written in cursive, which I don’t think kids even know how to do these days.

PH also made the following discovery:

“Keep reading a little,” is one of her preset phrases that she writes.

I JUST BOUGHT A SIGNED JEAN LITTLE BOOK FOR A DOLLAR TWENTY FIVE.

I mean, it isn’t definite.

People forge signatures on books all the time, it’s a problem.

But as much as I adore Jean Little, she’s no JK Rowling. Her signed books aren’t worth hundreds of dollars. Thirty dollars, forty maybe. Nothing worth forging. And the “keep reading a little” is a known catch phrase of Jean’s.

It’s signed by the author.

AND THE LIBRARY DISCARDED IT.

Oh, and here’s the kicker:

20130408-075837.jpg

That’s right. A FIRST EDITION book signed by the author.

…For a dollar twenty five.

20130408-075853.jpg

Life makes me happy, sometimes.

You Get What You Pay For

05 Tuesday Apr 2011

Posted by IfByYes in How is Babby Formed?, I'm Sure This Happens To Everyone..., Oh The Inanity, Perfect Husband

≈ 27 Comments

Tags

bargains, money, photography, photos, studio portraits, talent agency, walmart

I’ve found a Vancouver talent agency that’s interested in Babby, although they warn me that business for babies is a little slow year-round. I’m not looking to turn him into a star or anything, but a substantial amount of my college fund was paid for by appearing in tv commercials and such, so I know it can be helpful. Even if we got Babby into one commercial, that would still likely be $2000 his RESP didn’t have in it before.

The agency wants a professional portrait for their files. I guess they have had too many experiences with parents going “Oh, actually, I dabble in photography myself, so here’s a photo that I took” while handing them a photo with dirty diapers in the background and a booger in the foreground.

The problem is, we have no money.

Zip. Dead broke.

Not only did we recently buy plane tickets home for the late spring/early summer, but our car has suddenly decided that it needs a new air compressor, new shocks, and a new battery, and it took $350 bucks just to find that out. We haven’t dared ask for an estimate for the actual repairs yet, but we need to do it soon.

The upshot of all this was that PH and I did something that we never, ever, in a million years, dreamed we would do.

We went to Walmart.

It is a testament to PH’s love for me and willingness to support me in my whims that he even set foot there. You see, we are intellectual snobs and Walmart stands for pretty much everything that we hate. Yes, there are a lot of other companies out there that are just as big and corporate and evil, but there’s just something about Walmart that feels especially trashtacular.

Walmart is attracts people who are willing to line up like cattle for the slaughter all for the sake of saving a dollar here, fifty cents there. In general, this does not tend to be your highest class of person, and now we had joined their ranks.

The (soul-destroying) reason that we went there anyway is that we got 30 prints, including an “enhanced” 10X13, for nine bucks.

All we had to do was:

  • Show up on time for our appointment.
  • Wait with an increasingly bored and tired baby for over an hour, while being repeatedly told “it’ll just be five more minutes… why don’t you have a stroll around the store?”
  • Listen to people who showed up for an appointment booked later than ours, who then argued to the girl at the desk that they should get to go before us, because they booked an appointment for now, and their baby was younger.
  • Listen to exchanges like “what are you snacking for? Now you’ve got shit all in your teeth,” between a mother and her young daughter.
  • Accept that the picture was going to be unflattering and possibly even scary to look at.

By the time we got in to the studio, Babby was sleepy, red eyed and nose-rubbing, and it took a long time to get a good smile from him. When we did, the red and watery eyes were noticeable in the portrait, and there was a black hair stuck to a booger under his nose, which may or may not show up in the enlargements. I’m not sure the picture will really show him off to his best advantage, but the agency wanted a studio portrait, and by gum, they’ll get one.

Except we have to wait two weeks for the portraits to be developed. Even though there is an 24 hour photo processing centre in the exact same room.

But hey, it cost less than ten bucks.

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