This summer we went to visit my family in Rochester, New York. Before leaving for the airport, I remembered that I wanted to visit Dr. Joe's book collection. I raced over to his house and had 20 glorious minutes perusing his library.
Dr. Joe and his lovely wife Ellie are some of our best and oldest family friends. Dr. Joe, in addition to being a great eye doctor, is into his hobbies—taking photos and turning them into trivets and collecting first edition children's books.
Apparently, when his kids were young, he noticed that their beloved books were torn or covered with jelly and he wanted to preserve what he thought to be great works of art, inspiring him to start his collection.
Most of his books are signed and he has OVER 1400. Wow! Dr. Joe wasn’t home when I arrived, so Ellie showed me to the collection. My 20 minutes were filled with bliss. The most interesting thing I found in my brief foray into this room was anthologies signed by multiple masters of the craft and biographies of the greats. Boy do I have a lot of reading to do!
Dr. Joe’s collection has convinced me that what I am setting out to do – turn people on to enjoyable children’s literature and the authors who write them – is a worthy endeavor. While we may think of them as bedtime tales, writing kids' books is a great endeavor of both words and illustrations and the marriage between the two.
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