I found this book on my parent’s bookshelf when I was visiting the other day. My mother, a now retired kindergarten teacher, has a small collection of signed or rare children’s books she’s kept over the years which I never knew about. This one is old- a first edition from 1893. The inside is beautiful Victorian style illustrations composed around the lyrics to the songs. Little drawings of hands instruct the reader what do when certain words are sung. There’s also the music for each song on the following pages. When I run my fingers over it I can feel a slight embossed quality, making me wonder how exactly this was printed. I also got excited thinking we finally found the item we can take to the Antique’s Roadshow. (I love that show and always imagine myself with one of the appraisers saying to me- do you have any idea how much this is worth?) I checked ebay and to my dissappointment there are two other first edition up there- one at $2.50 and one at 99 cents. They do have a different cover than this one which is strange. Well, even if isn’t going to make me rich, it is still a treasure. If you can’t get your hands on an old one, Dover has done a reprint.

© Julia Rothman 2007