First Edition Noddy
At the start of this week I mentioned that I’d been surprised by the price of a purchase that I had made. Well this was the cause of the surprise. I had been browsing in the children’s section of a wonderful old bookstore in a town about ten miles away and came across a pile of Noddy books. I looked at the price of a few of them and saw that they cost about two English pounds each. Considering them a bargain I grabbed the whole pile, along with some Famous Five and Beatrix Potter and headed towards the till.
I’d done a brief calculation in my head of what I thought the average cost of the entire purchase should have been and was rather surprised when the total was said out loud. However, having taken so many books I was loathe to ask the young chap to add them all up again with me peering over his shoulder hand on hip so I just thanked them and wandered off a little worried. Of course when I began to check the prices at home I came across a note, written lightly in pencil on the inside cover of the book you see in the pictures, that informed me that this was a first edition.
Although I’ve often thought that it would have been nice to have had the foresight to buy a first edition Harry Potter at the time of publication I am very, very happy that my first ever first edition is a Noddy book. My nana owned so many of these and she would read them to us in her bed when we would stay over, after she’d made her morning cuppa of course (“the war was won on good cups of tea”). We would lay there with the duvet pulled right up to our chins and scream “ANOTHER” when one had finished.
It is this image that takes me back to those mornings in a rush of nostalgia. I wanted to live either there or in one of those tiny houses in Munchkin Land, Oz. Perhaps that’s why I love the fishing towns of the South West of England. They look somewhat like the illustration of Noddy town only real.
Buying this first edition was a serendipitous mistake that lead me to proceed with an idea that had been floating around in my head but had not yet been cemented.
We have a corner on the landing at the top of our stairs. There is enough room for the small thrifted oyster coloured nursing chair that I bought last summer and a lamp that will sit on a side table. There are shelves that run on either side of that corner and I’ve decided to dedicate this area to children’s literature. I’ve got so many books from my own childhood and I thrift an awful lot to this day.
So, from The Tales of Peter Rabbit to Jane Eyre this corner will be my way of taking a child, or children, through literature. A journey that starts with pictures and ends with the classics when they head off on their own and will undoubtedly leave the classics behind for a while and simply read what their friends are reading.
I had a similar journey. My mum would take me through flash cards at a very early age and I absorbed the process of learning to read with gusto. I remember very clearly being naughty and being sent to be early. I went up not very bothered by this punishment as I knew I had a whole stash of unread books under my bed cover. My dad came in to check that I was suitably penitent only to find me reading. He took the book away and told me I could have it back the next morning. I waited until he’d shut the door and I’d heard his steps going back downstairs and simply brought another one out and continued to read. He busted me again about five minutes later and the same thing happened. In fact it happened AGAIN until he really caught on to me and I had to give up my entire stash and sit out my isolation bookless……….or so he thought!
What he didn’t know, until now, was that there was an emergency book at the bottom of the bed and the whole time that I was being relieved of reading material I could feel it with my toes.
What was my emergency story?
A Noddy book.
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