“An Intimate Examination of Sock Fluff” Part 12
The next excerpt from my PYI keynote in a series that started in December 2011…
All the bits of sock fluff I’ve inspected so far have come from socks worn in the second half of my life. I’m now going to pull out a few bits of fluff from the first half of my life. I think you’ll agree that it follows well after these thoughts about the first and second half of my life – so far.
This is a poem I could recite by heart when I was nine years old.
No one made me memorize “Father William” by Lewis Carroll. I just wanted to because I liked it. I still do.
Here’s another of my favourite poems from even earlier in my life. I came to know it, and “Father William” too, through a big fat book called The Illustrated Treasury of Children’s Literature. It has a light blue, hard cover and a dark blue spine, and an inscription inside it reveals that it was a gift to my brother in 1955 but it somehow, some years ago, came to be in my possession. Don’t tell him. I don’t want to have to give it back.
That’s “The Goops”, originally from Goops and How to Be Them by Gelett Burgess.
Read the rest of “An Intimate Examination of Sock Fluff”
Part 1 > Part 2 > Part 3 > Part 4 > Part 5 > Part 6 > Part 7 > Part 8 > Part 9 > Part 10 > Part 11 > Part 12 > Part 13 > Part 14
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Kathy Stinson is the author of the classic Red Is Best and the award-winning The Man with the Violin. Her wide range of titles includes picture books, non-fiction, young adult fiction, historical fiction, horror, biography, series books, and short stories. She has met with her readers in every province and territory of Canada, in the United States, Britain, Liberia, and Korea. She lives in a small town in Ontario.
Thank you for this little walk down memory lane. These were some of my favourites too (not surprisingly).
Which pieces from The Illustrated Treasury do you remember best, dear sis? We should have a flip through it together next time you're here.
We really must, because I don't remember anything specifically. I do remember these poems, but not that they came from this book. Is the Velveteen Rabbit in there as well?
Yes, it is.