Library Showcase: Alice and Jerry Readers

We are back on our mission to have the best time-traveling classroom dolls can have.  At some point in the past, someone asked the human to make a set of mid-century readers, the Alice and Jerry readers.  These generally date from the late 1930s to the early 1950s.  We think they were eventually replaced by the more popular Dick and Jane New Basic Readers.

The series had:

2 pre-readers ("Day In and Day Out", "The Wishing Well")

2 1st grade readers ("Round About", "Anything Can Happen")

3 2nd grade readers ("Friendly Village", "Down the River Road", "Neighbors on the Hill")

3 3rd grade readers ("Through the Green Gate", "If I Were Going", "The Five and a half Club")

1 4th grade reader ("Engine Whistle")

1 5th grade reader ("Wagon Wheels")

1 6th grade reader ("Runaway Home")

These are our versions of the pre-readers and the 1st grade readers.

And here's the second and third grade readers.  All 6 of them.

The stories are all of idealized life in mid-century America, in a small town surrounded by farms.

Where a trip 'into the city' was a big event.

Finally, the last 3 'grown up' readers.  These covered more historical fiction, biographies of famous people (almost all men, and the only women included were the very feminine ones.  Which makes sense given the era these were published.)

The best thing about historical textbooks is how they represent the general views and moral system of the time.  If you're interested in a series on the history of schoolbooks for children in the US, please leave a comment.  We've got everything from the first New England Primer (1774) to the Dick and Jane New Basic Readers.

If you would like these readers, the printable is on sale now on Etsy.

Countdown to Halloween: Outfits and Activity Books

Nora here.  The human has been too busy to sew for us lately since she needed to get our candy and book stash under control.  When we asked her for new clothes, the human made some rather irritating noises about 'too many clothes' and 'not wearing perfectly good outfits you already own', so Cauth and I braved the depths of the storage closet for some festive clothing.

These were made in...Fall 2015, if memory serves.  The same time as the rest of the attack of the novelty Halloween fabrics.  The human has learned better since then, so we're not subject to such blinding combinations as much anymore.  (The shirts look just fine with jeans.  Novelty print capris, not so much...)

To go with the rest of our goodies, we also got some festive activity books.  At this point, we have quite a collection.  Space, Christmas, and now Halloween.  Maybe next year we'll add Valentine's Day, Easter, and the 4th of July to the list of holidays that we have activity books for.  These books contain free printables from Dover Samplers.  They're super quick and easy to make, 5 min or less for something cute to play with or give to a trick-or-treater.

Get your Halloween activity books here.

Instructions

Countdown to Halloween: the Candy and Book Store

And we are back for the remainder of 2018 after our usual summer break.  It's almost (10 days left) to Halloween, and we spent some time setting up Halloween decorations in our book store.  We'll be doing a bunch of posts leading up the big day, showing off all our seasonal decorations

But first, our store:

New books on the mantel, with Halloween paper sculptures

It's a bookstore with a rather fancy cafe/candy store attached.  The bookstore has a quite a few new decorations in the form of paper sculptures, and even more new books.  On the mantle are two fall-themed Tasha Tudor books:  Pumpkin Moonshine and Corgiville Fair.

The bulk of the books, vintage textbooks and modern YA fantasy

We also have a new collection of modern young adult fantasy books by Tamora Pierce, some steampunk books by Gail Carriger, and assorted other novels.  Have you lost track of what books we have?  So have we...

Another fancy paper sculpture, next to an antique globe from a yard sale

We've been collecting all sorts of cute things from going to garage sales this last year in Vermont.  The globe was a find from last fall.  But that's enough about the books.  We'll cover our new books in detail later.  Now for the glorious glorious candy store.

The owl is back to guarding the candy cart

Just having chocolate frogs isn't enough anymore.  We went all out in our candy collection this year.

We have the traditional candy, penny candy, chocolate bars, and all.  And then we have the Honeydukes cart (with owl) and display case.  For all of the candy.  Ever.

Pies, pumpkin pasties, cauldron cakes, madelines, and more...

Exploding bon bons, Bertie Botts Jelly beans, and butterfly wings

Some fancy premium chocolates with envelope wrappers

The final tally of Honeydukes cart and display is:  24 chocolate frogs (all with frogs inside), 12 boxes of sugared butterfly wings (6 with pretend candy, the rest stuffed with beads for weight), 4 boxes of cauldron cakes (each with a cake inside), 12 bags of peppermint toads (weighted with glass beads), 12 bags of fudge flies (more beads), 8 boxes of salt water taffy, 8 boxes of Drobble's bubble gum, 8 boxes of exploding bon-bons, 12 boxes of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, and 6 boxes of black pepper imps (all weighed with glass beads, but otherwise the packaging is sealed).  Oh, and 8 bars of Honeydukes branded chocolate (aluminum foil over craft foam, with a paper wrapper)

Want to guess how many individual pieces of candy are in this setup?

And that's just the Honeydukes portion of the shop.  We also have an old-fashioned candy store worth of penny candy, chocolate, and candy bars...  Pretty sure we're ready for all the trick-or-treaters that might stop by.

And if you managed to stick around this long, we have a treat for you: the Halloween banner we're using to decorate our concession stand.

The original banner can be found HERE.  (Yes, it's another papercraft from Canon Creative.  The human loves their designs, and they always shrink down well.)

The resized version for doll is HERE.

Stay tuned over the next week for all of our Halloween goodies!

Louisa May Alcott Books

We've had a copy of "Little Women" since about when the human started making books for us, but at some point, we wanted the rest of the books in the series.

And so the human found a site with some wonderful covers and spine art for almost all of the books Louisa May Alcott wrote, and made us a set.

The collection includes "Little Women", "Little Men", "Jo's Boys", "An Old Fashioned Girl" (like so many of us these days), "Eight Cousins", and "Rose in Bloom".

This collection is for sale at the human's Etsy shop: Little Women book collection

American Girl Books: Addy

American Girl Books: Felicity