
Resourcefully we turned to automated acquisitions, focusing on award-winning and notable children's books that are received systematically through an approval plan with our major book vendor - bringing forth the best of the best. Over time, publication proliferated, holdings bulged, and staffing slimmed. Children's books were passed on from our parents, and by us to our kids they grew exponentially in the library during a TC heyday of faculty children's literature specialists and they were eagerly read aloud by countless College members, sometimes by the authors or other special guests, in a magical weekly library story hour for local school children. The seasonal picture sticks with me for years, helping me recall childhood favorites and their prized place on our shelves: Goodnight Moon The Velveteen Rabbit The Little Prince Little Women The Phantom Tollbooth, Trumpet of the Swan, Nancy Drew, Eloise, Curious George, and much much more. Snowflakes settle, stockings come second, and time softly sifts, like sand through an hourglass.

Each book contains beautiful illustrations and creative language - to be specially unwrapped under the home tree, complete with real candles in small glass holders - another tradition, I learn, that is passed on through the Franck family of German descent. I wonder which titles are chosen for that now distant year, and I begin to imagine a multitude of picture books over the decades prior. Once sitting around the old oak Planning table on the fifth floor of Russell Hall, Jane, our former library director, quietly shares that every Christmas she and her two grown daughters gift each other a children's book. Mirelle Ortego, Magic: Once Upon a Faraway Land You can feel it in the air, even in a new faraway land. Like when jarochas dance! Magic is everywhere. Like when sounds are woven together into beautiful music. Like when strangers turn into friends and houses into homes. Like when simple ingredients turn into delicious meals.



Like when people's hands touch the earth and plant seeds that become fruit.
