History Lesson

I’ve always been a voracious reader and strict loyalist, which means I don’t need to read a new book in order to enjoy myself. In fact, there’s comfort in reading a book for the second time (or fifth or, in the case of Love Story, twenty-second) that bests the anticipation of reading a never-before-experienced book. When I open a brand-new book, there’s always the chance that I won’t like it as much as I thought I would, but re-reading a treasured favorite never disappoints. One reliable standby still captivating my imagination is a book about a little wooden doll and her century (so far) of adventure. The book Hitty: Her First Hundred Years follows a six-inch carved doll from her first moment of consciousness in a cabin through the years of being marooned on a tropical island, living in a bird’s nest, being stuck in a church pew, and even singing on-stage with Jenny Lind. Her exploits are thrilling, mundane, and stressful, all while taking the reader on a walk through a century of history, with its changing fashions, conflicts, and social norms. It seems so real when told from doll perspective, you feel as if you are there. I thought of Hitty frequently as we were reading Katharine Wilson Precek’s Penny In The Road, about a boy in 1913 who finds a penny from 1793 and lives a day imagining what the coin’s original owner would have done. Maybe inanimate objects can’t carry history with them…but maybe they can.

http://catalog.tempe.gov:90/search~S1?/aCullen,+Bill,+1942-/acullen+bill+1942/-3%2C-1%2C0%2CE/frameset&FF=acullen+clark+patricia&1%2C2%2C

http://hzportal.dayton.lib.oh.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=126U5I604A843.1247448&profile=ger&uri=link=3100007~!328773~!3100001~!3100002&aspect=subtab13&menu=search&ri=1&source=~!horizon&term=Precek%2C+Katharine+Wilson&index=PAUTHOR