A Golden Memory

by Karen Rose Smith

I can remember as a child, one of the perks of going to the grocery store with my parents was to choose a Golden Book from the revolving rack near the front of the store. I had quite a collection of them...from children's stories to classic fairy tales to career oriented topics. There were over 200 titles in the Little Golden Library to choose from and many of them are still in my personal library. In my recent cleaning out our cluttered closets frenzy, I came across the box and had to sit for a while to reflect on the childhood memories they brought back to life. Our son also enjoyed the books, although they were already somewhat dated by that time.

I also remember watching Roy Rogers, Sky King and Flipper every Saturday morning. Broadcast in black and white, they were great alternate viewing to Saturday morning cartoons. I also loved the Roy Rogers Tell-a-Tale books. He was one of my early heroes.

It was a special treat when I received a pop-up book as a gift. They were the equivalent of animation in today's ebooks for kids. Many of my pop-up books were holiday stories.

Since my mom was a third grade teacher, she kept me supplied in The First Book series that was also popular with her students. Our son enjoyed them too. These books were the way children learned facts out of their realm of experience before they went to encyclopedias. Recently I asked which books my son wanted me to keep and this series was among those he chose.

He also chose to keep the Hardy Boys series. I grew up with the Hardy Boys, as well as Nancy Drew. There is no doubt that these sleuths were the early inspiration for my cozy mystery sleuths--Caprice De Luca (Caprice De Luca Home Staging Mysteries) and Daisy Swanson (Daisy's Tea Garden Mysteries).