Revisit the books of our childhood

#Middlebury #Seniors

There really is something to be said for going back to a simpler time, even for a little while.

For those of us who work with people who have dementia, or if we just want to take a break from the current crop of books on bestseller lists, here is an idea: Revisit the books of our childhood.

Wikipedia can be a great place to remind us of the titles we might have forgotten. Put “books of the 1940s,” or whatever decade you’d like to explore, in its search box. You’ll find hundreds of books from our childhood, most with links to information about the books themselves, such as “Lassie Come Home” (1940), “Curious George” (1941), “Pippi Longstocking” (1945) and “Scuffy the Tugboat” (1946).

From the 1950s we have “Henry Huggins” (1950), “Charlotte’s Web” (1952), “Horton Hears a Who!” (1954), “Danny and the Dinosaur” (1958) and the “Brains Benton Series” (1959-61).

To jog your memory, in 1942, Henry, Jessie, Violet and Benny Alden were orphans living in a boxcar in the woods until they are introduced to their grandfather, who has the boxcar moved to his backyard in “The Boxcar Children.”

In 1946, “Scuffy the Tugboat” ended up floating down larger and larger waterways until he was rescued and was put back where he was happiest – the bathtub.

In 1959, Brains Benton and his sidekick, Jimmy Carson, solved the mystery of “The Case of the Missing Message” and continued solving crimes for the next five books in the original Brains Benton series.

If you want to find the old books of your childhood, it’s not as difficult as you might think. Some of the books are still in print. Check Amazon.com or AbeBooks.com. Some of them might be found at your library. If you’re very lucky, a few of them might even be on your own bookshelves.

© 2020 King Features Synd. Inc.