Books are the best gift anyone could give a young person, besides reading to that young person. These books may be purchased at a large retail chain, but why spend a large amount of money on one book when you can spend the exact same amount of money and purchase possibly a dozen books that are sure to please this young individual that much more.



I recently learned from a friend of mine that worked at our local library that before the library can receive new books they must get rid of some of their stock of books that have not been checked out in a while. Once this collection of books has been gathered together they are gone through and I was shocked at the wonderful stories she had to tell of the strange findings her and another librarian found.

As enjoyed our dinner, I could tell you if it was her fascinating stories or the wonderful food that I was enjoying more, but I do know that she had me hanging onto her every word. She explained how she found an older blue certificate two dollar bill in a copy of A Journey To The Center Of The Earth by Jules Verne, which she was shocked to have found. While continuing to go through the many books, which would be sold at a public sale, they found an unlimited supply of monopoly money and playing cards, which readers had apparently used as book markers and had forgot to remove.

She then got to the really great stuff! Inside of a hardback novel written by Stephen King, her co-worker found a piece of folded notebook paper with "I will not start fires" written in the handwriting of a young child ten times. She said that through the years she had heard of this occurring at other libraries in the same books, but they had never had it happened at theres until now. I asked her what the book was, but she said she would let me figure that one out since I was such an avid reader. I guess I will be reading Steven King novel for a while thanks to her!

"What else did you find?" I asked. She went on to tell me about the different movie ticket stubs, a unused band-aid, a wrapper from a candy bar, and several baseball cards. Some of the worst things that she mentioned, which I was shocked to find out were a rusty razor blade in between the pages of an old war book and in between the pages of a couple Harlequin Romance novels were some very short curly hairs. Nasty!

They had found a large variety of dried flowers, especially roses, and even some leaves. Their most prized treasures were handwritten recipes that had been written on index cards, which were of some really great recipes that they both now enjoy making. The funniest thing she found was an entire Cadbury creme egg that had apparently been flattened by the weight of the pages. She said it still tasted great, but I knew she had not ate it or had she?