Triangulations: Me and my little bookstore....

I used to teach public school. Not counting practicums and student teaching, I taught for a decade plus one. A few years into my career a new teacher with a shiny new master's degree moved into the classroom next door. Her masters was in something reading related and she measured her juvenile book collection in feet. Like, in the amount of feet the books measured on the bookshelf. I was impressed. Hers were mostly paperback and, I suspect, were book club editions--it takes a lot of those skinny little books to make a foot! During my classroom years I stuck mostly to library books for a regular book rotation in the classroom. In retrospect, I don't think I had an impressive collection as far as feet goes. I've been home now with my kids almost as long as I was in the classroom as a teacher. And now, I think, I could quantify my books in feet.

Much of my time in the public schools was spent in a school with some special grant funding. We were able to develop a literature-based reading program and an impressive library of book sets for reading groups. I loved to go to our collection stacks in a windowless room behind the school library--vault-like--and consider the possibilities.

In my years on the homefront and homeschoolfront I've found a similar love of possibilites in the book stacks at the local thrift stores. The shelves are brimming with books but I am always drawn to the juvenile books. Newberry books, Caldecott books, science, history--titles that can be built into interest studies, unit studies. So many books! And many of them 50 cents or a dollar! Most of the books in our home collection are from local thrift stores. Hunting for good and/or useful titles (I call it 'booking') became such a hobby for me that a few years ago I decided to launch an eBay bookstore.

The bookstore--Two Teachers Used/Gently Used Books--has turned our homeschool collection into an exciting rotation of books. We have books coming and going, with the kids all too familiar with my exclamation regarding their questions, "I have a book about that!" We aren't getting rich around here selling used books, but the benefits have made the venture worth my while. The rotation of books keeps things interesting, the tax write-off of our home office area has been nice, but one of the best things of all has been Sharon.

My first winter on eBay I sold a set of books from a Sonlight Core reading list to Sharon in Australia and a correspondence began. It began with a sentence in a transaction-based email about the weather and grew into many conversations/photos about schooling, children, life, loss and faith. She was expecting her now three-year-old and our winter was Australia's summer--a hot one. I have treasured her correspondence and phone calls.

I've been lucky enough in my 'booking' ventures to find 'real' curriculum such as some of our Saxon Math books, Easy Grammar, The Green Leaf Guide to the Old Testament, A Beka grammar books, Explode the Code, etc., but the gems have been the books for unit studies and fiction recommended by Sonlight and The Well Trained Mind. I tend to be drawn to the old books as well. Here are some of my favorite finds....

This was an exciting book to find.......here it is next to the newer, updated edition....

The vintage copy boasts "48 Best-Loved Stories", while the newer edition claims "36 All-Time Favorites". Of course, I had to sit up one night comparing the two books to see which stories fell from grace over the years...