Yes, We Have Crocodiles

You will never find such a range of children’s books – good and bad, classic and experimental, new and tattered, exotic and greeting-card bland – as at your average local library sale. I don’t understand the science of it exactly, except these books are apparently donated – though you would not know it from the looks the librarians shoot me every time I pull up with my trunk full of discards.

You may find twenty biographies of Roger Clemens or Lindsay Lohan, or you may find one vintage edition of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories, neither of which appears in that - or any - library’s regular collection. The vetting seems careless, even random, but the resulting inventory can trigger – in my neighborhood anyway – something like the exploration of some last frontier.

A free-for-all in other words. People line up for two or three hours in advance. Some of these are book collectors, I have heard, some bargain hunters and some, like me, are haunted by the possibility of losing that perfect, inspiring story to parents standing in front of them.

This is not admirable, necessarily. A lady once opened a book on my head, and proceeded to read it as I crouched to sample a bottom shelf. I did not take a minute to confront her because I am generally intimidated by people with such courage in their convictions, and also because I was busy lobbing whatever questionable books I could get my hands on into a box I had labeled as MINE. And thrown a scarf on top of. And barked at small children when they got too close.

Some of these potential treasures are twenty-five cents, two dollars tops, and there isn’t always time to read them all the way through. Consequently, the shelves in our house do sometimes fill up with some really cool looking covers and some relatively disappointing pages in between. And then we remind ourselves there simply isn’t enough room on those shelves for second-chances or maybe-laters, so back they go, somebody else’s family heirloom maybe, or somebody’s flash in the pan.

I carry faint memories of these books, so it wasn’t entirely a waste of money. One, which we owned for probably a week, featured two giants duking it out at the rest of the world’s expense. It’s a pretty common story, but these particular giants were amazingly the very shape, color and texture of ruffled potato chips. Who wouldn’t grab a book about belligerent potato chip giants? Years later I saw it again – our very same edition? – under glass in the rare and collectible section of an independent bookseller. Two hundred dollars. Oh well.

Still, even counting these losses, I can look with some pride at my enterprise in acquiring hard-to-find books like the rollicking Tina’s Diner - by Joann Adinolfi – about a flood and a hard-to-find plumber. Like Snowflake Bentley – by Jacqueline Briggs Martin – about an artist and photographer fanatically determined to capture a snowflake on film. Like Sayonara Mrs. Kackleman – by Maira Kalman - about a brother and sister picking up and touring Japan. Like Indigo and the Whale – by Joyce Dunbar –  about a fisherman’s son trying to forge his own future through music.

Or The Crocodile Who Wouldn’t Be King - originally published in Germany - my copy of which is inscribed:

“For Joseph. You know we have crocodiles here in the bayous of Louisiana. Thought we ought to acquaint you with some of the creatures you’ll see when you come to visit your parrain (Godfather) someday.

“Love, Paul
Christmas 1971”

The eponymous crocodile, repulsed by his father’s tyrannical ways, travels to the faraway city of Iglau, entertains children, almost devours an insensitive schoolteacher and learns to wear pants. The story’s pretty good – sad, sincere, uplifting and unpredictable – but it’s the art which is simply spectacular, and nowhere currently online, though one or two copies occasionally become available on Amazon. Joseph, are you out there? Someone left the lights on in your past.