Tuesday, June 20, 2006

So, we are still waiting for Marie (here) to write us something titillatingly interesting for our Book Corner. A promise is a promise Marie.

I also talked to Caterina, the owner of a travel book bookshop just down the road from where I live, about writing something, in German, for our Book Corner page. And she agreed!

Don’t know either of the women well: one virtually (Marie) and the other (Caterina) the last few months since I started ordering German books for the children at her shop. My impression is that they are both very intelligent, have a passion for books, and a fine instinct when it comes to matching the right book to its reader.

For instance, I ordered some books for my 11 year old daughter (three in the Mary Poppins’ series, by Pamela L. Travers, and The Invisible Friend, by Louise Arnold) and in the same batch of books, Caterina ordered Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones, and The Goodfellow Chronicles: The Sacred Seal, by Judith Christine Mills. So, when we came to pick up the books, she asked my daughter, “Do you know these books?” And, yes, they were perfect, and, yes, she sold them to us on the spot as well as the ordered. Excellent business all around: whether I am admiring her ability to figure out what Sara likes in books after getting only a few clues, or her ability to judge me as a mother who will (almost) pay anything to let her children read, is the question.

(For those of you who wonder why I am buying German translations of English books for my children… they prefer it so. German is their native tongue and speak English well, but not fluently enough that they can cobble up books at the same speed they can German books.)

And though I haven’t had quite the same experience yet with Marie, I have this feeling that she possesses this talent as well.

So while we, readers of the Red Tent Blog and books in general, are waiting for Marie and Caterina to write something for the Book Corner, take a look at some summer reading lists (here and here) to pass the time away that I got out of the Culture Vulture blog.

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