What Book Is This?

Tonight, after the girls were in bed, Evelin had a mission for me: Retrieve a bookcase from a porch two towns over. Apparently, it was something off Freecycle that hadn't been claimed and Evelin thought it would help our book "problem." (I use scare quotes on the word because I don't think it qualifies as a problem, it's just a lot of books, falling off shelves and forming piles around the house — kind of like a library ... without the shhhh'ing, stacks, card catalogue, or defensible acquisition policy.)

After it was in place, Evelin started moving around other bits of furniture and rearranging the placement of books throughout the house. This is where the tale gets odd.

Among the things that have gone unblogged over the past few months is Celeste's reading. She loves books, all sorts of books: board books, books, "page books" (the term she came up with for paperbacks and hardbacks without pictures), etc. Those page books have very few clues as to the contents when you can't really read, but Celeste doesn't let that stop her ... especially when it come to mass-market size paperbacks. She's appropriated several of them, given them new titles, and she's totally consistent about it.

When Evelin was rearranging the books, she paused for a moment when shelving a copy of Wide Sargasso Sea (this edition), which Celeste has dubbed "Ripley^* Howls at the Moon."

Next, Evelin paused over a copy of Animal Farm. I asked, "Hey, what's Animal Farm?" and Evelin looked at me with a look of surprise, initially thinking I'd never heard of George Orwell or something. Not five minutes later, when she asked, "Hey, what's Field Guide to the Slug?" ... and I responded with a short discourse about gastropod mollusks ...

^*Ripley is Celeste's Flapjacks Dog, which Evelin's mother bought for Quinn, but Celeste appropriated as soon as it entered the house ... and thus began the end of her friendship with Dee Dee Bear.