We kept a lot of things for sentimental reasons from the family home and brought them here with us. We kept some useful things and a lot of useless things. All of it has spent the last seven years gathering dust in our studio and in our neighbour’s workshop. The guest cabin, once finished, will hopefully make use of some of the treasures. The rest should be burned.

For example, you know that piece of wall you might have had in your home where you measured the growth of your children. Ours was on the wall of the garage where all of our children and their friends hung out over the 22 years we lived there. In addition to marking the usual childhood milestones, it seems anyone who partied in our garage was inspired at some time or other to also add their name to the wall. It was a thing of beauty. We cut that piece of drywall out and brought it with us. Yes, I am that sentimental. It is going in the guest cabin and our granddaughter can mark her height next to her dad, grand parents, aunt, uncle and whoever the hell Harp is.

More usefully, we kept a lot of the children’s books and brought bins of them with us. Although Robert Munsch books continue to be a hit, many of the books are looking pretty ratty and need upgrading. I had a suspicion that new books might have been written since the 80’s which might be worth adding to the collection. It is time to update the stash.

I asked for recommendations from grand parent friends. I also this morning checked Amazon. I checked top children’s books for 2019. Rated number three on the list is a book called “Grow the F*ck up” by John Kyle.

Children’s literature and/or parenting has apparently changed

since the eighties