“My Book House” edited by Olive Beaupre Miller is my favorite collection of children's literature. The 1st edition is my favorite in the green binding from 1922. The second set that I have enjoyed is the blue bound set published in 1948 for a thirty second printing with a copyright of 1937. As I was reading from book 2, "Story Time", to my son this morning, I thought of looking online again to see what was currently available and found that some of the editions and volumes are online.
This morning we enjoyed reading "The Little Red Hen and the Grain of Wheat," "The Little Gray Pony," "Ole Shut-Eyes, the Sandman," "The Two Crabs," and "Belling the Cat." Volume two has shorter stories with many authors as well as fables adapted from AESOP. Volume one has wonderful Nursery Rhymes and Verse with Illustrations. All the volumes have great illustrations and I would love to frame many of them but the books are too wonderful to take apart. My mother read these as a child and she read them to me, and I read them myself and to my sibbling, and now I am reading them with my children. I hope to find digital easily read versions for my children to have them for their children.
There was a reprint sometime in the 1970's or 1980's but so much had been taken out that they weren't the same. Although, if one of those versions were available, I would probably buy it. The older copies' pages are getting brittle and their are fewer and fewer available online and in bookstores.
As time permits, I may do more with My Bookhouse on this blog but for now, here's some starter resources if you aren't lucky enough to have any of the volumes or didn't grow up reading them.
A 1921 easily read scanned version of the "The Latch Key" volume can be found at :
http://www.archive.org/stream/thelatchkey01millarch#page/n5/mode/2up
If the link doesn't work, try a copy and paste in the browser or the site may be gone.
The following two links are to a blog by a librarian in South Carolina that gives some good information about the volumes.
http://mybookhouse.net/about-ms-kathy/
http://www.mybookhouse.com/2006/09/my-book-house-backstory.html
Wikepedia also has some information on the author and the series.
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