A "thingless gift" to the Jubilee School

The book drive for ajudicated youth ended very successfully. Friends of the shop contributed over 4 boxes of books which will be presented to facilities badly in need of books for the kids in their care. Thanks for your support. I would like to share a third idea for ways you can honor your friends by making a gift in their name as opposed to giving them a physical gift during the holidays. The Jubilee School is truly a marvelous little pk-6th grade school in West Philadelphia at 42nd and Chester that I've been involved with for nearly 20 years. The director, Karen Falcon, and I have been friends since I was the principal of the Miquon School. She also came out of the progressive, John Dewey, Bank Street philosophy of teaching and she has been working miracles with about 60 kids a year that whole time. She operates on the thinnest of shoestrings but has managed to create an incredibly rich curriculum for kids who come from all sorts of economic situations. The curriculum is student driven and a few years back the kids, some of whom had lost friends to random gun violence, joined the fight against gun violence and even testified before a United Nations Committee studying the problem. To find out more about the school and to make a donation, go to their website.

   In our continued browse through the books in our shop:

 We have a magic section in the shop with a variety of funky, wonderful books on this fine art of deception. This particular one, published in England in 1960, is designed for kids and has simple card tricks, etc. Who knows how it found it's way to us, but we're delighted to offer it for $10. Maybe it will be the motivator for the next Houdini.

Whilst we are in England, let me suggest a charming gardening book by one of the masters of garden writing, Beverley Nichols. We have an ex library copy, in dj, of Garden Open Today for $8. I'll let the author speak for himself. In his chapter, Fragrance, he writes, "Scented plants, I think, should be disposed strategically. By which I mean that there should be something at the front door, to calm one's goings out and comfort one's comings in, and something at the end of the lawn to sniff, and crunch, and talk about."                

 We pride ourselves on having an unusually large drama section which includes a very large selection of scripts, often just $2,  including this relatively scarce title by Bertolt Brecht, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, a Gangster Spectacle.  How can one resist an intriguing title like that. $10

Finally, an example of the delightfully obscure. We have a copy of The 1994 Hymnlet, OHS, Convention, 1994 Connecticutt for $10. Now for those of you who are uninitiated, the OHS is the Organ Historical Society and I came across a wonderful collection of pipe organ material and am having great fun with it. The group apparently convenes at least once a year in a different part of the country and spends a week touring the local churches and hearing concerts performed on the various organmaster's home organ. Within this hymnlet is the schedule of such performances at this convention as well as the music for featured hymns to be sung at the sundry churches. As I said, you never know what will show up in a used bookstore.