Treasure Things by Annette Wynne
(Photo by Keri Douglas, copyright protected)

Sitting on my shelf is a worn, torn and colored Treasured Things children’s book with little poems to recite by poet, Annette Wynne. It is a telescope into the lives of children and adults in 1922.

Treasure - Things
Bits of tin and colored glass,
   Nails and knives and strings,
Keep them in a treasure-box,
   For these are treasure-things;
Wrap them up most neatly,
   Keep them hidden so,
For what are really treasure-things
   Parents never know.

The Morning Lark
The morning lark rose early
   To see the black dark go,
"Goodbye, dear Dark," sang the morning Lark,
   "Good morning, Morning-Glow!"

Oases in the Desert
Oases in the desert are rather pleasant places,
Where men may stop to take a drink and wash
  sand from their faces;
Oases in the desert are pleasant spots, indeed - 
Perhaps the men sit down awhile beneath the 
   trees to read.

Newspapers
If all the news gave out
  And there should come a day
With nothing at all to print about -
  What would the papers say?

The P.F. Volland Company based in Joliet, Illinois published children’s books for almost 25 years. At the end of the book is a statement of their publishing intentions.

It is the Volland ideal that books should make children happy and build character unconsciously; that the stories be full of action and interest, made still more attractive by pictures in color, and all should be done by authors and artists who know and love children, and who leave out fear, mischief, cruelty and moralizing.

An old collection of poems in a tattered book with scribbles all over still speaks to today.

By Keri Douglas, writer/photographers, Washington, D.C. (Please follow 9 Muses News copyright use policy.)