Don’t Judge a Book By It’s Cover Or It’s Smell

As I was sitting and reading books to the kids tonight, I smelled a funny odor. I couldn’t quite place my finger on it, but it wasn’t a delightful smell.

I finally stopped mid-sentence in the middle of the book and asked, “Did someone puke?”

The kids all shook their heads no and wanted to know why I would ask such a preposterous question. I told them about the not so great odor I kept getting whiffs of.

Bency, my 5 year old, then piped up, “Oh, maybe it’s my library book. Sometimes I check out books that smell like puke.”

I brought the book to my nose and sure enough…it smelled like puke.

Then both kids asked to get a whiff as well.

Both kids agreed that the smell was coming from the book.

If this wasn’t enough to cause me a tremendous amount of bewilderment, my 7 year old daughter, Iris chimed in with, “I am really used to that smell. I read a lot and most of my books smell like this.”

The Tooth Fairy is Involved in the Case of the Missing Library Book

On Mondays, my 2^nd grade daughter, Iris, has library at school. They are allowed to pick out two books and bring them home.

Our house is filled with children’s books. There are books in all of my children’s rooms. There are books in the living room, the attic crawl space I turned into a play area, our van and our basement holds seven shelves that our lined with children’s books. My best guess is that we own over 500 books for the kids.

If this wasn’t enough we also go to the public library every week, and pick out 15 more books.

I have always kept a close eye on the borrowed library books from school. They can be read and then immediately returned to the counter in the kitchen where I keep their daily school folders and papers that need to be signed.

This year I have two children in school so this pile is getting larger. I told Iris last week that now that she is in 2^nd grade she is responsible for her library books from school and to keep them in her room.

This past Monday, while Iris was getting ready for school, I reminded her it was library day.

SHE COULD NOT FIND ONE OF HER LIBRARY BOOKS!

We searched frantically for 10 minutes before she had to leave but came up empty handed.

When Iris came home from school, she spent the rest of the afternoon scouring the house for it. She was still empty handed.

She shrugged her shoulders, gave up and said she had the perfect solution.

I have mentioned in a previous post, She Love Unicorns and Other Fancy Stuff that Iris has claimed the Tooth Fairy has her friend and pen pal.

Iris’s solution to her missing library book was to put it in the Tooth Fairy’s hands by writing her a note requesting her to find it.

To Tooth Fairy
From Iris
Dear Tooth Fairy,
Can you find Smile A Lot for me? Can you at least find it or return it on Monday or tomorrow? See you! Just tell me if you couldn’t find it.

I felt bad for the Tooth Fairy. She already has a huge workload of collecting millions of kids’ teeth and hauling a sack full of money around the world every night; and here my daughter now wants her to find a missing library book.

The Tooth Fairy collected her note Monday night from my daughter’s “tooth fairy pillow” and began to search relentlessly all day Tuesday and Wednesday. I heard her jingling around downstairs going through EVERY bookshelf, pulling out every book. She scoped out all of the children’s rooms. She looked under beds, couches and chairs. She crammed her tiny body in every bag, box and nook she could find. The book is nowhere. I’m afraid the Tooth Fairy may have to call the public library and see if it accidentally got returned there.

I have a feeling the Tooth Fairy is exhausted with all of this extra work placed on her these past few days.

The Tooth Fairy was nice enough to take the time and write back to Iris though!