The Internet Archive went through a rough patch recently, and I'm glad that it's back on its feet. The site is a repository for so much media that doesn't seem to exist anywhere else. It's also the closest thing I've found to a real time machine.
A while ago I stumbled across the Internet Archive's trove of picture books - not just the classics like "Curious George" and "Goodnight Moon" that everyone knows, but all the junk books and ephemera that cluttered our bookshelves and got lost under the bed when I was a kid in the '80s. I'm talking about the movie tie-ins, the McDonalds give-aways, and the read-along books that came with cassettes or records. Those were the flimsy, cheap, bottom of the barrel books that somehow stuck around much longer than some of my favorites, even though they were so disposable. An awful lot of them have been preserved in the Internet Archive, right along with all the classics. And I'm so glad that they're there.
I spent so much of my childhood around books that now nothing unlocks my old memories like books. I got obsessed with finding some of the old 80s and 90s children's media I'd enjoyed as a kid when my kids hit certain milestones - mostly for my benefit rather than theirs. Looking in on those old pieces of my childhood through the Internet Archive was instantly transporting. I could feel some of the old synapses firing to life again, the sense memories of dog-eared pages and crayon-scrawled covers returning full force. I remembered the toys those books were often mixed together with, the carpets and furniture of my childhood home, and the sounds of my parents telling me "five more minutes" or "time to clean up." It was a shock to see the whole, unblemished versions of volumes like "Over in the Meadow" that I only remember as a half-mangled collection of damaged pages, barely held together by peeling sticky-tape. Or a "Sesame Street" dictionary where the endpages weren't covered in Smurfs stickers and temporary tattoos.
It was also fun to suddenly have access to all the books I didn't have as a kid. I think everybody had at least one book that was part of a series that they were never able to find the rest of. Sometimes the other volumes were pictured on the back cover or on an insert, to let us know they existed. I remember loving Graeme Base's "Eleventh Hour" and "Animalia," and wishing I could find his newer books. And suddenly, there was his entire bibliography, along with all the obscure, out-of-print Dr. Seuss books, the books Roald Dahl had written for grown-ups, and the whole Disney Fun-to-Read library. I found out that "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" had two sequels. "Babar" has six more books written by the original author, and over thirty more by his son. And part of me felt like I was seven years old again, and the luckiest kid in the world.
I understand that every generation has its own media, and have done my best to encourage my kids to explore everything available to them, but it does unsettle me that so few of the books I loved as a kid are available in libraries or bookstores anymore - and, if they are they've been repackaged or re-illustrated, or rewritten to appeal to the current crop of tots. I can only seem to find the adventures of a younger, more attractive Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, or graphic novel versions of The Babysitters Club books at the local library. Of course, that happened generations before me, and will happen generations after. It took some work to find the exact version of "The Little Engine That Could" that I remembered on my bookshelf, which had different illustrations than the original. Other books I had turned out to be abridged versions or updated classroom versions. A couple had content so outdated that they're no longer kid-appropriate.
I'm glad that time marches on, and my kids get to enjoy their Mo Willems and Dav Pilkey, but also that I can read them the Bill Peet and Louis Slobodkin books that aren't so easy to find copies of anymore. I get some reassurance that the books that existed when I was little have been preserved somewhere, and I can visit them once in a while. It's not the same as having the physical books in your hands, but for me it's enough.
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