A nerdy post about books. Children's books.

I went to Barnes & Noble last night. There are few things I enjoy more than walking around in a book store. Even though I didn't buy anything (although I could have, trust me), I still left feeling satisfied.

There are certain sections I always visit, like the Employee Picks and of course Fiction. Lately I've been looking at the cookbooks and the Bargain Books as well.

But last night I decided to head over to the Children's Books. It had been a long time since I'd ventured there, and I decided I'd like to see if they had the original Mary Poppins books. Because very few people realize that she's from a book.

And as I browsed the shelves looking for it, I realized how much I read when I was growing up. There were basically two kinds of books: older "classic" children's literature and new, probably-fresh-from-the-publisher literature.

And it was a very nostalgic ten minutes for me, looking at those books, because those classics are what I'd grown up reading. I received Caddie Woodlawn and King of the Wind for Christmas one year; Walk Two Moons brought back vivid memories of my third grade classroom. The Laura Ingalls Wilder books, which I read throughout elementary school, made me smile and so did the copy of Mary Poppins I finally found.

There were so many more, and for a moment I felt completely contented to be surrounded by the stories that my childhood had been built around. As I headed back to the more age-appropriate sections, I almost bought the copy of Mary Poppins, but decided to leave it there. I've got the sequel at home, and besides, hopefully some little kid will see it and realize that she's actually nothing like Julie Andrews.