Yetsa’s Sweater by Sylvia Olsen, illustrated by Joan Larson, 2006.
Yetsa and her mother go to her grandmother’s house to help her prepare wool for making a sweater. Yetsa is getting too big for the sweater she’s wearing, but she still loves it because her grandmother knitted designs in it that have personal significance to her and her family.
Yetsa’s grandmother builds a fire and brings a large pot for the wool. They have to sort through the fleeces they received from Farmer McNutt and remove any little twigs or hay or anything that doesn’t belong. Yetsa yells when she finds some sheep poop stuck in the fleece. After they’ve removed the debris as best they can, they wash the fleece in hot water over the fire. Then, they rinse it in cool water and wring it out.
While the wool dries on the clothesline, they take a break and have some bread and blackberry jam.
The following week, they begin pulling apart the fibers of the wool, making it fluffier, a process called “teasing.” Then, Yetsa’s grandmother runs the wool through a carding machine, and they begin spinning it into yarn with a spinning machine.
When the spinning is finished, Yetsa’s grandmother has enough wool to make many sweaters.
In the back of the book, the author explains that Yetsa is her own granddaughter and that knitting is a traditional skill for Coast Salish women. They learned knitting from Scottish settlers who came to British Columbia, and the sweaters they made came to be called Cowichan sweaters, after the largest tribe in the region. Children like Yetsa begin learning how to prepare wool and knit at a fairly young age.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
I love books that show people making traditional crafts, and I enjoying following this one from beginning to end! Readers get to see each step in the process of making the sweater, starting with the wool and ending with the finished sweater. I’ve been knitting from a young age, but I’ve never tried spinning my own wool, and I liked seeing the intricate patterns of the sweater.
When I was a kid, I often ignored authors’ explanations because my focus was on the story, but as an adult, I like the added details of author’s explanations. This is a family story because Yetsa in the story is based on the author’s own granddaughter.
Halloween is approaching, and the Sherlock Street Detectives are talking about their costumes. David is going to be a bear, and he made his costume out of an old rug. Pedro is going to be a clown. Walter and Ann, who are twins, refuse to tell anyone what their costumes are because they want it to be a surprise.
Then, David says that he has to go home because it’s dinnertime, and after dinner, he’s going to look for a comet with his telescope. Pedro says that he’s never used a telescope before and asks if he can look, too. David says he can, and Pedro says that he will come back to his house when it’s dark.
When David and Pedro meet to use the telescope, David shows Pedro how to use a star map to find the constellations. While Pedro is looking through the telescope, he thinks that he sees a UFO! At first, David doesn’t believe him. It’s too early to see the comet, so he thinks maybe Pedro saw a meteor. Pedro insists that it was a UFO, and David points out that UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object. That means that anything that “unidentified” can be a UFO. Pedro can’t identify exactly what it was he saw, but that only means that he didn’t recognize the object. It doesn’t have to be an alien spacecraft, just some normal thing he didn’t recognize, like a meteor, a comet, or even just a firefly.
Since David’s dad works for NASA, Pedro says that they should ask him if it could have been a comet other than the one they were expecting to see. However, David’s dad confirms that there should only have been one comet that night and that the comet should have been in a different part of the sky. The boys talk about getting Walter and Ann to help them investigate, but then, they see some strange creatures in the bushes!
What did Pedro really see through the telescope, and could those weird creatures really be aliens?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
This is fun mystery picture book! Figuring out what/who the aliens are is the easiest part of the mystery, since this is before Halloween and the twins were being mysterious about what their costumes are, although it might seem harder to young children. The answer to what Pedro thought he saw through the telescope is revealed first, although I wasn’t entirely sure what to think of it myself. At first, I thought that the “aliens” might have been throwing around some glowing toy or something, but they would have to have thrown it really high to get it in front of the telescope because the boys were using the telescope on the roof. There’s a perfectly logical explanation behind the phenomenon, and David figures it out by noting where the object was and it was moving. David’s father confirms David’s guess with a call to NASA.
One of the nice things about this simple mystery story is that it introduces some real concepts for stargazers and amateur astronomers. There is a vocabulary list and glossary in the back of the book.
This series also offers good representations for racial diversity. Racial issues don’t enter into the story. The kids are just a bunch of kids who happen to live in the same neighborhood and are friends and like to solve mysteries, but they are a mixed racial group, and that’s nice to see. David is black, Pedro is Hispanic, and the twins are white. The children’s races are not referred to in the text of the story, but they are shown in the pictures.
Halloween is coming, and the students in Roger’s class at school are preparing for their Halloween play. The class rehearses their play every day, and they make invitations to the play to send out to people in town.
On the night of the play, the school’s auditorium is full of people waiting to watch the play, and Roger waits backstage for his turn to go on stage. He doesn’t have a big role in the play, but his role is important.
The other students in Roger’s class go on stage, dressed as witches, ghosts, and skeletons. They perform the songs and dances they’ve rehearsed. The audience laughs at the funny parts, and everyone is enjoying the play.
All the time, Roger is backstage, listening and preparing for his part. He counts down the lines until the moment comes when Roger steps on stage for the play’s finale!
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
I remember reading this book when I was a little kid, and it was a Halloween favorite of mine! Felicia Bond is better known today as the illustrator (but not the author) of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, which was originally published two years after this particular picture book. The art style between the two books is noticeably similar, but the book about the Halloween play is different because this is about mice who live like people and do not interact with humans. I was also amused that one of the student mice in this book was dressed in an orange shirt with a black zig-zag and black shorts, like the cartoon character Charlie Brown, who wears a yellow shirt with a black zig-zag and black shorts. The tv special It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was known for popularizing the concept of Halloween tv specials, and Roger the mouse plays a large pumpkin in his class’s Halloween play, although Roger isn’t the mouse wearing the Charlie Brown style clothes. Roger is the one in the sweater with an R on the front. I was just amused by this little detail in the pictures of his class.
This picture book is a sweet little story about a mouse boy and the Halloween play given by his class. School plays on a wide variety of themes are a common experience for human children attending both public and private schools, and they are often memorable points in children’s school experiences. They can also be very emotional experiences. Students can be nervous about plays and being on stage in front of an audience, and sometimes, there are conflicts about which students get the best parts. This cute little picture book doesn’t have any drama in it and doesn’t talk about stage fright, although there are other children’s books that address these issues.
Instead, the story is more about a magical evening and the small but important role played by one particular student. Much of the story shows the build-up to the play, and when the play begins, Roger only appears on stage at the end of the play. The rest of the time, he’s listening to the other students from back stage, waiting for his cue to step into the spotlight. We don’t know exactly what the play is about, but it’s not that important. Those quiet moments of anticipation backstage are magical, and Roger will never forget how exciting this evening has been!
Emily thinks that she has the best costume for the upcoming Halloween party! It’s a beautiful dress that makes her feel elegant and magical.
Emily takes the costume on the bus to show her grandmother, but somehow, the box with the costume in it disappears during the ride. Emily is upset at losing the costume and doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t want to go to the party as something ordinary, like a pumpkin.
Then, her grandmother suggests that she just go as herself. As herself, Emily is truly unique!
My Reaction
I liked the grandmother’s unorthodox solution to the problem of the missing costume. I can understand a kid loving a particular costume so much that it seems like nothing else will do, but showing Emily that she’s just fine going to the party as herself is a good way to show her that she is just fine as she is, just being herself. Emily would have liked going with the costume she loved, but she doesn’t need any costume in particular because she is good enough by herself.
It’s Pet Day at school, and twins Walter and Ann are bringing their dog, Watson, and their cat, Fuzz Face to school with them. Watson is really Walter’s dog, and Fuzz Face is Ann’s cat. The school bus is chaotic and noisy because the other children have their pets with them, too.
At school, each of the kids tells the rest of the class about their pet. When it’s time to go to lunch, the kids give their pets food and water and leave them in the classroom.
When they come back from lunch, a pair of hamsters are missing, and their owner, Tina, thinks that Fuzz Face might have eaten them. Ann points out that Fuzz Face couldn’t have eaten the hamsters because Fuzz Face was in his cage during lunch.
The kids figure that the hamsters are probably hiding somewhere in the room, and they ask Tina to tell them everything she knows about the hamsters so they can find them. They use what Tina tells them about the habits of hamsters to figure out where they are.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
It’s a fun picture book mystery, but it’s also educational, like other books in the series. The information the kids give about their pets is true. Some of them say where their pets originally came from, like Pedro, who says that his pet parrot is a breed that comes from South America. Ann mentions that her cat takes vitamins and has to go to the vet sometimes, like people have to visit their own doctors. I liked how the characters use facts about the behavior of hamsters to figure out where the hamsters went.
I was a kid about the age of the characters at the time this book was published, although I don’t remember reading this book at the time. When I was in kindergarten, the year before the book was published, we had a special pet event in my class, but we didn’t do it like the class in this book. As I recall, different people brought in pets on different days so it was less chaotic and there was no chance of one pet eating another, which is a real risk. Also, all pets had to be in cages to keep them from running away or causing trouble, and they were never left unattended. My mother helped me bring our pet birds to class, and she took them home with her immediately afterward, so they weren’t left sitting around the classroom.
The book has a vocabulary list and glossary in the back.
Ann doesn’t have much confidence in her twin brother Walter’s dog Watson. She doesn’t think that he’s capable of learning tricks, and when Walter shows her the new trick he’s taught Watson, she isn’t very impressed. The trick is for Watson to just grab a red rag out of Walter’s hand and run off with it.
Ann is more concerned with getting her scarf washed and hung out to dry before they go see their friends. David and Pedro like Watson’s trick. At least, it’s a pretty good trick for Watson because Watson doesn’t know many.
Pedro shows the other kids how he’s making a weather vane. It’s a windy day, so it’s a good time to try it out.
Then, Ann notices that the scarf she hung out to dry is gone! At first, she blames Watson for taking it as part of the trick Walter taught him. However, the dog is not at fault. Pedro uses his weather vane to show Ann how to find her scarf.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
It’s a fun picture book mystery, but it’s also educational. I liked the part where Pedro explains how he made his weather vane. Kids can follow along with his explanation to make a weather vane of their own. The mystery of what happened to the scarf isn’t difficult, but the way the children found the scarf was clever. The book also has a vocabulary list and glossary in the back.
David is supposed to be watching his younger brother, Adam, while his mother is gone, but he gets absorbed in his new book. When David’s friends come to see him, they realize that Adam is missing!
The kids look for Adam everywhere, but they can’t find him. David is very worried.
Walter tries to use his dog, Watson, to track down Adam, but Watson hasn’t been trained to track people. When that doesn’t work, Walter tries writing down everything David can remember about Adam’s disappearance, but because David was reading instead of watching, he can’t remember much.
One thing that David remembers is that Adam wanted to go for a walk. David didn’t want to go, so he let Adam play with his compass instead. David explained to Adam that a compass always points toward the North Pole, and that fascinated Adam because the North Pole is where Santa Claus lives. The kids realize that Adam still has the compass, so he is probably using it to go north and find Santa!
What they need to do is go north themselves to find Adam, but they don’t have another compass. What can they do?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
It’s a fun picture book mystery, but it’s also educational. The books in this series use scientific concepts to explain the mysteries or to help solve problems. This book explains how a compass works, and to find Adam, the kids have to create a compass of their own.
There is also a vocabulary list and glossary in the back of the book.
The book begins by saying that there was a time when not all communities had schools at all. In areas where the population was low, children had lessons at home or from a neighbor, if they had lessons at all. Towns and villages needed enough children living there to support even a small school. (The book doesn’t describe exactly when or where they’re talking about, but it’s implied that this is the United States or the American frontier.) When there were enough settlers in an area for a school, they might make a small log cabin for the school. As populations grew and there were more students, they would build better schools.
Requirements for teachers were different back then than they were today. Most teachers were men because married women were not allowed to be teachers. Only single women could teach. Teachers were also often required to handle rough students as well as teach them, and all ages and grades of students would study together in one-room schools. The teacher would manage the different grade levels by having them dividing them into groups based on their levels and having the different groups take turns reading aloud to her while other students did quiet work, like practicing writing. The teacher would set some students quiet tasks to do while focusing on a different group, and then, they would switch. Teachers were also responsible for the cleaning and maintenance of their school, but they typically assigned students chores to help with that. Local families would provide room and board for the teacher of their community, and they would also contribute toward the teacher’s salary.
Lessons were basic and focused mostly on the “three Rs” – reading, writing, and arithmetic. (Those three subjects contain the letter ‘R’ near the beginning, even if they don’t all start with that letter.) There was often little time to teach anything else, and these were the subjects that were most important to people with the most common jobs, such as farmer, craftsperson, or storekeeper. In schools that taught a wider range of subjects, students would also learn history (mainly focused on the United States), world geography, and grammar.
Small schools often had few books or supplies. Because paper was often in short supply, children would memorize lessons and verbally recite them back to the teacher and would practice writing on slates (small blackboards). When students were able to buy paper, they bought a blank notebook they called a copybook. The paper in the copybook wasn’t lined, so if they wanted lined paper, they had to draw the lines themselves, using a ruler.
A small school might also only have two books for the students to study: a primer for beginning readers (which showed the alphabet, numbers, and some basic spelling words and poems) and a copy of the Bible. The most popular series of books for building reading skills in the 19th century was McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers. The series started with a primer and continued with six readers, each one at a higher reading level than the last one to build more advanced reading skills. In the small, one-room schools, students would work through these books at their own pace. (Since all ages and grade levels were together in one room, there was little concern about each student moving to the next grade at the exact same time as their peers since they were all still going to be in the same room with the same teacher anyway. As long as a student was continuing to come to school and make progress, it didn’t really matter how fast or slow the progress was.)
The book describes the daily routines of students at small, one-room schools, including how they would get to school each day and what they would do at lunchtime and recess. Most children simply walked to school, although they often had to walk long distances to get there. Sometimes, they might ride a horse to school or get a ride from an adult in a wagon or sleigh, if it was winter. Children brought their lunches from home, but some schools also maintained a school garden. Most of the children from these small schools would grow up to be farmers, so gardening was a valuable skill for them to practice, and the students would also eat what they grew in the school’s garden. During the winter, they could make a soup with vegetables they grew on the stove in the schoolhouse (which also kept the schoolhouse warm) that everyone would eat for lunch. The schoolhouse stove could also be used to heat up foods that the children brought from home. Besides their lunch break, the students would also have two short recess breaks during the day. During recess, they could walk around outside, talk to their friends, play games, or play with toys they brought from home, like marbles. Toys were often homemade or easily improvised, such as using string to play Cat’s Cradle.
Sometimes, students would play pranks on their teacher or fellow students, such as hiding bugs and spiders to scare someone, pouring water on their seat if they got up, or covering the schoolhouse chimney to fill the school with smoke and smoke everyone out of the school. The last prank was dangerous.
Punishments for pranks and misdeeds, such as being late or falling asleep in class, were at the teacher’s discretion. They could take whatever form the teacher thought was appropriate for the situation, and they could be as harsh and strict as the teacher thought was necessary. Sometimes, they could be a form of poetic justice, designed to fit the crime. We aren’t told why one misbehaving boy was told to put on a girl’s bonnet and sit with the girls in class, although it might have been a fitting punishment if his misdeed was teasing the girls. (That was just a guess of mine, that the teacher might have decided that, if he wanted to tease girls, he should try sitting in their place for awhile.) Some punishments were meant to teach lessons and reinforce the idea that children should not repeat certain behaviors, such as having the children repeatedly write lines, sentences that spelled out what they were supposed to do or not do. (For example, a student who was late to school could be assigned to write, “I will not be late to school” or “I will be on time to school from now on” a certain number of times.) Other punishments were purely for humiliation, like having a student wear a cap that labeled them as a “dunce”, in the hopes that the embarrassment would keep them from misbehaving again. (This could also be the goal of making a boy wear a bonnet and sit with the girls.) Punishments could even include physical punishments. Teachers were allowed to whip their students, if they though it was necessary, and some teachers even punished children who were physically fighting by making them take turns whipping or hitting each other with a stick. The book doesn’t explain the motive for doing this, but I think that they were probably emphasizing the idea that people who fight get hurt and that getting hurt is unpleasant to discourage them from fighting more in the future. I also suspect that the point of making them take turns hitting each other was to make it equal, so it wasn’t just one person beating up on the other, but that’s just a guess. When the students got home, and their parents found out about what they had done at school that day, they might even get a second punishment, on top of whatever punishment the teacher assigned them!
Sometimes, schools had special events for holidays or academic events that involved members of the wider community. For example, schools sometimes had spelling bees, including some where adult members of the community would watch or participate. Schools often had Christmas pageants, where children would sing songs or recite poems they had memorized or perform a play written by the students themselves. At the end of the school year, students would have oral exams in front of their parents and other community members, followed by a picnic with games.
The book ends with a section of games and activity suggestions designed to show modern kids what it might be like to be a student in an old-fashioned one-room school and compare their own schools to old-fashioned schools.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
Books in the Historical Communities series focus mostly on the 1800s in the United States, but they don’t always mention exactly what time period they are describing. It’s often more implied than stated, and that’s true of this book, too. The book mentions the 19th century once or twice, but it doesn’t mention any specific date or date range.
The pictures in the book are a combination of drawings and photographs of real people in historical costumes, reenacting scenes at schoolhouses and the lives of the students. I liked the combination of real people and drawings to illustrate different concepts about life and education in old-fashioned, one-room schools.
There are some concepts of education in a one-room school that fit with the educational concepts of the modern Montessori system, such as having students of different levels being taught together and having students progress at their own rate in different subjects. In a way, I think that the Montessori system hearkins back to this one-room school style of education, and that’s examined in more detail in the classic children’s book Understood Betsy, which is by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, who was an early advocate of the Montessori method of education in the United States.
Mr. Pine’s Purple House story and pictures by Leonard Kessler, 1965.
Mr. Pine lives in a little white house. All of the houses on Vine Street are white, and they look completely identical. Mr. Pine thinks that he’d like to do something that will make his house different from all the other little white houses.
His first idea is to plant a pine tree in his front yard. Since his name is Pine, everyone seeing it will think of him, and his house will be different from everyone else’s. The problem is that all of his neighbors like his pine tree and decide to plant their own trees. Soon, all of the houses look alike again with pine trees in the yards.
To make his house look different, Mr. Pine tries to plant a bush next to his tree, but everybody likes that idea, too. Soon, everybody has both a bush and a pine tree in their yard, and the houses look identical again.
Mr. Pine tries to think of something that he can do with his house that his neighbors won’t imitate. He gets the idea of painting his house, but he can’t pick any obvious color that all of his neighbors will want, too. He decides to paint his house purple. Is this finally the idea that will make Mr. Pine’s house different from the rest?
This book is actually the second book in a series of picture books about Mr. Pine.
My Reaction
I often think of this book and The Big Orange Splot together because they’re both about people in a neighborhood of identical houses who make changes to distinguish themselves and their houses and end up changing the way their neighbors view their own homes. The difference between the books is that, in The Big Orange Splot, the neighbors were completely opposed to changes that made anyone’s house different until they began to see the opportunities for living out their own dreams through their homes. In this book, the neighbors immediately seize on everything that Mr. Pine does that’s different and start copying him. They think all of his changes are great and frustrate his efforts to be different by doing everything he does until they decide to all paint their houses different colors. Of course, Mr. Pine’s changes are all less outlandish than the ones from The Big Orange Splot, so they would be easier to accept.
I liked it that Mr. Pine’s neighbors all have colors for names: Mrs. Gray, Mr. Gold, Mrs. Green, Mrs. Brown, and Mrs. White, and all the colors they eventually pick for their houses are different from the colors in their names. Even though this book mentions a lot of colors, the only colors shown in the pictures are black, white, and purple. In the end, when the houses are all different, the differences in color are shown with lines providing shading rather than with actual colors. It still works to show that the houses are now different from each other.
The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Manus Pinkwater, 1977.
Mr. Plumbean lives in a neighborhood where all the houses look alike. He and his neighbors all think of the uniformity as making their street “neat” and tidy, and they appreciate it. Then, something happens that makes them reconsider.
For reasons that nobody ever understands, a seagull carrying a can of orange paint happens to fly over Mr. Plumbean’s house and drops the can, leaving a big orange splot on Mr. Plumbean’s roof. Mr. Plumbean realizes that the big orange splot means that he’ll have to repaint his house, but the painting project makes him think.
Instead of painting his house to look like everyone else’s, the way it was before, he gets a bunch of wild colors and turns the exterior of his house into a rainbow explosion, working around the big, orange splot on his roof! He adds paintings of animals and other things he likes and colorful patterns. It’s such a wild and crazy design that his neighbors think he went mad. Before long, he adds a clock tower onto his house and an alligator and some trees with a hammock in the front yard.
The neighbors think he’s gone too far, but Mr. Plumbean says, “My house is me and I am it. My house is where I like to be and it looks like all my dreams.”
One of Mr. Plumbean’s neighbors tries to talk some sense into him, but instead, Mr. Plumbean talks to him about his dreams. The next day, the man goes out to buy some building supplies. It turns out that he always loved ships, so he turns his house into the ship of his dreams!
With Mr. Plumbean’s encouragement, other neighbors also start to change their homes to reflect their dreams, changing their quiet, “neat” street into a magical wonderland of imagination!
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
I remember this book from when I was a kid, and I always liked the pictures! It’s fun to imagine all the creative themes a house could have and what you might choose if you had the opportunity to live in a house that could look like anything you wanted. The houses shown in the pictures of the neighborhood end up looking nothing like their original shapes, except for Mr. Plumbean’s house, oddly. The others are vastly different from their original shapes, and the windows aren’t even in the same places, making them look like they’ve been completely rebuilt. This level of renovation would be difficult and costly in real life, but this story is meant to be fun and to celebrate imagination and the capacity people have to add a touch of color to their lives. If you read this book with a child, you can invite them to decide which of the house was their favorite at the end (mine was the one that looked like a castle) or what they would do if they could make their house look like anything they want.
In real life, I’ve never particularly liked those neighborhoods where all the houses look alike. I’m not the only one because tract homes and uniform suburbs were controversial from their beginnings in the mid-20th century. In the early 1960s, a song called Little Boxes (listen to it on YouTube) poked fun at the uniformity of suburban houses and the lives of the people in them (although the houses in that song were still different colors – just saying). The connection between the uniformity of homes and the conformity of the people living in them is a topic that resurfaces periodically in popular culture and other songs, like “Subdivisions” by Rush (listen to it on YouTube).
The themes of non-conformity and self-expression are pretty profound, but the story is lots of fun and isn’t too deep for kids. If you read the back section about the author, it explains that the inspiration for this story came from a time when he spilled orange ink on his own pair of new yellow boots.
This picture book is a fun story about non-conformity and self-expression. In the beginning, Mr. Plumbean is as content as anyone with his neat, uniform neighborhood until a strange, inexplicable accident creates a situation where Mr. Plumbean has to paint his house. Once he’s confronted with the task of repainting his house, Mr. Plumbean begins to consider the creative opportunities this chore provides, and he enjoys exploring the possibilities and changing his house to be more of a reflection of the wild and wacky person he really is or dreams of being. Once his creative side is unleashed, it begins to get his neighbors thinking along similar lines. True, they liked it when their street was neat and uniform because they could see the appeal of having things orderly, but it turns out that each of them also has an inner creative side that’s been waiting for a chance to get out. The non-uniformity and non-conformity of their street becomes more comfortable for each of them as they each embrace those sides to their personalities that they don’t normally show. When they come to accept and embrace their own dreams and each other’s, it doesn’t matter to them anymore that they’re not all alike. They’re comfortable with the wacky and whimsical parts of their personalities, and they’re not afraid to show them anymore. They’re happy with themselves, their homes, and their different visions.
I really liked the art style of the illustrations in the book. It’s very simple but colorful, and you can tell that the artist used markers because you can see the marker lines, especially in the backgrounds of the drawings. It makes it different from more modern books that use digital art. I like seeing signs of the physical materials used, and it gives the story a funky, organic feel that goes well with the theme.
As I said earlier, I did notice that many of the new home designs in the pictures don’t take into account where the houses’ windows used to be, but that’s just part of the whimsy of the story. We don’t need to worry about how these people accomplished these drastic changes so quickly and easily. It’s just fun to think about how you can personalize your space to reflect what’s important to you.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 