Vintage Books Take You Back

We filmed Janis Amodeo, our Book Barn manager, as she told us a very special story today. After we grabbed the tissues and wiped our tears, we decided to share it on social media. But truly, it’s a fast paced world over on Instagram/TikTok/facebook so we decided to share it here, too, so you can savor this story.

I listened to Janis tell the story and typed it pretty much verbatim, here. Feel free to share it out. And if you wish to watch the video, click here.

"We have an outstanding vintage department here in the Book Barn, and I want to relay a little story to you, but I’ll get to that. People buy vintage books for many reasons; some people like to decorate and they like the look of an old book, some people just find vintage books endearing — they call out to them when they walk by. So actually, a book called out to me as I was walking by one day and I was flabbergasted. When I was a child, I barely spoke. I was shy, I was quiet, and I had a speech issue which I was not aware of, I just knew I “talked funny.” So I didn’t talk. Well, I brought this book to school one day and my fifth gr teacher called the speech therapist down and said “Janis, why don’t you show Mrs. Hunt your book and talk about it?”

Well, I rattled on and on and on to poor Mrs. Hunt for I don’t know how long about all these great projects you can make from this book. And guess what? The next day, I was invited to join speech class. As a result, they cleaned up my list (almost, you can still hear it) but I became a teacher, and I taught for 45 years. 

This book changed my life because… if I hadn’t shown this to my classroom teacher and she referred me to speech, I’m not sure which way my life would have gone. So, after 45 years of teaching, I’m retired, I’m here, I want to give a shout out to all the speech therapists that work in the schools and help kids like me, who didn’t want to talk until their favorite childhood book changed their life.

I found a donated copy right in the vintage section here at the Book Barn. And you can find a book here, too. Maybe it’ll change your life.