Sunday, January 31, 2010

Oh, Kids Can Press, how could you do this to me?

-In an exciting update, somehow, my coupon code didn't get included! Lovely, lovely Kids Can Press is sending me a bag! I am worthy of carrying Chester!-

I love you so much. Because I have gone beyond mere love and am in deep adoration of Melanie Watt's Chester. Because I enjoy watching our Scaredy Squirrel books trot in and out of the library. Because of your Kids Can Do It series, which I discovered as a teenager and are still my go-to resource for crafts. Because you are imaginative and practical and exuberant and you do great things.

But you have caused me great sorrow. Perhaps it is not your fault. Perhaps there is some deep flaw in me. Perhaps the great Chester has deemed me unworthy and so...

I do not have a Melanie Watt Scaredy Squirrel and Chester bag.

I have been watching other librarians, librarians who do not appear to have any more inner librarianess than myself troop about with these marvelous bags at pretty much every conference I've been to in the past year.

Every time, I arrive too late to procure one for myself. I cannot find where they got them. Kindly exhibitors tell me sorry. But are they really sorry? Or are they secretly watching the Chester-meter and finding me wanting?

This time, I was really going to get one. I had a coupon. A coupon which I tenderly conveyed home from Boston. A coupon for a real Chester bag, if I only expended $39 upon marvelous Kids Can Press books online! I can do this, I thought. No Chester meter here, to measure me and find me wanting!

I bought Chester books for me, myself. I bought Kids Can Do It knitting books. I waited.

Today, I found a lovely large package reposing upon the dirty tiles before my door. I tenderly conveyed it inside. I opened it with expectant fingers.

NO CHESTER BAG!!

Once again, I have been weighed and found wanting. *Sob* Oh great Chester, what can I do to be worthy of your presence? I have proclaimed your greatness to all who might be interested (and many who aren't but I told them anyways). I have read your epic life stories to all my 1st and 2nd grade library tours and visits, so that you might bask in the waves of laughter we generate. I have gently herded crowds of preschoolers through the fascinating meta-narrative complexity of your literacy experiences. What more can I do? How can I be a complete librarian without your approval, in the form of your fully licensed Chester bag?

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