Saturday's Rare Book Cafe: collecting your childhood favorite books only without drool or gnawed-down corners

Spring is the season for kids, as e.e. cummings reminds us:

in Just-
spring          when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles          far          and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far          and             wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and

        the

                 goat-footed

balloonMan          whistles
far
and
wee

So with spring springing- early as usual in the Southern US, yet to come in the North (but soon, really!), Rare Book Cafe is delighted to welcome rare and collectible children’s book dealer Larry Rakow to our March 25 program!

The program will also feature segments on miniature books, appraising books, book collecting as mental illness, and accidental literary bonfires, but the idea of a kid’s book surviving the kid is so novel you won’t want to miss Rakow’s account of how he has built a business around finding and selling them.

With a brilliant website and blog, an online catalogue, YouTube videos, and a Facebook page, Wonderland Books is an easy find for the online shopper. Here's how Wonderland describes itself:

Wonderland Books began doing business in 1990, dealing in old, rare, and out-of-print children's books. Owner Larry Rakow is a former children's and young adult librarian and the prior owner of Kidstamps and Wonder-Shirts, businesses that create educational items and apparel designed by some of the world's leading children's illustrators to encourage and motivate reading. (Interested? You can check out Wonder-Shirts current website at www.wonder-shirts.com.) A proud member of the Movable Book Society (www.movablebooksociety.org) and the Magic Lantern Society of the U.S. and Canada (www.magiclanternsociety.org) and a past-president of the Northern Ohio Bibliophilic Society (www.nobsweb.org), Larry lives with his wife, Susan, two children and four grandchildren in Cleveland Heights, OH.

Wonderland Books maintains an inventory of more than 12,000 titles and specializes in pop-up and novelty books, Newbery and Caldecott-award winners, Golden Books, and illustrated titles from Victorian through modern times. We attend a limited number of book fairs each year (check out our blog to see upcoming dates), but tend to do most of our sales over the internet. We pride ourselves on offering collectible books in extraordinary condition and, in the past, have helped customers complete collections of Caldecott-winners and Little Golden Books, rare Meggendorfer, Nister, and Raphael Tuck titles, and many much-beloved books from their childhoods. Looking for a particular title? I'm sure we can help.

Visiting the Cleveland area? Here’s how to find Wonderland:

By email via the Wonderland100 website and Facebook.

By phone: 1 216-538-7460

Or at the following address:
1824 Wilton Rd.
Cleveland Heights, OH, U.S.A.
44118

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Rare Books Cafe is sponsored by the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair. It’s broadcast every Saturday from 2.30 to 3.30 pm EST and features interviews, panel discussion and stuff you can learn about book collecting whether you are a regular at Sotheby’s or just someone who likes books.

The program airs live on Rare Book Cafe’s and the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair’s Facebook page; right here on the Book Fair Blog, and the Book Fair's YouTube channel. Shows are archived on YouTube and can also be viewed on the Facebook pages and the blog after their first run.

Hosted by Miami book dealer, appraiser and WDBFRadio.com’s Bucks on the Bookshelf radio show creator Steven Eisenstein, the program features a revolving set of cohosts and regular guests including Thorne Donnelley of Liberty Book Store in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida; Lindsay Thompson of Charlotte’s Henry Bemis Books; miniature books expert Edie Eisenstein; and program creator/producer, T. Allan Smith.

Rare Book Cafe program encourages viewer participation via its interactive features and video: if you've got an interesting book, join the panel and show it to us! If you’d like to ask the team a question or join us in the virtually live studio audience for the program, write us at rarebookcafe@gmail.com.