Sometimes a book you had no idea existed comes home from school with your kid. Or maybe she throws it into a paper bag at a library sale, or you find it on the shelf at the doctor's office. And you read it and are moved and interested and compelled. It's a gift from the book gods, and I hope I am appropriately thankful enough, often enough, for the many times we've been lucky like this. Here is one:
I see now, of course, that it's won a major award, and is by a well-known author, and basically I should have known about it before. But I didn't. It just showed up in my house one day (I hope larceny was not involved) and we read it. It's about a little girl who's family has lost almost everything in a fire, and she and her mother are saving up to buy a new chair for her mother to sit in. It's a story I never expected somehow, and it is wonderful.
I think this will have to be a new feature on this blog: books that you never expected, that then won you over. Notice I managed to write this whole post without using the word serendipity? It wasn't easy.
marcialerner.com 
We read that book, and I don’t remember where we found it either, but it was lovely!
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Oh, I love that book too!
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I love that book.
One I’m thinking about is called Happy Birthday Henry. Very obscure and very wonderful —
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Actually, it’s called Henry’s Happy Birthday — a small, obscure book that brought so much pleasure to both my boys!
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That IS a great book. I discovered it as a kid on Reading Rainbow and have loved it ever since. Even though it did instill in me my childhood fear that our house was more than likely going to burn down at any moment.
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This book is great, it is on my son’s wishlist. Another one of my lesser known favorites is Tale of the Three TRees.
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I love books that we find entirely by accident. I may have mentioned before that my 4-year-old just adores “One More Wednesday,” which is about a child mourning the loss of a grandmother, of all things. It just jumped out at him on the library book shelf, and the tone is so sweet and gentle that I’m coming to love it myself.
Wasn’t recommended, didn’t know the author, nothing. Just a truly great accidental find.
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