Do You Save Your Kids' Books??
Moms View Message Board: General Discussion: Archive March 2007:
Do You Save Your Kids' Books??
I am overloaded with kid books and I want to donate them. However, when I look at them and see what great shape they are in, and see the inscriptions inside, and realize just HOW MUCH MONEY was spent on zillions of books, I wonder if I should be keeping them. It takes a lot of time and money to amass a personal library and I wonder if I'm doing my kids a disservice by wanting to get rid of them. When they have kids, will they want this ready to go library?? I got rid of all the baby board books, of course. No reason to save books that got chewed and drooled on, no matter how lightly. And I've found that lots of people give books as gifts, so maybe amassing their own library won't be so hard....I just don't know!
On the other hand, I have books my mom saved from my childhood and they are not in good shape. They smell and some had mold and they were just rather icky!! I don't know if it's JUST because of their storage in the basement, or if books just don't store well period. Many of my kids' books are beautiful hardcover Disney books and lots are Little Golden Books, and some are the heavy paper ones with the glossy, posterboard type covers.
Any thoughts?? Obviously I'm keeping any special ones and any unusual ones, but should I keep all the rest?? And as grandparents, am I going to regret not having a library ready to go when the grandkids come over?? (that goes for toys, too...how many toys do you keep for grandkids???)
One last thing...how many of you inscribe books?? I am not a fan of inscribing books and my mother is. Most of these books are covered with her handwriting and my DDs' full names and dates and such, which is a royal pain. I will have to cross it all out, making the book look bad, before donating. (and frankly, I already think they look bad with all that handwriting in them) I don't like writing in books for ANY reason and these are mostly just your basic run of the mill books, not special, so why the need for inscribing them??
I have inscribed special books but not every book I give.
I donate books. Being a home-schooler we accumulate a ton of them. You could sell them as a lot on ebay. My kids have 3 bookshelves of books we keep. They tend to weed them out on their own. They have some favorites that they want for their children. I would ask your kids to help go through them.
I only inscribe on special books too. I donate most book as they outgrow them. I only keep really special ones.
The books we don't save or won't be passed down to siblings we donate.We give our books to Mcmaster Hospital for the kids.We've donated hockey cards and comic books too.
Oh, man, count me in as one who spent a gazillion dollars on books. I should have used the library more!! The books that were saved for me from my childhood are also in terrible shape, so I never really wanted to save any. Books have come a long way since then as far as content, too.
At first I donated the board books to my son's daycare and to a neighbor who runs a home daycare and now I sell all the books to Half Price Books. Sometimes I put the money in my son's savings account and sometimes I go to Starbucks with it. I really just wanted all these books out of my house. My son is 12 now. It's a much more controlled situation now. His room looks much better.
What was depressing for me was to see how little these books are worth and if you wait too long they are worth nothing. I am starting to sell back some of my books and the rare ones I sold on amazon and I sold a few kids books on amazon, but the value plunges fast!!
I was reading a book last night for the 3rd time - The Nurture Assumption - great book, and already the pages are yellow and old looking. I think that book is only 5 years old! Anyway, I say get rid of them and make money off of them if you can.
My mom saved ALL our books. She kept the special ones and all our favorites so our kids could read them at her house. It works out well since we really don't need more books. All the rest arrived in several boxes the first time she came to visit us after we moved. Boxes and boxes of books! I was surprised to say the least. I've kept a few of them but many have been donated. My kids books are all still with us since A is still little. I plan on keeping our favorite ones and donating the rest when the time comes.
I save most books, even mine.
With the kids books I feel that the ones they have read over and over hold special memories for us. I do let some paperbacks go. I donate them to the library. If any book is inscribed then i keep it. That means it was a gift and will be a treat to look at when they are parents themselves.
I bought a few childhood favorites from EBay. The cost for them was minimal.
The only stuffed animals that I keep are the kids' absolute favorites. At their ages they still keep their special ones in their rooms. I have my childhood favorite teddybear "BooBoo" sitting in the cupboard of my desk.
We have a whole rubbermaid bin, in Emily's room, full of their books. I will have grandchildren someday (I hope!), and it would be nice to have those books for them!
You could save them for grandkids, or you could sell them on eBay.
When I was about 10, my parents gave most of my books and toys to a cousin who had fallen on hard times. She was on her 2nd marriage and had 4 kids.
I know that I still resent the fact that my parents sold all my Dr. Suess books (the whole collection) for $5 a big box. I spent a lot of money buying all those exact same books for my DDs when they were little.
I would at least let your kids keep their favorite books and get rid of the rest.
I still have some books from my childhood that I have read to my nieces when they visit. I also have some Dr. Suess books that I got in the mail a few weeks ago. I'm saving them to read to my own children.
I have given my nieces books as a present in the past and if I think it is a special book, I will write an inscription in the front so that they will hopefully keep in for their own children.
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