The Dismantled Library: The Berenstain Bears: Trick or Treat

Monday, September 5, 2022

The Berenstain Bears: Trick or Treat

The Berenstain Bears: Trick or Treat by Stan and Jan Berenstain

1989

Weight: 3.5 oz

Method of Disposal: Donated

I can only begin to describe my childhood love for the Berenstain Bears, and my two favorite books, which I have held onto all of this time. Trick or Treat and No Girls Allowed. I have always loved Halloween, dressing up in costumes, animals. It is no stretch that I would be in love with tiny bears, wearing clothes, and performing childlike dramas. The illustrations were the best part, but each book has a lesson, of course. I am confident the Berenstain Bears helped me develop my empathy and my love for reading.

Halloween is upon us, y'all. I am struggling to decide what costumes Harriet and I will be wearing this year! It's the most wonderful time of the year...

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Among the Rubble of Fallen Bookshelves...

I have collected books for as long as I can remember. I worked in bookstores for years before I ended up at the animal shelter. I have gathered words, sentences, punctuation, and cover art to my own detriment. I purchased books before clothes, sometimes instead of food. I can see my childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood sprawled across many shelves and shoved into boxes that sit collecting dust, just waiting for the next big move. I think I am a woman who is afraid of commitment, settling, and stagnation. Yet the things I love most seem to coincide best with a stable, secure, immovable life. I love dogs, books, and often one woman’s company above that of others. The dogs are here for the long haul. They are too wonderful for this world and yet they are essential to it. The woman is complicated. The books are sturdy, durable, constant, perfect, and full of intrigue. They are also very heavy. They are boxes of ounces, pounds, kilograms, weight. We have moved together too many times. Maybe we met at the wrong time in the wrong place, and I have just refused to let go all of this time. I have decided to dismantle this library of thousands of books. What am I holding onto really? I have books I loved, books I hated, books that made me uneasy for weeks, and books that made someone else uneasy for weeks. I have begun to treat these books like objects and not like the magical capsules they are. I am going to give away, sell, donate all of this weight so that others can enjoy it, collect it, share it, and so that I can move more freely through my life. Libraries are where it’s at. The problem: I am terrified to let the books go. We have been together so long and put each other through so much. The only way I can imagine sending them off is if I memorialize each and every one I have left at this moment. This blog is to honor my friends, my enemies, my lovers, my life, and my words as I have collected them through the books I have read and, finally, to move away from them and onto other things. I will never stop loving books. I will never stop reading. I plan only to stop collecting so much material, so much weight.

The Dismantled Library

Monday, September 5, 2022

The Berenstain Bears: Trick or Treat

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