When I first heard The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo was being turned into an animated movie I was worried. Seems I had good reason to worry. They say right at the beginning of the movie it is “based on the book The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo” well it should say “this lame movie is very loosely based on an awesome book by Kate DiCamillo.” Despereaux is very cute in the movie, but not really like his character in the book at all. They cut so much out (as most movies based on books do) and added so many utterly ridiculous things not even in the book at all. Some of it was downright silly. If you are a person who has never read the book, you may find the movie cute and charming and all of that. If you’ve read the book, I am betting that you are finding it very lacking as I am.

The book is way better. If you haven’t read it – read it. It’s really cute.

I hope everyone out there had a wonderful Christmas! I certainly did. I got lots of goodies: DVD’s, games (for the Wii, my pink DS, and board games), clothes, books, a DVD video camera (video blogging? ), and other goodies. One of the things I got that I was excited about was a particular book.

Everyone has memories of their childhood. Everyone has childhood memories of school. Some of you may have memories about going to the school library as a child. Well, I have very fond memories of my school’s library. There was this one particular book that I loved to check out when I was little (between the ages of 7-9?). My friends and I loved the book. Why? Well, it was a small book. I guess that had a certain appeal to us for some reason. When one of us returned it to the library, another one would then check it out. It was a revolving door of sorts. I have thought about that book at least a couple of times a year practically every year of my life. I mentioned the book to Colin before. I did a very brief search for it, but couldn’t remember many details about the book so I didn’t come up with anything.

A few weeks ago, I got to thinking about the book again and tried searching for it again. I didn’t know the title or author, so this made the searching quite difficult obviously. It really bothered me that I couldn’t find the book. I persuaded my librarian husband to do some searching one night using his librarian skills. We found a couple of other books based on the few details I remembered about the book that triggered more memories of the details. Basically, I knew these things about the book:

1. It was a small (in size and word count) book.
2. The title was short (possibly three or four words).
3. It had a man and woman who lived in a house that was made into a hill (sod house).
4. There was a cow on the roof. (This was the most important detail.)
5. It wasn’t a picture book. It was mostly text with some pictures throughout.
6. It had a dingy cover.
7. It was old.

So the most important detail (the cow on the roof) is what I would search for trying to find this book. Well, the night we were looking, we found some books about sod houses, but nothing about cows on roofs really. Colin said he’d look for the book some more the next day at work.

By this point, I was getting really agitated. It was really bothering me that I couldn’t find the book. I didn’t think I’d ever find the book again! I really wanted to know the name of it! A couple of days later, I started searching some more and Colin made some comments that basically led me to believe he had found out the name of the book while at work. So I made the comment, “If you know the name of the book and don’t tell me, I am going to be so mad at you!” Well, I was sort of being dramatic and was freaking out about it all, and Colin grabbed a present from under the tree and told me to quit whining and open it. Well, then I felt bad because I thought maybe he had actually found the book and that I had just ruined Christmas. I didn’t open the present though, but did do a little more searching. I finally ran across an e-book of folktales. In the bibliography, it referenced a folktale called “The Cow on the Roof” or “The Husband Who Was to Mind the House.” I also found a picture book called “Cow on the Roof.” I was on the right track, and the folktale story sounded familiar, but still I couldn’t find the book. I decided to give up and wait until Christmas and see if Colin had indeed found it.

Well, he did find it. The book is called Gone is Gone and it’s written by Wanda Gag. It was written in 1935. I don’t think it’s the exact same cover as the edition we had in the school library, but I could be wrong. The book is actually in print again. Basically, it’s about this man, Fritzl who decides that his wife has it easy taking care of the house, animals, and their baby and so he switched places with her one day. She goes off to the fields to take care of his work, and he sits home to do her work. Well, turns out, her work is just as hard if not harder than his own work and everything that could go wrong pretty much does. It’s a great story. I can’t believe I finally know what the title is, and I own the book thanks to my wonderful librarian husband!

What did you guys out there get for Christmas? And, do you have any books you remember from your childhood?