Newsprint has a high acid content, although it's lower now than it was. That's why old newspaper clippings crumble to pieces. Pulp magazines and paperbacks are particularly prone to falling apart in your hands. There are some easily available pH neutralizing products now, if you have older paper you want to keep. Acid also eats away at artwork on paper, which is why you want acid-free mats and backing. Regular cardboard has enough of an acid content to ruin paper things stored in it, so my stored art is in acid-free boxes or plastic.

If you wish to be further traumatized, the Kodak Company claims that it never intended color photography to be permanent. All your grandparents' pictures are fading into faint brownish blobs.

For further trauma, those backups you made to CD are not permanent either. Commercial CD's are embossed, which is why they last a long time. CDs (and I think DVDs) you make on a typical home or office computer are burned and therefore not permanent.

I was just telling the owner of the newly opened used bookshop in my neghborhood that his store doesn't yet have that old bookshop smell.

The Graveyard Book just won the Newbery.

thank you p-C!

and Congratulations to Neil -- he may not be one of us, but he feels like one of us

and the controversy begins -- is it too scary for kids. ( this is the talk in the emails at my library) I have to say I think Coarline was much scarier. And we have other books that really should be in the children's section that are there....

The Graveyard Book just won the Newbery.

Which it completely deserved. Just a fabulous book.

and the controversy begins -- is it too scary for kids.

Coraline is a much scarier book, and I think both it and The Graveyard Book are perfect for kids.

Agreed. I have to say that I am also thrilled that Savvy by Ingrid Law got an honor award. Really good and I've been pimping it to kids for months now. ( pimping doesn't really belong in a sentence with kids, but ...)

I think the scariest part of the Graveyard Book is the first few pages but not anymore than many other children's classics. I just read of review of the Dangerous Alphabet that said it was much too scary for its age range, which I disagreed with too.

Abby read Savvy and loved it, Nate read Graveyard Book and loved it.

And best part? They both chose those books of their own volition because they thought they sounded good. Not because I'd heard they were "good" or reading them because they had to.

May I preen a bit at my kids' tastes in reading?