Back when I was a baby my Grandma Joyce and Grandpa Bob in Ohio sent a series of children's books to my big brother and me in Montana. They had simple titles about their simple subjects such as Sam's Lamp and Sam's Potty and nobody, including my grandparents, could imagine that we'd find the books particularly fascinating. Kids' taste is unpredictable, though, and my brother and I, and later my sister, were fascinated indeed. More precisely, we loved the books and have never forgotten them, though they surely don't exist within our family anymore. I recently put my mom in charge of our baby's English library and mentioned a couple of books that I remembered from my childhood, but left out the Sam series because I had already Googled and only found them for around $100 apiece. One hundred dollars for a five-page, fifteen-word, 6-inch by 6-inch children's book. Obviously they're hard to come by in the US and, I gather, a bit of a collectors' item. Well, over the weekend, Sarianne gave me a couple bags of baby gear, including blankets, clothes and some books, among other things. She showed me everything that she was giving me, or so I thought, because when I got home and unpacked it all I was shocked to find this book, Max Nalle, Max's Teddy Bear, at the bottom of one of the bags. Max, you guys, is the Swedish Sam! Or rather, Sam is the American Max as this series originated here in Sweden, a fact which I never knew before today. Can you imagine? My American Swedish baby will read the same book as I did, a whole generation later, in the land where it came from and totally by chance.
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