The 5 Little Pigs and Over 1000 Other Stories
June 19, 2018
The Koester House Museum in Marysville had too many books. Museum staff attractively displayed the late nineteenth and early twentieth century works in their custom-built case which kept the volumes in pristine condition since 1906. But no one read them.
This distressed museum staff who prided themselves on making Koester House and its contents accessible to all. As Sharon Kessinger, Koester House Museum Foundation (KHMF) member, noted “the books in the . . .library have seldom been touched, let alone read, browsed, or studied.” They remained “entombed in their oak cabinets with glass fronts” and were “essentially buried books.”
The KHMF members envisioned bringing the volumes out of the tomb and into the light. They wanted the books to be explored by staff, researchers, and the public. Volunteers knew that the collection shed light on the museum’s namesake, Charles F. Koester (1841-1902) and his times. Museum staff eagerly desired to learn more in order to share these stories with visitors.
A Humanities Kansas Cultural Preservation Grant allowed them to clean, catalog, appraise, and organize the collection in order to make them accessible. Indeed, the afternoon Director of Programs Valerie Mendoza visited an inviting array of antique children’s books sat out on a round table in the library for all to admire. Foundation president, Pat Breeding, Valerie's tour guide, told her that she adapted two of the books, 5 Little Pigs (1875) and How the Animals Came to the Circus (1917) into skits to be performed by children involved in the local summer theater.
Since the end of the project in May museum volunteers also started a reading club. They meet in the Koester House parlor and take turns reading aloud from one of the books in the library. Their first selection (they had over 1000 books to choose from) was Bitter-Sweet: a Poem (1858) by JG Holland. Laughing, Breeding explained that the choice came about when she sat down with an inventory list in front of her, closed her eyes, and randomly placed her finger on the page.
“It‘s been a good first choice,” she remarked. The book, a long poem, contains themes of redemption and the question of why evil exists. She said it was fun to read a book the way it was enjoyed during Charles Koester’s time—aloud in a group. The book and its author are in themselves historical figures. While the name JG Holland is no longer well known, he was somewhat of celebrity in his day. Holland co-founded and edited Scribner’s magazine (a popular nineteenth century monthly), was good friends with poet Emily Dickinson, and his own books sold over half a million copies!
You can browse the Koester House library collection on LibraryThing. You can also attend the Koester House's Reading Club on Mondays from noon to 1pm.