I don’t remember how old I was when we bought the set of encyclopedias, but I was young enough that I didn’t care about the encyclopedias themselves as much as I cared about the children’s story books that came with them. We got the encyclopedias, a set of dark green bound books called the Harvard Classics, and a set of 10 children short story books called Colliers Junior Classics. I was trying to remember one of the stories about an African girl, but the only words I could remember were “Damasi’s kraal.” A little googling revealed that Damasi is a man’s name, but kraal put it firmly in South Africa, and since that wasn’t the actual title, I kept looking. Eventually I stumbled upon a blurb on Google about a book called Thirty-one Brothers and Sisters, about a Zulu girl called Nomusa, and something clicked; I remembered that name. I looked for the book, but it’s out of print, and anyway, there was no digital copy. Then, I decided to check eBay, but it occurred to me that it wasn’t the whole book; those Colliers books had short stories and excerpts. I thought I’d look for the Colliers set, just for the hell of it, and I found several sets. Most were expensive or incomplete, but I found one starting at $13.99 plus reasonable shipping, so I set a snipe…and won. I just paid for them this morning, so I don’t have them yet, but it’ll be fun to read them as an adult and see the difference.

Now, all I need is the encyclopedia with the article for fashion! I could buy the whole set, but that’s really the only one I remember; I loved the pictures.