The other day at work, some of the ESL (English as a Second Language) teachers were trying to think of the title of a great English-teaching text they remembered from the 1990s. It incorporated stick-figure drawings on flash card-like pages that were ring-bound.
There used to be a copy hanging round the old staff room, one said, but we had moved to a new building, and the little flash-card book had been forgotten (and had probably been thrown out). No one could remember the title or author.
It made me think of a book I had as a child to help me learn German. My father had visited Munich in Germany not long after the 1972 Olympics and had brought me back a poster for my wall. I was very young and thus didn’t know anything about the violence that had occurred there. But I had become entranced with teaching myself German (and went on to study it at high school and university).
The book I’m thinking of was a small paperback and it was part of a language series. It has long gone from my library, unfortunately. I also had a hardcover Berlitz book that I loved.
In my final year at school, I won a prize for German speaking from the Goethe Society. The prize was two lovely volumes of German fairy tales and songs. The song book was illustrated, with music, and I had it until recently. Now I can’t find it anywhere. I can only think that I must have given it away with a lot of others, in a fit of needing to make room in my bookcases. Why does it always seem that the book I give away is the very one I want not long after?
There are websites that can help you identify books whose titles and authors you’ve forgotten. One is What Was that Book? Many of the postings on that are novels people read as children and half-remembered.
And what do you know? Today, I did a search for my German Through Pictures book and found it straight away! It was by I. A. Richards, I. Schmidt Mackey, W. F. Mackey and Christine Gibson. Itwas first published in 1953, though mine was a 1972 edition. Amazingly, I found a blog post which reproduced some pages from German Through Pictures here. Thanks, Mary Caple from Montreal!
I could also buy the book via Amazon, priced from $7.92-$221.95, depending on quality and collectibility, if I wanted.
I think we should bring back the series, as it’s so easy to learn from. There was also a French version—and perhaps there were other languages available, too.
Oh, and if anyone remembers the ring-bound English flash-card book with the stick-figure drawings, please let me know!
The Crayon Files 
Glad to hear you found your German book, Caron. It is so frustrating to lose things that you value.
I always, always seem to throw out the wrong things, then regret it later. If I had room, I’d have a throw-out ‘holding pen’, in which things I wanted to get rid of could sit for about six months to see if I really wanted them gone.
They should have a site like this for those of us in middle age who walk into a room and forget what we went there for. Or who try to remember song titles, our grocery list. etc. :~)
Hah! Yes. It’s alarming when that starts happening.