I used to loathe parting with books. If I read it, or intended to read it – no matter the decade – it had a permanent place on my shelves.

Then I moved several million times and befriended a neat freak graphic designer. She was aghast in my home office one day. “Why do you have all of these books?”

“I love books,” I replied.

“Are you going to read all of them again?”

“Of course not.”

Hmmm. That was a few years and several hundred books ago. She encouraged me to let go of the ones that weren’t favorites, or references for work, or some other important touchstone.

This was an almost physically-difficult lesson to learn. But I discovered that passing along books to friends and family members had its own rewards. Spreading the word about favorite writers. Making room on the shelves for new books. It’s a healthy, cleansing, normal thing to do. Like sorting through the closet or making sure the four-years-expired condiments get tossed before accidental food poisoning ensues.

But there have been mistakes. Horrible mistakes.

At some point – and I don’t know how this  could have happened – I lost track of “The Wednesday Witch” by Ruth Chew. This was the first chapter book I read in one day. I think I was six or so. I remember being so proud that I had mowed through the entire thing at once. I ran to tell my mom about it.

I cannot find my copy. I can’t fathom that I would have parted with this book on purpose. I did give away a ton of children’s books once to a teacher friend. But I kept the important ones. Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild. The Ramona books. The Judy Blumes.

So I looked up what a copy of “The Wednesday Witch” would cost. Hello! It is out of print and collectible. (The Amazon prices range from about $8 to insanity).

Every once in a while I search through my parent’s house looking for this book. Clearly I should just buy the darn thing, but I seem to have some strange, tangible need to read the EXACT copy of this book that I read as a child. It is a story about a modern witch who rides a vaccuum cleaner instead of a broom. How cool is that? “The arrival of a witch who travels by magic vacuum cleaner is only the beginning of Mary Jane’s strange adventures,” is the book’s premise.

More to the point, why on earth is this book out print?

Chew died in 2010 at age 90, but her estate hopes to have her books republished.

Reading up on Ruth Chew got me worried about another old friend, “Little Witch” by Anna Elizabeth Bennett. I never owned a copy of this. I just checked it out of the elementary school library about 1,000 times.

There’s probably an entire generation of kids from my elementary school who never got to read this book because of me.

Yep, it’s out of print as well. And it starts at $43 and goes into the $260s.

Bah! This is so much worse that hearing your high school music on the classic rock station for the first time.

– Jen