Every so often, I like to look at the search terms that bring people to this site. And sometimes, I suspect that my blog did not in fact answer the searcher’s question.
So, as a public service, here are answers to questions from the search terms real people used to find my actual blog.
How much would a 100 year old Girl Scout handbook be worth?
In the year of our Lord 2019, there actually aren’t any Girl Scout handbooks that are exactly 100 years old. How Girls Can Help Their Country, the first-ever handbook, was published between 1913 and 1917, making it more than a century old at this point. The next one, Scouting for Girls, didn’t come out till 1920.
Copies of How Girls Can Help Their Country typically sell for between $25 and $100. If your copy is in extremely good shape or it’s one of the unusual ones, like the 1916 fourth edition with the price list inside or the 1913 second edition of which only 500 were ever printed, you may be able to get more money for it from the right collector.
There is a version of Scouting for Girls that was adapted from How Girls Can Help Their Country. It has only 257 pages (the 1920 edition has 557) and a copyright date of 1918. The only copy currently known to exist is in the GSUSA archives, but there’s a dispute among historians right now as to whether or how many more were published. If you have one of these, it’s probably worth a fortune to the right collector.
Does anyone else not like Les Miserables?
My post on why I hate Les Miserables is the most consistently popular piece on this blog, which makes me think I should hate things more often.
To clarify: I actually enjoyed reading Les Miserables the novel by Victor Hugo very much. It’s the popular stage/screen adaptation that makes me want to throw things.
What is inappropriate for school readers?
Like pornography, we generally know it when we see it.
I, personally, want to see school readers quit normalizing the heterosexual agenda. My kids brought home one of those “Dick and Jane” books the other day, and there were Dick and Jane’s parents, a mom and a dad, just cavorting around on the page like we don’t all know about their perverted lifestyle. I mean, Baby Sally is right there. We know what you do when the kids are asleep, you sickos.
[n.b. I do not have children.]
Why do I attract narcissist friends?
I’m not a psychologist, and I’m definitely not your psychologist, person who made this Google search and somehow wound up on my blog. So take my opinion with a grain of salt, which is:
The good news is that it’s probably not because you are a narcissist. The bad news is that it probably is because you, for whatever reason, don’t communicate clear boundaries or a certain intolerance for bullshit.
Your narcissist friends use you to boost their own egos because you let them. Why you let them is something only you (maybe with the help of a trustworthy therapist) can figure out.
What does Scout value in the start of the book?
This is almost certainly an attempt to do To Kill a Mockingbird homework without actually having to read the novel, so I apologize to whichever Googler landed on my blog, wherein I do not talk about To Kill a Mockingbird even once that I know of.
The answer to your question is “not a whole lot beyond herself and her interests,” which is pretty normal for a seven year old.
What do inappropriate books?
I’m still pondering this one. What do inappropriate books, indeed?
How does Charlaine Harris write so frankly about sex when she has kids?
To offer the kind of details Charlaine Harris does about sex, you have to have had sex at least once. Having children is a really good indicator that you have had sex at least as many times as you have children (barring twins, etc).
Also, I’m presuming that Harris doesn’t let her kids read her books until her kids are able to understand that sex is an extremely common and even healthy part of adult human relationships. Kind of like how I didn’t give my oldest niece a copy of my first book until I thought she could handle the violence in it.
Do children find being inappropriate good?
Children generally do not know what constitutes being “inappropriate.” They are children.
“Inappropriate” is a cultural construct. It’s something we learn from older humans around us and internalize (or don’t) as we grow. When children are being “inappropriate,” they’re usually just doing a thing, and they don’t yet have the internal wiring both to understand that other humans are bothered by the thing and that they can and should curb their impulse to do that thing.
Kids don’t find “being inappropriate” either good or bad. They’re exploring and trying stuff. They’re hardwired to do that. It is extremely human.
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Dani Alexis 
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