Miss Tadpole and Bubbles had a 4-H meeting this afternoon and it was their turn to give the presentations.  Naturally, they left them till the last minute, because who needs to prepare?

Since our ISP switch, though, we only have internet access on one computer – Seymour’s.  It’s an inconvenience for sure, and when Miss Tadpole wanted to use the internet to look up information about the history of cats, we told her to look at the encyclopedia.

Her response?

“That doesn’t have history in it.”

*facepalm*

So I gave her a whirlwind introduction to the encyclopedia.  Again.  (Sadly, this is not the first time this conversation has happened in my house.)  I showed her the index, explaining that it was “like Google, before Google was a thing.”  Then I demonstrated how to use it to check out different keywords in her search (she wanted information on cats in ancient Egypt).  Unfortunately, our encyclopedia was a bit lacking when it came to ancient Egyptian cats, but hopefully she learned that she doesn’t have to rely on the internet for everything.

And no, I’m not holding my breath that that particular lesson actually soaked in.

Still, it was a lot of fun looking through that old encyclopedia.  Some of my most treasured memories involve summer afternoons at the library reading The World Book Encyclopedia.

Do you have any fun memories involving reference books of yore?  Share ’em below – let’s reminisce! 🙂

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