One of my clearest reading-associated memories has to do with summer reading. For a few summers at the library in my little town, you could go in once a month and talk to a librarian about the books you'd read, and then you'd get something—a coupon for a shake at the Polar King, maybe, or one for a donut at Happy Days Market—for reading over the summer.

My first grade teacher, Mr. Averett, was a librarian there one of the summers, and that is my memory: the papery smell of the library and how cool it was after the heat of riding my bike there; the relief of taking off my full-of-books backpack and then sitting together with a tall stack to talk about. He always stopped me after three or four because of course, I'd read too many to talk about them all.

I read a lot of books.

I wish I'd kept a list of the books I read as a kid, because most of them have faded into general reading memories. But a few stick out and will never be forgotten, so long as I have a memory, and one of my favorites was The Golden Name Day ​by Jennie Lindquist. It tells the story of Nancy, who comes to the country to live with the Bensons when her mother is ill and in the hospital. Grandma and Grandpa Benson, who emigrated to America from Sweden many years ago, take care of Nancy, making her a part of their lives with their extended family. They share their animals (Karl the Twelfth and Whoa Emma!, both horses, and Oscar the dog and Ciciley Ann Waterspout the cat), wallpaper her bedroom with little yellow roses, and teach her about their Swedish traditions.

The one Nancy falls in love with is the Swedish Name Day.

Every day in the Swedish Almanac has a day associated with it. On a Swedish name day, the honoree bakes a cake, and then there is a party with friends and family. There are some surprises or gifts, too, and singing of traditional Swedish folk songs. Grandma's name day is just a few days after Nancy arrives, and she is enchanted by this idea. She decides immediately that she wants to find out when her name day is—except "Nancy" isn't a Swedish name. How her new friends and family try to come up with different ways to give her a name day, but none of them quite work. The name-day problem and how the solution is found is the book's main plot line.

But it is such a delightful story.

Truly a girl book, I have to say, even though Nancy becomes friends with a boy named Alex. It is a story about a girl from the city discovering what living in the country is like, and what it feels like to be an only child but suddenly be included in a family. It is about Grandma's unconditional love for Nancy (even when she is being difficult). It is about flowers, and friendship, and family traditions and history. It's also about reading and how stories influence our choices.

I've sort-of wanted to reread this for ages. "Sort of" because I was worried. It is out of print (even though it was a 1956 Newbery Honor book), so I wasn't sure: what if there was something in it that I hadn't noticed as a child but that would make it offensive to me as an adult? Or what if it just wasn't as good as I remembered? Plus, since it is out of print, it seemed impossible to get a hold of a copy without spending a bunch of money.

But then I had the brilliant idea of using inter-library loan. (I know! It only took me seven years of being a librarian to think of this.) One of my library friends processed my request and voila: a few days later, I had my hands on a copy. It was perfect: just like I remembered, with the same end papers as my childhood library's copy and the same cover (there is also a red cover, but red is entirely the wrong color for this book).

And rereading it was not disappointing.

Revisiting childhood favorites is sort of strange for me. I love re-discovering the details I'd forgotten, but I also am surprised by how certain parts of the books have influenced me. Rereading The Golden Name Day reminded me of what a flighty, flower-loving, prone-to-looking-for-fairies-in-the-morning-glories kind of little girl I was. I wanted to live inside of Nancy's world, which is grey when she arrives but slowly changes color, via flowers, as the spring progresses. Reading about a girl who was so influenced by flowers reinforced my love of flowers, and I think there is a tiny bit of Nancy and her adventures in my yard. But the flowers weren't the only thing. The Golden Notebook introduced me to several of the tropes that still influence my life:

• A love of pretty fabric. Even though there's not any quilting that happens in the story, Nancy does have a pretty quilt, made by Grandma, in her room, and then there is the violet fabric in Wanda's sewing box. Just a hint...but I already loved fabric so reading about it made me feel like I wasn't the only one.
• Old treasures. Nancy finds an old, worn-out book in a box in an attic one day. Ever after reading that, I wished for an attic with boxes I could search through. I loved snooping and sifting through old stuff when I was a kid.
• Poetry. The book Nancy finds is a poetry anthology. She reads Nashe's "Spring, the Sweet Spring" and is never the same. I don't remember when I discovered poetry, but not many children's books mentioned poems. Reading about Nancy reading poems helped me to be ready to read poems.
• Family history. Nancy has a conversation with Aunt Martha when she realizes that Grandma actually left​ Sweden, a place she loved, to come to America. She looks around and realizes that without Grandma's choices, she couldn't have the experiences she was having. Those ties to places where my ancestors lived—England, Scotland, Ireland, mostly, but I do have one line from Sweden—tug at me. They are the places I most want to visit, partly because they are not here. Nancy's moment of realizing that Grandmother's life was completely different before she came to America was a little ah-ha moment for me, too, when I read it as a kid.

 I loved rereading this, and am now on a hunt to find my own copy.

 In homage to how I used to read when I was a kid—entire afternoons spent outside on a comfy chair—I read the book outside.
Of course, I didn't ever have entire afternoons, but I did sit out in my backyard, reading in the sunshine, quite often. In fact, I confess to rereading it several times before the ILL due date came up. It added a series of peaceful, introspective, happy moments to my summer.

Have you ever heard of The Golden Name Day?​ Or do you remember a book from your childhood that you'd like to own a copy of?