My husband’s sister is a missionary to Mexico. She has 2 kids and one on the way! And this year she turned 30 (yes, same as me). I wanted to get her a fun present, something that would remind her of home. So, I found a cool magnet from Hallmark that says, “There’s no place like home. –Wizard of Oz”. And a great card of a scratch-n-sniff hamburger! How All-American is that?! Then, I found the absolute best thing ever!
It’s a book called P is for Peach: A Georgia Alphabet. It’s a cross between a kids picture book and a coffee table book. Each page is dedicated to a letter of the alphabet–Georgia style!
Here’s a few of my favorites:
A is for Atlanta. It is the capitol of our state… (Hotlanta! The ATL. Or as I like to say it, Atlanna.)
E is for the Etowah Indian Mounds, a symbol of Native Americans from long ago... (I went there on a field trip in elementary school!)
Now, K is for Kudzu, creeping invaders with long green vines... (If you haven’t been to Georgia, you can’t understand this!)
L is for the Live oak tree, with graceful old boughs of cool shade. Dripping stands of Spanish moss… (again, it’s so southern and something you just have to see!)
S is for Savannah, a city build of green quilted squares… (My husband’s family is from Savannah!)
V is for Vidalia Onion, a sweet onion grown only here… (Yummy!)
World of Coca-Cola begins with W… (every good Georgian knows that Coke is the real thing!)
Each page has the little verse (like above), a beautiful illustration and a longer paragraph on the side to give some real facts and figures about lovely Georgia. There’s illustrations of Stone Mountain, a peach farm, Martin Luther King, Jr., Fernbank and even kudzu taking over a car. They just nailed it! The illustrator is from Georgia, so maybe that made it seem so homey. As I sat in Borders reading it, I started getting all misty-eyed and proud to be a Georgian. (Maybe you’ve heard, “American by birth, Southern by the grace of God”!?)
I think this would be a great present for anyone who loves their home state or like my sister-in-law is missing her home state! There is a Alphabet Book for each state plus some other fun alphabet books like S is for S’mores: A Camping Alphabet, D is for Dancing Dragon: A China Alphabet and B is for Bookworm: A Library Alphabet. I want to get one for all the states I’ve lived. Let’s see, that would be:
Y is for Yellowhammer: an Alabama Alphabet (I better get that one, because I have no idea what a yellowhammer is!)
C is for Centenniel: a Colorado Alphabet (why Centenniel? I guess I should get that one, too!)
S is for Sunshine: a Florida Alphabet (aah, yeah! I do know about that one!)
S is for Sooner: an Oklahoma Alphabet (I only lived there for a summer, so maybe I’ll skip this one!)
Anyway, you can check out their website and see what kind of alphabet your state might have!
(Oops! I hope my sister-in-law doesn’t read this! I haven’t mailed her gift yet!)
You are cracking me up how excited you are about the GA book. That really is the PERFECT present! I gave your mom the Minnisota one for her 50th. I thought it was a great find.
I’ve seen the S is for Sunshine book.
I haven’t been to Stone Mountain in forever!
We got the Yellowhammer one last year… they were actually giving it away at the Alabama Book Festival! Pretty cool, huh?
if you need something to go along with your peach theme I just picked up some secret deoderant … I grabbed the wrong one b/c I would never get a scent like this & plus it’s a gel which I hate, BUT … I swear I smell like a peach muffin from PO FOLKS!!!!
Wow! Neat stuff! I’ll have to check out the book for my state! Thanks for the non-paid advertisement 🙂
As a Georgia girl, thanks for sharing your find.
I love the MN one Kristen gave me- can’t wait to see the GA one too! BTW- you lived in MO too!
PS
I wanna come home…one more week…sigh.