When you are a child, there are many things you take for granted. And not just the obvious things you are used to hearing, like good food, a warm bed, your family and an easy road to happiness. When you develop you realize just how good the things you experienced were. Not by comparing yourself to others, but by experiencing more things. This isn't a comparison of my childhood to someone's less fortunate, but of my childhood's innocence and ignorance compared to my current knowledge of the world.

You still like the foods that you liked as a child not only out of nostalgia, but also because the food that was good when you were a kid is still good. In "Ratatouille," the famed food critic eats a phenomenal bite of food that sends him back to his childhood. We see the nostalgia set in, and as tears flow out of monsieur Ego's eyes, a clip of his mother making him ratatouille long ago plays in his mind. While this "blast from the past" is part of the reason that he so loved the incroyable dish, let's not forget that the food had to first be fantastic, like it was when his mother made it for him. While I'm on the subject of food, I'll just use my mother's cooking as an example. I took it for granted. And from knowing a few mothers that are great chefs, I assumed that my church's potluck was nothing special. One day, however, I visited another church, and when it came time to scoop some of that delicious food onto my plate, I dove right in. It was a grave mistake, because when the food reached my mouth I realized just what a blessing my mother, and all of the mothers in my church that made such delicious food, had been.

Recently I've come to the realization that this wasn't just with that potluck, that I had quite a few things to be thankful for. Many things in my childhood that I would expect to be run-of-the-mill, were really top tier. And the one that outweighs them all, besides the obligatory family or friends, was a couple of storybooks. The name of the series was "Frog and Toad."

These two beautifully written characters, with an incredibly written friendship, no doubt influenced the way that I grew up. While teaching simple messages like kindness, care for someone in need, and learning from mistakes, I now look back and see just how powerful these books were. Don't get me wrong, they were only a first grade reading level, and I must have grown bored of the simple words and sentences quickly, but the ideas and the art, still stand framed in my mind, after all of these years. And I haven't read one of these in at least a decade.

I think everyone feels a yearning for their life to be as simple as it was back when they were a child, but there is more to these critically-acclaimed books than literary training. There is a minimalistic beauty that only the greats could touch. This can be seen in the art, and so I've included a few pictures.

These images speak for themselves. The workmanship and style provide a message that is simple enough for a child to see, and an adult to appreciate. The waves of nostalgia hitting me in the face are clouding my ability to describe these utterly phenomenal works, but I think when you see these, whether you read the books or not as a child, you'll realize that the majority of other children's storybooks written long ago or recently have nothing on these.