NPR

Still looking for that picture book you loved as a kid? Try asking Instagram

Some people spend years or longer trying to track down favorite books from childhood. An Instagram account called My Old Books uses crowdsourcing to make the connection.
One of many bookshelves in the home of Marie-Pascale Traylor, the artist and former preschool teacher behind the "My Old Books" Instagram account and Etsy shop. She collects vintage children's books and helps people reconnect with their long-lost favorites.

Monear Fatemi was on the hunt for a children's book she had loved as a kid in the 1980s. She remembered so many vivid details: the family in the book ate lima beans, the dad had a bushy mustache, the cat's name was "Dog." She could recall every detail, it seemed, except the title and author.

Fatemi, a former English teacher, says she was eager to find this particular title for her 2-year-old daughter because it had meant so much to her when she was growing up. Fatemi is half Persian, and says she rarely saw people of color represented in books or television at the time.

"The illustrator may or may not have tried to show diversity in the book, but the dad looks like my dad and the brother looks like my brother and the mom looks my mom," she says. "It's a black-and-white

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