Property of the Castle Rock Public Library

The vague reflection of the person you see in this photo is my dad, who was recently reunited with a copy of The Bachman Books…though this copy is a bit more interesting.

Aside from The Boxcar Children, the only other chapter books I remember reading as a kid was The Hatchet and The Bachman Books.

After my parents were divorced, my sisters and I moved with my dad to a quaint little yellow rental in the Northeast side of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Some bedroom shifting happened over the years, and at one point I ended up with the finished half of the basement to call my own.

Well…almost my own.

See, there was a strange little alcove that didn’t seem to serve any logical purpose that I could fathom (though adult me would say it was probably perfect for a bar), but it did fit a couple of bookcases very well. With my dad working in the nuclear industry, he had plenty of boring books that seemed to shrivel my insides just by looking at them. But there was one book in particular that stood out to me, and I’d be lying if part of the appeal wasn’t the foiled dust jacket.

I read and re-read that book. It was unlike The Boxcar Children and The Hatchet in so many ways. It seemed to unlock the desire in me to read that still persist to this day.

Was it responsible to allow an eight year-old to read this book? Absolutely, if you ask me.

All of King’s stories in The Bachman Books are sought-after classics, so much so that you can still buy a copy of The Bachman Books to this day with one gross omission: Rage.

Yeah, it’s a story about a school shooting before school shootings were even really a thing, but because of the sensitive nature of the topic, it is missing from current copies of the series.

That means that if I wanted to gift to my father the very book that began to mold me into the twisted individual I am today, I would have to find a used copy. Be sure that sellers on eBay know exactly what they’re holding in their hands when they list an old school copy of The Bachman Books. Even ratty, dog-eared copies are expensive.

I couldn’t settle for a paperback, though. I needed to find the same foil-stamped hardbound version of the book I remember growing up with. When I found it, it wasn’t in great shape, so I decided to lean into the character of the book, and created a version of The Bachman Books that was once circulated out of the fictional Castle Rock Library.

I’m no stranger to the packaging that libraries use to protect their books, and I relished the thought of constructing one myself (a job which an actual librarian would surely consider mundane).

I carefully crafted the (logistically accurate) Dewey Decimal label on the spine of the book. I wrapped and taped the clear cellophane over the dust jacket to prevent further damage.

And, most importantly, I added a checkout slip and holder. The slip seems to contain some very interesting and infamous Castle Rock characters that apparently checked this book out before it was mysteriously withdrawn from circulation:

Well, now the book belongs to you, dad. Love you.