Aunt Gussie was a firm supporter in a good education and believed this was to be instilled at an early age with children's classics. Pinocchio, The Wizard of Oz, Arabian Nights, and Heidi were a few of her favorites and, like clockwork, she gave them to her grandnieces and grandnephews every Christmas. Unlike the continuously changing realities of the 20th-century that surrounded her, Aunt Gussie found a lot of comfort in children's book since they described simple, beautiful worlds that, no matter how many times she reread about them, never changed.