Book returned to school library after 120 years

Father Tuck’s "Book of Animal Life" turned up at a charity jumble sale in Dorset

A school received an unexpected parcel in the post when a book that was presented to a pupil 120 years ago was returned to the school library.

Father Tuck’s "Book of Animal Life" was last recorded at Brookfields Primary School in Birmingham in 1904, according to a sticker on the inside front page.

The sticker added that the book was presented to a child called Florence Taylor in recognition of her good behaviour.

More than a century later, the book was found among a pile of books at a charity jumble sale by Cindie Raven in Dorset.

The book was presented to a child called Florence Taylor in 1904

After some research, Mrs Raven helped the book find its way back home.

"It is a little bit of history," she said. "I picked it up a couple of years ago and it has been sitting in a box in my house."

When she looked through the box recently, she picked up the book and saw the sticker that named the school and the "City of Birmingham Education Committee".

“I thought it should be returned to the school at which it was first presented all those years ago," she said.

When the book was presented to Florence, Edward VII was King and Albert Einstein was a year away from producing a paper on his Special Theory of Relativity.

Brookfields Primary School's head teacher, Leanne Mahony, said it was a real joy to see the book.

"While the world has changed significantly in the last 120 years, what was nice to see is that encouraging a love of reading was as important then as it is now," she said.

"Books are such an important part of school life and there is something reassuring in seeing that is something that has endured over the years."