You’ve unlocked a core memory for me I think I learned about lapis lazuli from Mrs piggle wiggle too I just never remembered it how many of the books did you read?
Growing up, we had a big book with a lot of sample stories or excerpts from kid's books. I think that was the story of the boy who wouldn't clean his room and got stuck in it and couldn't go to the circus when it came to town - moral: keep your room tidy - and I think i only read the first actual book once (the kid who refused to go to bed with a cure of not going to bed until he was so incredibly tired he slept through a party, the 'i thought you said...' girls who were fed powder that made their hearing very sharp so they couldn't misunderstand anymore).
Anyway the lapis thing was in the intro as an aside, told at the same time as 'she never punished a child, not even when Mary Ellen dropped the tea pot and it shattered all over the floor. 'We can make tea in the coffee pot and call it toffee,' said Mrs. Pigglewiggle.'
One of the kids was eating candy and reading a book about precious stones and drooling and got the pages stuck together and Mrs Pigglewiggle said she also felt like drooling over some of the stones and said her favourite was lapis lazuli and i immediately went to the encyclopedia to figure out what lapis was.
