Glittered Past

My father was an avid reader and encouraged my own love of reading. When he passed away I inherited his collection of German language books. Many were about the war. After all, he might have been part of the Wehrmacht for about ten years, but soldiers had a very limited vision beyond their own circumstances. He read to figure out what the hell had happened between ages 18 and 32 when he finally came out of Soviet captivity. 

 In his collection there was one of my own forgotten books ... Tausend und eine Nacht. 

In my memory, the book, re-published by the Deutsche Buch-Gemeinschaft, had been embossed with glittering gold lettering on the outside.  I remembered that the Ali Baba cave, depicted on the inside covers, glittered with more gold. 

My adult eyes were disappointed to find no glitter … no fancy gold embossing. It's only through the power of my childish imagination, that the images glitter like gold. 

Does that still happen? Do books still offer children that glitter using only plain colours
and words on a page? I sure hope so.