It’s summer, and for a frontier family, the summer chores can be the most fun! Kirsten and her younger brother, Peter, are going fishing. They’re hoping to get enough fish for their family and their Uncle Olav’s family to have for supper. There is plenty of trout in the stream, and they should be able to get enough fish, although sometimes, disasters happen on their fishing trips. Once, Peter chased a skunk, and their mother also warns them to be careful of snakes and bears. Kirsten wears a whistle around her neck that she can blow if they get into trouble. Kirsten thinks her mother worries too much.
The children take their dog, Caro, fishing with them. Kirsten is a little concerned because Caro likes to chase things, but Peter insists that he can watch the dog and fish at the same time. When they don’t seem to have much luck getting big enough fish in the stream, they decide to go upstream to the pool. The fishing goes well, but Caro is stung by a bee.
Kirsten realizes that Caro must have found a “bee tree”, a tree where bees have built their hive. Kirsten is interested in finding the tree because it’s a source of honey and honeycomb that their mother can make into special treats. If they can collect enough honey, their father might even be able to sell some and buy some of the things the family needs. They need to be careful while looking for the tree, though, or they might get stung themselves. Kirsten is pleased when she finds the tree, but she notices that there are marks on it from a bear’s claws, so it looks like a bear was trying to get the honey, too. Kirsten could ask her father how to get the honey and get him to help, but she wants to figure out how to do it herself and surprise everyone. She asks Peter to keep the bee tree a secret while she tries to figure out how to get the honey, and Peter reluctantly agrees.
Meanwhile, Kirsten’s cousins tell her about the town’s Fourth of July celebration. Kirsten’s family hasn’t lived in America for very long, so her cousins have to explain the significance of the holiday to her. Every year, the nearby town holds a parade and picnic with music and games. A lot of the local farmers also bring things to sell, like pies, butter, or preserves, and they use the money they make to buy things they need. Kirsten thinks again about the honey tree and the things her family could buy. She really wants a straw hat, like her cousins wear.
Later, when Kirsten is picking berries with her cousins, she sees a little black bear cub. She thinks it’s adorable, but Lisbeth says they have to leave the area immediately. If the baby is near the berries, its mother is sure to be somewhere nearby, and mother bears get dangerous if they think someone might hurt their cubs. Kirsten doesn’t really take the warning seriously until she tries to take Peter and Caro back to the bee tree with her to get the honey, and they meet the mother bear face-to-face!
The book ends with a section of historical information about the wilderness on the American frontier in the 1800s. Wild plants and animals were sources of food, but they were also sources of danger, like the bears in the story. The attempts of the pioneers to control the land were about securing sources of food and reducing sources of danger. There is information in the book about how pioneers cooked and how they dealt with changing seasons and weather. It also discusses the Fourth of July and how trips to town were rare treats for pioneer farming families.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction and Spoilers
It’s a good story about the difference between bravery and being foolhardy. From the beginning, even young Peter reminds Kirsten that being brave and being foolish are not the same thing. After their hair-raising encounter with the bear, in which the children have a narrow escape and their dog is injured (but fortunately not killed), the children’s father lectures Kirsten about putting both her life and her little brother’s life in danger. When Kirsten explains what she was trying to do with the bee tree, her father also tells her that she doesn’t really know what she’s doing. She took his equipment, but if she had carried out her plan the way she was thinking of doing it, she would have both destroyed the hive and ruined the honey as well as getting badly stung. Kirsten should have just gone to her father as soon as she found the tree and got his help from the beginning. Kirsten is ashamed for getting their dog hurt and putting herself and her brother in danger and almost ruining her special find, and she apologizes.
Because Kirsten’s father now understands the situation, he gets Kirsten’s older brother, Lars, to help him move the colony of bees to their farm. He knows how to set up hives and keep bees long term, so instead of this being just a one-time find and honey harvest, they will be able to get honey from the bees regularly. Kirsten goes with her father and Lars to watch them move the bees. She does it because she’s been having bad dreams about the traumatic escape from the bear, and she thinks it will help her to recover if she goes to the area again and sees it with her father and brother, when it’s safe.
Kirsten still feels bad that she wasn’t able to get the honey all by herself and that her attempt to do it was a disaster, but her mother consoles her. She says that she and Kirsten’s father understand that Kirsten was just trying to help and that her discovery has helped them. She just needs to learn to be careful as well as being brave. I thought that it was also a lesson in learning to share the glory instead of trying to take all the credit by going it alone and risking the success of the project, but the book didn’t quite say that. Kirsten wanted to be the one to say that she did it all herself, but because she couldn’t really do it all herself, everything went wrong. She could have accomplished her goals by talking to her father in the beginning and still been the heroine who found the bee tree, as her mother pointed out. She still gets credit for what she did without needing to take credit for what she couldn’t do alone.
The book ends with the family enjoying the Fourth of July celebration. Thanks to the discovery of the bees, they are able to buy the things they need.
Happy Birthday, Kirsten by Janet Beeler Shaw, 1987.
It’s spring, and Kirsten’s family is planning to build a new barn on the farm that they share with Uncle Olav and his family, and her mother is expecting a new baby.
One day, while they are outside, working, dark clouds come, the wind picks up, and Aunt Inger thinks it might be a tornado. She urges everyone to get into the root cellar for safety. Miss Winston, the school teacher who is staying with Uncle Olav and Aunt Inger, joins them in the cellar. She brings her quilt with her for comfort and because it reminds her of home, so she wouldn’t want to lose it to a tornado.
She tells Kirsten and her cousins that her mother and other women and girls in her family made the quilt for her as a present when she left Maine. The scraps of cloth in the quilt came from clothes members of her family used to wear and things she used to wear when she was younger. Everyone who worked on the quilt signed it, making it a “friendship quilt.” Kirsten and her cousins ask Miss Winston if she could teach them to make a quilt like this one, and she agrees. She says that she will give them some muslin for the backing, but they’ll have to supply the scraps of cloth for the designs themselves. Because it takes a lot of work to make a big quilt, she suggests that they each make a square. Quilts are an unusual concept to the Swedish family because people in Sweden during their time usually use woven blankets. Kirsten’s mother also reminds her that she will need her help to sew more clothes for the new baby. Kirsten’s cousins, Anna and Lisbeth, suggest that they do their quilt sewing during recess at school, and Miss Winston agrees.
At school, the girls trade cloth scraps with each other and invite other girls to join them in quilting. One of the other girls, Mary Stewart, has done quilting before, so she helps the others. While the girls sew, they talk, and Kirsten talks about the baby that her mother is expecting. Mary says that the little girl her family calls her little sister is actually her cousin. She was born as one of a set of twins to Mary’s aunt, but the other twin died at birth, and their mother died shortly after, so Mary’s mother took the baby to raise with her family. Stories like that worry Kirsten because she worries that something might happen to her mother or the new baby.
Mary also brings up the topic of whether or not Miss Winston will move on. She’s been going to Powderkeg School for four years, and every year, the previous teacher moves on, and they get a new one. Although Kirsten initially had trouble with Miss Winston, she has become fond of her, and she wouldn’t like to see her go. With all the other changes happening in Kirsten’s life, she doesn’t want any other major changes now. Kirsten suggests to the other girls that they turn their quilting project into another friendship quilt for Miss Winston, signing it like her family members signed their quilt. The other girls debate about whether they could manage to finish a quilt like that by the end of the summer term. Lisbeth thinks they could, but Mary doesn’t want to rush the project because the best part of making a quilt is sewing it with your friends.
The talk then turns to Kirsten’s birthday. She will be turning ten years old soon. She didn’t celebrate her last birthday because that was during their voyage to America. Mary says that ten is a more important birthday anyway, although Kirsten isn’t sure if her family will do anything for her birthday this year, either. Everyone’s attention is taken up with preparations for the new baby.
When Kirsten’s mother tells her that the new baby is about to be born, she also tells her that she remembers the day Kirsten was born, too. She says that she will never forget that day because she had been hoping for a daughter, and she knows that Kirsten’s birthday is coming in two more weeks. Kirsten is happy that her mother remembers, and she hurries to get her aunt to help with the birth of the baby.
Fortunately, Kirsten’s new sister is born safely, although Kirsten has to take some time away from school to help her mother with the new baby and household chores. However, her mother tells her that her friends from school will be coming to the raising of the new barn, which is the day before Kirsten’s birthday, and she will allow Kirsten to have her birthday free to have fun with her friends.
At the barn raising, Kirsten and her friends have a chance to work on their quilt again. Kirsten is behind on making her quilt square, but her friends have arranged a special surprise for Kirsten’s birthday.
There is a section in the back of the book about babies and young children on the frontier during the mid-1800s. Children were born at home then, with the help of family members and midwives because there were few doctors and hospitals on the frontier. With limited access to medicine and without some of the modern medicines we have today, childbirth and early childhood were often risky. It was sadly common for families to lose a child or two before they were five years old. Because accidents as well as illness posed a threat to young children, parents were often strict with discipline so their children would listen to them and follow their instructions to avoid disaster.
This part of the book also talks about the phases of a child’s life on the frontier. Older children wore clothes that looked like smaller versions of their parents clothes, and they would often do the same kinds of chores that their parents did on their farms. Most children expected to become farmers or farm wives, like their parents. They were raised doing farm work, and they didn’t expect to do anything else when they were older.
Although their lives were filled with chores, there were still some opportunities for fun. Sometimes, neighbors would turn chores into social occasions, called “bees.” These work parties could center around any kind of chore that the community needed to do and could do together, like raising a barn or making quilts, like the characters in the story. Along with accomplishing their task, it was a chance for friends and neighbors to get together and talk and have a little fun.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
I don’t think I read this particular book in the Kirsten series when I was young. I wasn’t as fond of the Kirsten books as I was other series in the American Girls franchise because there are some really sad parts in the series. However, I really enjoyed this particular book. Kirsten is worried at first about the welfare of her mother and her family’s new baby because she knows that life on the frontier can be dangerous, and sometimes mothers die in childbirth, and babies don’t always survive. Fortunately, everything turns out well for Kirsten’s mother and new little sister.
This is a happy spring story with a focus on new life and friendship. Even the smallest kitten in the new litter seems like it’s going to be fine. I liked it because, while life on the frontier could be very hard, it’s nice to see that not everything turned out as a tragedy. The book ends with the barn raising and birthday celebration for Kirsten.
Kirsten Learns a Lesson by Janet Beeler Shaw, 1986.
It’s November, 1854, and now that nine-year-old Kirsten’s family has settled in their new home in Minnesota and the harvest season is over, it’s time for the children to go to school. Kirsten and her brothers, Lars and Peter, will go to the small local school with their cousins, Lisbeth and Anna. Powderkeg School is a one-room schoolhouse in a little log cabin. Lisbeth and Anna’s stories about what Powderkeg School is like worry Kirsten. They talk about how strict their teacher, Mr. Coogan, is. Sometimes, the boys in class get rowdy and fight, and Mr. Coogan uses physical punishment on them. However, the girls tell Kirsten that she probably won’t have any problems with Mr. Coogan because he likes children who are well-behaved, and Kirsten is well-behaved. Still, Kirsten is nervous about what her new school will be like.
When they get to school, they learn that Mr. Coogan was injured in a fall from his horse, so they will have a replacement teacher, Miss Winston, who has only recently arrived from Maine. When one of the mean boys in class says he hops the horse also stepped on Mr. Coogan, Miss Winston tells him that nobody talks out of turn in her class and, although they live in the country, “we are not savages like the Indians.” (This is a 19th century attitude toward Native Americans, but this concept is challenged later in the story.)
Miss Winston has each of the children in class introduce themselves so she can get to know everyone. When it’s Kirsten’s turn to say her name, she forgets to address her teacher as ma’am, like the other students. Miss Winston insists that she say “ma’am”, and when she sees Kirsten struggling with the language, she asks Kirsten if she speaks English. Kirsten says that she speaks a little, and her cousins explain that her family just came from Sweden and that they speak Swedish at home. Miss Winston says that “practice makes perfect”, so Kirsten will practice her English in school. For now, she will have the easiest lessons and share seven-year-old Anna’s schoolbook.
When the mean boy, Amos, laughs at Kirsten, Miss Winston glares at him and strikes the school’s iron stove with her ruler, startling the students. Miss Winston says that her father was a ship’s captain, so she knows how to be in charge of her students, like he was in charge of his crew. Then, she deconstructs the sentence “Miss Winston hit the stove”, pointing out which words are the subject, verb, and direct object of the sentence. Then she warns the class to “Be careful that the direct object of hit isn’t the student.” The implication is that Miss Winston is just as willing to use physical punishment against her students as Mr. Coogan was.
When Amos introduces himself to Miss Winston, we learn that he is nineteen years old, the same age as the new teacher, but the new teacher says that, in spite of being the same age, she’s still the teacher, and he’s the student. In spite of being more a young man than a boy in age, Amos has only just finished the third reader, and Miss Winston says her role is to help him read and do math like a man would, embarrassing Amos. (He can’t use his age to put himself on an equal footing with the new teacher because they are not intellectual equals. She’s the same age, but she has graduated from her own school and become a teacher, and he’s still struggling along with low level math and reading.)
Anna helps Kirsten with her lessons, and Miss Winston praises her for helping to teach Kirsten, but she doesn’t praise Kirsten for doing a good job. At the end of the school day, Kirsten and her cousins talk about the new teacher. Anna thinks that Miss Winston seems nice, but Kirsten thinks that Miss Winston doesn’t like her and that she seems very strict. She asks if that was what Mr. Coogan was like, and Lisbeth says he was worse. The best part of the day for Kirsten was lunchtime, when the children were allowed some play time. When she ran around and played tag with the other children, it didn’t matter if she didn’t speak much English.
When the girls play school with their dolls, Anna imitates Miss Winston and her comment about “savages.” Kirsten asks the other girls what that word means. They say it means “wild.” Kirsten asks them if the Indians (Native Americans) are really like that, and they say that some people say they’re kind and will help people if they need food but others day that they’re “cruel and bloodthirsty.” They’ve seen an Indian man before. He came to their house when their mother was roasting meat, and he left when their mother gave him some. They thought he looked pretty “savage” because his face was painted, and he had eagle feathers in his hair. The girls say that Native Americans also wear knives and live in tents. As a farmer, their father is concerned about the Native Americans. He knows that, if the farmers take too much of their usual hunting grounds for farming, it will drive away the animals, and the Native Americans will be starving and angry. While he is happy that he has been able to secure some farmland for his family (I explained a little about the famine conditions and lack of farmland in Sweden around this time that caused people like the Larsons to leave their country when I covered Meet Kirsten), he is aware that the Native Americans also need land for their survival.
At school, Miss Winston announces that each student will memorize a poem and recite it for the class. When they recite their poems, she wants them to say them with feeling and show the emotions their poem is trying to convey. Kirsten worries about this assignment because she’s still learning English. It’s hard enough for her to learn to read anything in English and understand the meaning of the words. She doesn’t know how she can also learn to memorize an entire poem and say it in front of everyone. Miss Winston gives Kirsten a short poem to learn, but having even a short one doesn’t seem to help Kirsten.
Meanwhile, Kirsten has her first encounter with a Native American when she spots an Indian (Native American) girl watching her while she’s getting water from the stream. The girl runs away, but Kirsten finds a blue bead that she dropped. Kirsten takes it and leaves her a little pretend cake that she and her cousins made for their dolls. Later, she finds that the cake is missing and that there’s a green duck feather in its place. She and the Indian girl trade little objects in this way, gradually becoming friends.
Kirsten’s secret friendship with the Native American girl becomes a comfort to her when school is stressful. Frontier teachers often board with families who live near the school, and when Miss Winston comes to stay at Kirsten’s aunt and uncle’s house, Kirsten feels like school is following her home. What’s worse is that Kirsten’s family will be joining them for dinner, and they will practice English during the meal. Kirsten knows that the meals, instead of being comfortable family time, will now be like lessons, and they will struggle to say things they would want to say because her family still hardly knows English. Worse yet, Miss Winston is cross with Kirsten because she can’t seem to memorize even her short poem.
Sneaking away to visit the Native American girl, who is called Singing Bird, gives Kirsten an escape from her struggles with English. Somehow, Kirsten and Singing Bird manage to communicate well enough with each other, even though neither of them speaks each other’s language. Then, Singing Bird takes Kirsten to see her village. To her surprise, Kirsten realizes that she has been gradually teaching Singing Bird English words without realizing it. However, Singing Bird’s people are going to be moving on soon. Kirsten’s uncle is correct that farming is driving away the animals the Native Americans depend on for food, and they’re suffering for it. Singing Bird invites Kirsten to come with her tribe when they leave, and it’s tempting to think of living an exciting life, traveling with Singing Bird and not going to school. But, is that what Kirsten really wants?
The book ends with a section of historical information about frontier schools in the mid-1800s.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction and Spoilers
Along with the first book in the series, this is the book that I remember the best of the Kirsten books. I think I either didn’t read the others or didn’t finish them because there are some sad things in the Kirsten stories that I didn’t like. In the first book, Meet Kirsten, another child Kirsten befriends on the journey to Minnesota dies of cholera. It’s historically accurate that some children died of disease on the journey west, but it was still hard to take. I also talked about how the reason why families like Kirsten’s wanted to come to America was that Sweden was experiencing famine around this time. The first book didn’t say much about that, but in this book, Kirsten remembers experiencing hunger in Sweden when her father’s crops failed and how her little brother cried from hunger.
Kirsten understands the plight of the Native Americans when they have to move to a new area when their food supplies run low. However, when Singing Bird invites Kirsten to come with them, she realizes that would mean leaving the rest of her family, and she can’t do that. While it’s tempting to go with her friend and escape the problems in her life, Kirsten can’t do that without also giving up the good things in her life and trading the problems in her life for a different set of problems. Although there are appealing aspects to their lives, the Native Americans also have their own struggles. To use an old adage, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence. People say it in different ways, but just because someone else’s situation is different doesn’t always mean that it’s better.
In this book, we also see what it’s like for Kirsten’s family as they begin learning English, so they can communicate with other people in their new country, and the children begin going to school. The little frontier school is different from other schools they’ve experienced before, and the teachers are strict. They have to be strict because some of the students are rough and fight with each other physically, and they have to make it clear that they’re not going to put up with that. This is a real-life aspect of schools from this time period. Fortunately, we never see the teacher actually using physical punishment against anybody. She just threatens to do it so her students will think twice about misbehaving.
When Miss Winston comes to board with Kirsten’s relatives, Kirsten thinks that everything is going to be worse, that she’s constantly going to be bombarded with lessons and the problems she’s been having at school. However, it turns into an opportunity for Kirsten and Miss Winston to get to know each other better. At first, Miss Winston can’t understand why Kirsten is having such a difficult time remembering her poem, even though it’s pretty short and easy. It’s partly because she’s still having difficulties with her English, but also, the content of the poem has no relation to anything currently happening in Kirsten’s life. It doesn’t interest her, and her mind is preoccupied with all the changes happening in her life, making it difficult for her to focus on the poem and remember it. When Miss Winston shows Kirsten a model of her father’s ship, it brings back memories of the ship Kirsten’s family traveled on when they came from Sweden. Miss Winston realizes that Kirsten has strong memories of the ship, so she gives her a different poem to memorize, one about a ship. Kirsten finds this poem easier to remember because it connects to memories she already has.
Although Miss Winston can be tough, she genuinely does care about Kirsten and looks for ways to help her learn. It just takes time to figure out the best way to help her, and Kirsten also needs time to adjust to her new language and new home. Once Kirsten sees that it’s possible for her to learn and for her new home to begin feeling like home, she begins to feel better about her new life in Minnesota.
I enjoyed the realistic aspects of the story and the references to historical events and real life conditions on the frontier. I think I liked this story better as an adult because I understood more about the historical background than I did when I was a kid. Parts of this series are still sad. Kirsten remembers people being sick and dying on the journey to America, and although she doesn’t go into detail about it, her family did suffer genuine hardship in Sweden.
It’s the summer of 1854, and Kirsten Larson is traveling by ship to America from Sweden with her family. There have been storms during the voyage, and the sailing has been rough. It’s crowded on the ship, and people have been seasick. On board the ship, Kirsten makes friends with another girl her age, Marta. The two girls play with their dolls together and talk about the things they’ll do when they finally reach America. The reason why the Larsons are traveling to America is that Kirsten’s Uncle Olav is already there. He has established a farm in Minnesota, and he has married a widow with two daughters. He wrote to the Larsons and asked them to join him and his new family in Minnesota and help on the farm.
When their ship finally reaches America, it docks in New York. No one is allowed to leave the ship until the health inspector declares that they are healthy. Health inspectors will not allow anyone with a serious, contagious disease, like cholera or typhoid, to go ashore. When they are allowed ashore, Kirsten’s father finds an agent to help them change their money at a bank and buy train tickets for their trip west. The agent, who is also from Sweden, will even accompany the family to the Mississippi River as a guide. The family needs help because they can’t speak English yet.
When they go to buy food in New York, Kirsten is accidentally separated from her father and gets lost. Because she can’t speak English, nobody understands what she’s saying, so Kirsten can’t ask for directions. Kirsten is frightened, but a kind lady sees her distress and tries to ask her what’s wrong. Kirsten can’t tell her, but then, she realizes that she can draw a picture, so she draws a picture of a ship. The lady leads Kirsten back to the dock, and she manages to find the rest of her family in the nearby Battery Park.
The next day, Kirsten says goodbye to Marta because the Larsons are leaving the city before Marta’s family. Because Marta’s family is also going to Minnesota, they hope that they will meet again there or somewhere on the way.
Kirsten has never seen a train before, and her first ride on one is frightening at first. The trip lasts for days, but finally, they arrive in Chicago. There, they will meet up with other pioneers heading to the Mississippi River. At the boarding house in Chicago, Kirsten reunites with Marta, whose family will also be traveling with them!
The pioneer families take wagons to the Mississippi River, and then, they board a riverboat. Kirsten’s mother worries because, when they boarded the riverboat, she was sailors burying a passenger who died of cholera. (A disease caused by ingesting contaminated food and water.) Cholera is a serious risk, and her worries are justified. On their third day on the boat, Marta becomes ill with cholera and dies from it.
Kirsten is distressed at Marta’s sudden death, but fortunately, the Larsons all make it to Minnesota. All along, Kirsten has been struggling with homesickness and is still grieving the loss of the only friend she had in America, but she is cheered when she is greeted by her new cousins, Anna and Lisbeth. With her cousins as her new friends, Kirsten thinks that Minnesota might come to feel like home after all.
The book ends with a section of historical information about immigrant families, like Kirsten’s.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
Although I liked the American Girl books when I was a kid, I didn’t like the Kirsten books, partly because of Marta’s death. I don’t think any of the other American Girl books has a child death in the first book. In fact, I don’t even remember any other children dying in any of the series, unless it happens in one of the newer books I haven’t read yet. It is realistic for a child to die while traveling west. Diseases like cholera were a real-like risk to pioneers. I’ve visited places along the old Oregon Trail, and I’ve seen the graves of real pioneer children who died of disease. There’s also a doll at one of the local historical museums in my area that once belonged to a little girl who died on the trip west. I know that children died on the journey west in real life, but it’s still depressing to read about, which is what bothered me about the Kirsten books. For this reason, I don’t think I read all of the Kirsten books when I was a kid, or at least, I don’t remember much about most them.
Reading this book again as an adult, I found it easier to deal with Marta’s death. I knew it was coming, so there was no shock to me. Marta’s illness is only a small portion of the book, and Kirsten doesn’t see Marta dead. We do get a picture in the book of the riverboat sailors carrying Marta’s coffin away for burial.
I always appreciate the sections of historical information in the back of American Girl books. This one discusses immigrants, the reasons why they wanted to move to a new country, and the conditions they encountered during their journey.
Earlier, when I covered Rasmus and the Vagabond, I mentioned that the characters hide in an abandoned village, and Oscar tells Rasmus that the reason that the village is abandoned is because, years before, the people in the village all decided to emigrate to America together, specifically Minnesota (a popular destination for Scandinavian immigrants). The Library of Congress has more information about Swedish immigrants and the major periods of immigration. Around the time that Kirsten’s family emigrated to the United States, Sweden was suffering problems from overpopulation, lack of adequate tillable farm land, and famine. We don’t hear the Larsons describe any particular problems they had in Sweden or suffering. We are told that they had a farm in Sweden with a house with a maple tree near the door and a barn, but we don’t know if the family was suffering in spite of owning the farm. The important point is more that conditions in general were bad in Sweden, so the promise of rich farm land in Minnesota was attractive to them. The historical information included in the back of Meet Kirsten doesn’t cover this information about conditions in Sweden. Instead it focuses on what immigrant families might pack to bring with them on such a journey and what the traveling conditions would have been like.
Kirsten’s Cookbook by Terri Braun, Jodi Evert, and Jeanne Thieme, 1994.
This cook book is one of the activity books that was written to accompany the Kirsten series that is part of the American Girls franchise. The American Girls books were written to help teach American history (as well as sell the accompanying dolls and accessories), so this book has recipes of the type that people would have eaten on the American frontier during the mid-1800s, when the character of Kirsten lived, and some historical information.
The book begins with some historical information about cooking on the frontier. Pioneer families like Kirsten’s family ate what they grew themselves and things they could gather from the woods around them. They ate certain foods only in the season when they could get them, and it was hard work to produce food and process it before using it in recipes. There were certain types of food that they had often because the ingredients were simple and often available, like potatoes and bread, and they rarely had time to prepare special or elaborate meals. However, they would take the time to make some special treats for holidays.
There are special sections that describe what pioneer kitchens were like and the dishes and table settings they would use. Pioneer families like Kirsten’s lived in one-room cabins, so her family cooked, ate, and slept all in that one room. They had a wood-burning cookstove, but stoves like that did not come with temperature settings. (This is why you don’t see temperatures specified in old recipes from the 19th century, although this book does include that information for modern readers.) People learned to judge roughly whether the temperature was right to bake bread or cook other recipes by feel, and could regulate the approximate temperature through the type or amount of wood they burned.
There is also a section of cooking tips and kitchen safety tips for modern child readers. Then, the recipes are organized by type of meal with a section of Kirsten’s favorite recipes. Each section and recipe is accompanied with additional historical information and trivia.
Breakfast
Pork sausage patties
Hard-boiled eggs
Swedish rice porridge
Round rye bread
Homemade butter
Ginger cookies – Although cookies seem like an odd thing to see at breakfast, a pioneer family might have them and save some for a snack in the mid-morning, before lunch, or as they called it, dinner.
Dinner
“Dinner” is usually the biggest meal of the day, but depending on when and where you live, that might be either the midday meal or the evening meal. In modern times, it tends to be the evening meal, after a family or individuals are home from work or school and have more time for a large meal. Modern people sometimes use the terms “dinner” and “supper” (the evening meal) interchangeably for that reason. In Kirsten’s time and, sometimes, in rural areas even in modern times, the biggest meal is the midday meal, what most of us would call “lunch.”
Baked ham slice
Swedish potatoes
Cabbage and apple salad
Fruit Soup
Swedish Almond Rusks – Swedish rusks are crunchy sweet breads, a little like biscotti.
Favorite Foods
This section just has an assortment of recipes for Kirsten’s favorite foods. Some of them are traditional Swedish foods, and others are more American. There is a mention in this section that pioneers learned how to make maple syrup from “Indians”, meaning Native Americans.
Potato soup – Soup with bread and cheese was a popular supper meal for farming families in the 19th century.
Swedish meatballs
Fresh applesauce
Swedish pancakes – These thin pancakes are rolled and filled with jam.
St. Lucia buns – These special buns are topped with raisins, and it’s a tradition in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries to serve them on St. Lucia Day, December 13.
Pepparkakor cookies – These are thin, spicy cookies that are cut into shapes and served at Christmas.
The book ends with a section of tips for having a pioneer-themed party. When real pioneers had parties, they were often organized around chores they had to do or tasks to accomplish. They called these work-play parties “bees”. Besides accomplishing a task, friends and neighbors would also bring food and share a meal, talk, and have fun. The suggestions in this section are organized seasonally. A Winter Baking Bee could involve everyone getting together to bake holiday treats, like the ones included in this book for St. Lucia Day and Christmas, or whatever the guests want to bake. At a Spring Gardening Bee, guests can get together to plant a garden or potted plants, with plants for guests to take home themselves. For a Summer Berry Bee, guests can pick berries (if they grow locally or at a “pick-your-own” farm) or make jam, with some for everyone to take home. For a Fall Apple Bee, guests can pick apples and make recipes with apples, like applesauce.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
Samantha’s Cookbook by Polly Athan, Terri Braun, Jodi Evert, and Jeanne Thieme, 1994, 1998.
This cook book is one of the activity books that was written to accompany the Samantha series that is part of the American Girls franchise. The American Girls books were written to help teach American history (as well as sell the accompanying dolls and accessories), so this book has recipes of the type that people would have eaten during the early 1900s, when the character of Samantha lived, and some historical information about cooking and dining during that period.
The first section in the book discusses innovations that made cooking easier in Samantha’s time than it had been in earlier time periods. The kitchen in Samantha’s house had running water, a gas stove, and an icebox for refrigerating food. Because Samantha comes from a wealthy family, who can hire people to cook for them, Samantha’s education focuses more on learning how to be a good hostess, meaning that she would be more likely to be in the dining room, helping to entertain guests, rather than in the kitchen, preparing food. However, Samantha would have been familiar with cookbooks, discussing new recipes and studying sections of cookbooks that offered advice about dining etiquette. There are sections in this book that discuss the role of servants in shopping for and preparing food and the proper way to set a table for an elegant dinner party.
After that, there is a section of cooking tips and kitchen safety tips. The recipes in the book are divided into sections based on meals, followed by a section of Samantha’s favorite recipes. The recipes are also accompanied by historical information.
Breakfast
The book explains that, because Samantha is from a wealthy family, her family’s cook begins making breakfast before Samantha wakes up in the morning, so it will be ready for her as soon as she’s awake and dressed. In her time, breakfast was typically the lightest meal of the day, but wealthy households had a variety of foods at breakfast. Breakfast was typically served with hot drinks. Adults usually had coffee or tea, while children might have hot chocolate.
Strawberries with cream
Ham slice
Cheese omelet
Saratoga potatoes – These are fried potato chips, which were a relatively new innovation in Samantha’s time. The book explains that potato chips were invented by a Native American cook at a resort in Saratoga Springs, New York in 1853 after a customer complained that the fried potatoes should be thinner.
Blueberry muffins
Dinner
“Dinner” is usually the biggest meal of the day, but depending on when and where you live, that might be either the midday meal or the evening meal. In the past and in rural areas, “dinner” was often lunch. By Samantha’s time, as it typically is in modern times, it was the evening meal, after a family or individuals are home from work or school and have more time for a large meal. For wealthy families, like Samantha’s family, dinner was a very formal meal. They would often dress up for dinner, and at formal dinner parties, there would be name cards on the table to tell everyone where to sit. At a formal dinner in a household with servants, individual dishes and parts of the meal would be served in “courses”, but the number of courses could vary. Samantha’s family followed the English style, with fives courses at dinner. The book mentions Samantha’s family having soup, salad, appetizers, a main course with roasted meat, and dessert and coffee at the end of the meal. Some larger, fancier dinner parties could have many more, some as many as 18 courses!
Cream of carrot soup
Roasted beef tenderloin
Mashed potatoes
Fresh green beans
Corn oysters – These are fried corn patties.
French salad
Dressing
Ice cream snowballs – These are scoops of vanilla ice cream coated in shredded coconut.
Favorite Foods
This section has an assortment of recipes for Samantha’s favorite foods. The book explains that, while Samantha was being trained to be a hostess more than a cook, even wealthy girls like her would taught some basic cooking skills. Sometimes, Samantha would help the family’s cook in the kitchen and make some simple recipes.
Apple Brown Betty
Jelly biscuits
Cream cheese and walnut sandwiches
Chicken salad sandwiches
Gingerbread
Lemon ice
The book ends with a section about how to plan a tea party, like girls in Samantha’s time might have. The suggestions include themed tea parties, like afternoon tea, a color tea (a popular concept in the early 1900s, where everything at the party, from decorations to food, would be themed around a particular color), a garden tea party, and a doll tea party (girls would bring their dolls, and there would even be tiny treats to serve to the dolls).
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
Lady Margaret’s Ghost by Elizabeth McDavid Jones, 2009.
This book is one of the mystery stories published to accompany the American Girl series of historical books. The main character of this book, Felicity Merriman, lives in Colonial era Williamsburg, Virginia, around the beginning of the American Revolution.
Felicity’s mother is going on a trip to visit a relative, along with Felicity’s younger siblings. As the oldest girl in the family, Felicity will be in charge of the household while her mother is gone and her father and his apprentice, Ben, are working in the store her father owns. It’s a big responsibility and an honor that Felicity’s mother considers her capable of managing the household, but because Felicity is still young and some household tasks involve heavy work that is difficult for her to do alone, her mother has hired a temporary cook, Mrs. Hewitt, to help her. Because Felicity is known as a daydreamer who doesn’t always pay attention to what she should be doing, her mother reminds her to focus on the task at hand while she’s minding the house, although she has faith in Felicity and is sure that she will do a good job.
Soon after her mother leaves, a crate arrives at the house for Felicity’s father, along with a letter. The letter explains that a cousin of Felicity’s father has died and that the crate contains some family heirlooms that his cousin left to him. These heirlooms once belonged to a common ancestor of theirs, Sir Edward Merriman, a wealthy nobleman and the first member of their family to live in the colonies, more than 100 years earlier. Felicity’s father didn’t know his cousin well because they never lived very close, and his cousin was much older, but he does know the history of the heirlooms. The heirlooms include a lady’s silver vanity set and a silver cup and rattle for baby. The story is that Sir Edward’s wife, Lady Margaret, owned the vanity set, and the rattle and cup were for their infant son. Unfortunately, the baby was stillborn, and Lady Margaret died shortly after the birth. After her death, her husband and the household servants believed that she still haunted the house. The haunting may have been part of the reason why Sir Edward decided to leave his home in England and go to America, but even though he later remarried and had other children, he could never bring himself to part from the things that belonged to his first wife and child. Even before Felicity’s father tells her about the ghost story, Felicity gets a strange feeling from the vanity set, and she wonders if the objects could be haunted.
However, Felicity soon has to turn her attention to household issues. Mrs. Hewitt, the temporary cook arrives, and she is a brusque and unpleasant woman. She is rude and condescending to Felicity when they are working in the kitchen together. Because Mrs. Hewitt is so rude, Felicity is nervous and makes mistakes, making her look like more of a fool to Mrs. Hewitt. They can’t easily replace her because cooks are in demand right now because this is Publick Times in Williamsburg, and there are many visitors to the city. Everyone is busy tending to them. Mrs. Hewitt was the best they could find available. Felicity’s father does speak to her about her rudeness to Felicity. After that, Mrs. Hewitt is sullen and resentful, and she is even more pleased whenever she sees Felicity doing something wrong.
There is also an exciting event taking place. Felicity has entered her horse, Penny, in a horse race at the fair in town! Ben, her father’s apprentice, will ride her. The day of the race, Penny seems to be doing well, but then, she suddenly develops a problem during the race. When Felicity and Ben check her out to see what was wrong, they discover that someone put burrs under Penny’s saddle! Worse still, the wounds caused by the burrs become infected. Felicity is very upset and worried about Penny, and she wonders who would have hurt her horse. There were a couple of men looking at her before the race. There was also a boy named Dawson and a girl called Anne.
Dawson turns out to be a runaway, but he also has some knowledge of horses. Although Felicity is a little suspicious of him at first, Dawson helps to heal Penny’s wounds. He also says that he saw Anne gathering burrs, but it was probably on behalf of someone else.
When Felicity realizes that her treasured coral necklace, which her mother also wore as a girl, has disappeared, Felicity questions whether she carelessly lost it or if someone has stolen it. Felicity has been doubting herself and her ability to manage the household because of all the mistakes she has made since her mother left, and the clasp of the necklace was a little loose. This could just be another disastrous mistake, but it is suspicious that Anne seemed so friendly to her at the race and then ran away from her later. Anne also literally bumped into Felicity at the race. Could she have taken the necklace? Dawson seems to think so, but then again, can Felicity really trust everything he says?
Felicity still gets an odd feeling from Lady Margaret’s heirlooms, and she thinks that she sees something white moving around at night. At first, she thinks that it could be Lady Margaret’s ghost, but then, strange things begin happening around the house. Things disappear, and Felicity worries that maybe she carelessly mislaid them. Then, her necklace unexpectedly turns up, and Lady Margaret’s vanity set vanishes! Are these strange things part of the haunting of Lady Margaret or the work of a thief? If it’s a human thief, is it the work of the runaway Dawson, mysterious Anne, unpleasant Mrs. Hewitt, or the mysterious person who arranged for Penny to be hurt?
The book ends with a section of historical information about Colonial era Williamsburg. The story is set during Publick Times, which was when court was in session in Williamsburg. People would gather in Williamsburg during Publick Times to see the trials in court and attend a public fair in Market Square. The fair offered various kinds of entertainment, games, and races, like the horse race in the story.
My Reaction
The story leaves it a little ambiguous at the end about whether Lady Margaret’s ghost exists, but if she does, she is not harmful and has nothing to do with the thefts in the story or what happened to Penny at the horse race. As the section of historical information explains, there are many new visitors in Williamsburg during Publick Times. This was a good setting for the story because there are many strangers to the city with unknown pasts and motives, and crowds at the fair might harbor thieves.
Part of the story and part of the section of historical information in the back focuses on the subject of orphans. Both Dawson and Anne are orphans, and neither of them is really being cared for. Dawson admits that he used to steal to support himself after his father died, but he is seriously looking for work. Anne technically has a guardian, but her guardian is abusive and uses her as a servant rather than taking care of her.
When the thefts occur and mysterious things start happening around the Merriman house, both Dawson and Anne look like the best suspects, but there are also possible adult suspects. Even after Felicity realizes Anne’s situation, she isn’t entirely sure which of the men at the fair that day is Anne’s guardian. Mrs. Hewitt also looks suspicious because she is so unpleasant and seems to be trying to make trouble for Felicity. I though the book did a good job of supplying an array of suspects to consider. The solution to the mystery was one of the possibilities I thought was most likely, but there were enough other possibilities to make the story interesting.
The Ghost of the Gracie Mansion by Susan Kohl, illustrated by Ned Butterfield, 1999.
The year is 1803, and the Gracie family has decided to temporarily leave New York City because of the Yellow Fever Epidemic. William Gracie, the eldest son of the family, is disappointed because he has started working for his father’s shipping business, and he was looking forward to being promoted to clerk this spring. He wants to follow in his father’s footsteps, and he’s serious about wanting to learn the business. The trip that they’re taking to their new country home at Horn’s Hook, north of the city, seems to delay his plans because it’s so far away from everything, from his father’s business and from the Tontine Coffee House, where businessmen and other important people meet to discuss the issues of the day. However, William can’t help but admit that the situation in New York is serious. People are dying of Yellow Fever every day, including children, and his parents just want the family to be safe.
William begins to feel a little better when his father tells him that he’s arranged for them to work together from the family’s country mansion. His father says that captains of the ships he owns will stop at Horn’s Hook on their way to New York Harbor to report to him, and William will help him to prepare the cargo lists and timetables for the ships. Their temporary exile from New York hasn’t put a stop to their business or William’s education in that business; they’re just going to be doing things a little differently until the crisis is over.
While the family is traveling to their new country house, Mr. Gracie tells them about the history of the place. There used to be another house on that land, but it was destroyed during the American Revolution (an event still in relatively recent memory at the time this story takes place) as the British and the Patriots struggled to control it because that location is a strategic spot on the Harlem River. Mr. Gracie says that their new house is built over the basement of the old house, and that’s important because he’s aware that the former owners had a secret tunnel that led out of their basement in case they needed to use it as an escape route during the war. He told the builders to look out for it while they were building the new house, but if any of them ever figured out where it is, they never admitted it. The Gracie children are excited about the idea of their new house having a secret tunnel, and they’re eager to find it!
The new Gracie house is beautiful, really more of a mansion than just a house. However, there is something strange going on there. Soon after they arrive, William’s younger sister Sarah sees someone in the house dressed all in white. Sarah thinks that she saw the ghost of the person who owned the house that used to be on their property. The others don’t believe her because Sarah has a vivid imagination and is always making up stories, but Sarah insists that she saw someone.
When things start disappearing from the house, the rest of the family begins to believe that there may be some unknown person in their house. Sarah still thinks it’s a ghost, but William thinks maybe someone has found the secret passageway into the house. Who is this mysterious intruder?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
I always like historical novels, particularly historical mysteries, and I really enjoyed this one. The mystery is meant for children in elementary school, and it isn’t too difficult, but it’s fun to see the Gracie children searching for the secret passage and trying to learn who is sneaking around the family’s country mansion. I also enjoyed that the story offers history lessons on multiple levels. The immediate situation for the characters is the yellow fever epidemic of 1803, but the story also touches on the American Revolution. The solution to the mystery is also related to Revolutionary War history. The Gracies, headed by father Archibald Gracie, were a real family who made their money in shipping, although the events in the story are fictional. There is a section in the back of the book that explains more about the family’s history. They associated with prominent people in New York in the early 19th century, and Alexander Hamilton makes an appearance in the story when he visits the Gracie Mansion. The Gracie Mansion is a real place. When it was first built, it was in the countryside outside the limits of New York City, but since then, the city has grown around it. It is now used as the home of the mayors of New York City.
Although this book was published before the coronavirus pandemic of the early 2020s, I also appreciated the part of the book at the beginning, where William is concerned that the current epidemic has changed his plans and impacted his ability to learn his father’s business. However, his father explains to him that they are still in business, and he has made arrangements for them to continue working in a different way during their time away from the city. People who lived through the quarantines and lockdowns of the covid pandemic will understand how it impacted the way people worked or continued their education and how people had to find ways to work around the problem. I appreciated that this story shows how people have had to deal with public health crises before in history and how they have always had to find creative solutions to deal with problems of this nature.
In this particular situation, the Gracies are a wealthy and privileged family, so their options for escaping from the crisis and working from outside the city are greater than other people of their time. Not everyone had a countryside mansion where they could go to escape the disease, and not everyone had employees who could report to them wherever they were. What Mr. Gracie and his son are doing during the course of the story is the early 19th century equivalent of “working remotely”, pre-Internet, and they accomplish it through people coming to report to them and taking goods and information into the city on their behalf. Even though the Gracie family can stay outside the city, they are still sending their ships into the city’s harbor because the cargo the ships carry is necessary there. There are people in the city who are waiting for the supplies the ships are carrying. The crews of the ships are what people in the 2020s came to call “essential workers” – the people whose type of work was necessary, no matter the circumstances, and who could not perform their duties from a remote location. The same is true for all the other people who must remain in the city because their jobs require them to work with or on behalf of the people who are still there.
This story takes place during World War II and focuses on a child evacuee from London. The title of the book comes from a quote from Winston Churchill:
“Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror … for without victory there is no survival.”
Winston Churchill, May 13, 1940
It’s September 1939, and Liz Hawtin is an orphan living with her aunt, uncle, and cousins in London. Her mother died when she was a baby, and her father was killed when he was hit by a car a few years earlier. Liz’s overbearing aunt is making her life miserable and has been since she moved in with her relatives. It takes Liz some time to realize why her aunt doesn’t like her, but it has to do with social class, political philosophy, one-upmanship, and her aunt’s sense of fairness and entitlement – what sort of people are “deserving” and what sort of people aren’t.
The main problem is that Liz’s father was into socialism before he died. In fact, he used to give public talks about it, and Liz would watch them as a child, although she admits in hindsight that she doesn’t entirely agree with everything her father believed. One value that she and her father definitely shared was the belief that education is important. Liz’s entire family is working class, including her father, and none of them have ever had more than just very basic education. Her father was a very bright man, but like other members of their family, he had to leave school early and get a job because their family was poor. However, he urged Liz to study and get the best education she could because he realized that higher education is the way to move up in the world and get better jobs and a better position in life.
Liz’s current situation when the book begins is irritating to her aunt because Liz has both the academic potential to attend a better school than the ones her own children have attended and because Liz’s father had the foresight to take out an insurance policy on his life that has provided Liz with enough money to attend this better school and to buy good school clothes and the extra equipment and books that this better school requires. Every time Liz has needed something for school, her aunt gripes about how much it costs and what a waste of time and money it is. Liz gets her aunt’s permanent wrath by telling her straight out that the insurance money belongs to her and not her aunt and that it was meant for her education. This enrages her aunt because she had labeled her father as the foolish, idealistic socialist who was undeserving, so the idea that, because of him, Liz has both academic aptitude and the money to support her education seems supremely unfair to her. On some level, she probably realizes that Liz’s more advanced education will probably help her to be more prosperous than the rest of the family, and she hates it and is jealous. She takes every opportunity to criticize Liz and to tell her that her time spent reading and studying is wasteful. She encourages her children who, like other members of their family, all have to leave school early to get menial jobs, to give Liz a hard time. The only members of the household who like Liz are her gentle cousin Rose and her uncle, but it’s difficult for them to stand up for Liz and help her because the aunt bullies both of them as well.
At the beginning of the story, Liz is fifteen years old, and she is faced with a difficult decision. She is getting close to graduating from her grammar school. She badly wants to finish, but she knows that the insurance money is running out. Soon, she will be faced with the difficult decision of whether to leave the school without graduating and get a job, which is bound to be the menial work that her cousins are doing. Her aunt has always resented her and is eager to get rid of her, so she wants Liz to get work and start supporting herself as quickly as possible.
When World War II breaks out, Liz’s life is changed forever, and Liz realizes that, ironically, the changes are going to be for her benefit. Because Liz is still a student, she will be part of the government’s program to evacuate children from London to protect them from bombings. None of her cousins will be evacuated, even though they’re not much different in age from Liz, because they are no longer students, but Liz will be sent to the countryside with the rest of the students at her school. The government will also provide money for her support and education during the period of the evacuation, so Liz realizes that she will be able to finish her education after all. Rose and Liz’s uncle are sad at her leaving, but her aunt makes it clear that she is pleased that Liz will be leaving very soon and that she doesn’t want Liz to come back after the evacuation period is over. Once Liz is finished with her education and no longer part of the government program, Liz will be on her own in the world. It’s both a little scary but also liberating for Liz. She doesn’t know where she will be staying during the evacuation, but at this time in her life, it’s really better for her to leave her aunt’s house, finish her education, and establish an independent life.
Before she leaves, she says goodbye to her grandmother in London. She worries what will happen to her grandmother, her uncle, and Rose when she’s gone. Her grandmother isn’t worried for her own sake because she’s lived through war before, and nothing ever seems to happen to her. Besides, she knows where the shelters are for safety, and she’s sure that she can take care of herself. Liz knows that, once she is gone, her aunt won’t be able to pick on her all the time, and things are bound to get worse for her uncle and Rose, but there’s nothing she can do about that.
When she arrives at school, she and the other students are told that they are being sent to a small village called Chiddingford in Oxfordshire. It’s such a small town that it doesn’t even appear on the map in their school atlas. There, they will be staying in the homes of people living in the village. The headmistress reminds them all that this will not be an easy experience for them. Many children are being evacuated along with them, and all of them will experience homesickness and difficulties adjusting to the place where they will stay. She urges all of them to be kind to each other and considerate of their hosts in Chiddingford. The girls in Liz’s form (grade) are also going to be paired up with girls in the lowest form because these younger girls are new to the school and don’t even really know each other yet. The headmistress thinks that the experience will be easier on them if they have an older girl as a buddy, like an older sister. Liz pairs up with a shy girl named Veronica, who is wearing a school uniform that is way too big for her. Her parents were trying to save money by buying her a uniform that she could grow into. It makes Veronica a laughingstock among the other students, but Liz sympathizes with her, knowing what it’s like to worry about money and to feel different from everyone else.
The students are excited by their trip into the countryside. The village of Chiddingford is already expecting them, although they had originally been told that they would be hosting a boys’ school instead of a girls’ school. Lady Brereton’s daughter-in-law asked her to pick out a boy from the arriving students who would be a good companion for her sons. However, since there are no boys on offer after all, and she knows little about girls, having only a son and three grandsons, Lady Brereton decides that she’ll pick out a girl from the evacuees in the same way she would pick out a dog, which is something she does understand. She chooses Liz because Liz has an alert expression and stands with her head up and a look of spirit and resilience.
Liz finds the move to the countryside disorienting, although she likes the peacefulness of it. Her reception at the Brereton house is disappointing because Mrs. Brereton had her heart set on getting a boy. She has three sons and is single-mindedly devoted to them. A girl simply wouldn’t do as a companion for her boys. In fact, she thinks that having a teenage girl in their house might well lead her teenage sons astray. However, people are commanded by the government to take in evacuees, and Mrs. Brereton can’t just give Liz back or trade her for someone else just because she’d rather have a boy. It’s awkward for both of them because Liz knows that Mrs. Brereton really doesn’t want her and that she tried to get rid of her.
Mr. Brereton is an historian, and he once worked at a college near Liz’s old neighborhood. He describes the history of the area and the type of housing there to his sons. The Breretons are a genteel, highly-educated family. They’re also the sort of intellectuals Liz’s father used to disparage, the ones who came to the college in their area and observed their lower-class living like scientists watching an ant colony and would leave, thinking that they understood their lives, when they had only ever seen them from the outside.
The youngest of the Brereton boys, Miles, makes fun of Liz when he finds out that her school doesn’t teach Latin because he says that she’ll never be able to go on to university. It stings because Liz is more educated than the rest of her family and is proud of it. She angrily retorts that she doesn’t want to go on studying forever because she wants to do something that will help win the war. Unknowingly, she’s prodding a sore point in the Brereton family because the eldest boy, Simon, wants to enlist, but his family would rather that he continue his education at Cambridge and become a doctor. Simon does want to be a doctor, but he also feels called to aid the war effort. He feels torn because his family is telling him that he should let others take care of the war while he goes to school and learns something that will make a difference later, but he feels guilty for staying out of it. His grandfather, Sir Rollo, who was a brigadier general, says that 19-year-old Simon is a man now and must make up his own mind about what he wants and what he’s going to do. Liz wishes that she hadn’t said anything about helping the war effort because she didn’t know that it was a sore point for this family, and she certainly wouldn’t want to influence Simon to do something that was dangerous or wrong for him. He seems too gentle and intellectual to really be a soldier.
When her teacher, Miss Garnett, comes to check on her, and see how she’s doing in the Brereton house, Liz says that she doesn’t think she fits in with this family. Miss Garnett advises her to give it time. Liz realizes that the Breretons are a tempestuous family, and it’s not really her fault for setting them off. They get set off by other things and people, too. Liz’s family back in London wasn’t the nicest, and they had their fights and spurts of meanness, but Liz feels like the Breretons are more unpredictable. She doesn’t know their history, quarrels, and sore spots, so she has no way of knowing what will set them off next.
Liz feels a little better after talking to the other girls from her school, comparing their host families. As she describes the Breretons to her friends, their absurdities jump out at her, making the whole situation seem more humorous instead of tragic. Mrs. Brereton doesn’t want her, which is hurtful, but she’s stuck with her anyway, which is funny. Young Miles keeps teasing her about not knowing Latin by shouting random Latin words at her, which don’t even make sense when translated. Miles is learning Latin vocabulary and can conjugate verbs, but he doesn’t really speak it as a language. Mr. Brereton, the professor, reads in the bathroom, which is the girls say is pretty normal, but what he reads are heavy historical texts, and he keeps a notebook and pencil in there, too, so he can take notes. The other girls laugh at the silly habits of the Breretons and tell Liz about their own host family. Three of them are sharing a room over a local shop, and the family that keeps the shop are certainly not intellectual. They have no books at all in their house, and they seem to be slow thinkers, who have only “one thought about every two hours.” Liz, whose source of pride back in London was being more educated than the rest of her family and most of the people in her working-class neighborhood, realizes that the Breretons’ higher intellectualism has been making her feel inadequate, like just a silly school girl. However, she and her friends are really more in the middle, doing better than some people, if not as well as others, and that’s not a bad way to be. Their learning isn’t over yet, either.
There are also some consolations to life with the Breretons. The live in an old, converted mill, and Liz has her own room next to the wheel house. Mrs. Brereton thinks of it as a rough room, very simply furnished and really more suited to a boy than a girl, but Liz likes it and is grateful that she doesn’t have to share a room with anyone else. When she doesn’t want to talk to the Breretons, she can go to her room to be alone and read, burying herself in Pride and Prejudice and other books she enjoys. When Miss Garnett sees Liz’s room, she also thinks it seems fun, and the water sounds from the millstream and waterwheel remind her of being on a ship.
There is one other member of the family that Liz hasn’t met yet, the Breretons’ middle son, Ben. Ben is 17 years old, and from the way his family talks about him in his absence, he’s something of a disappointment to his parents. Although he is two years older than Liz, they are about the same level at school, which is hard for his rigorously intellectual family to accept. He also has a tendency to get into various scrapes. None of them are truly shocking, mostly ridiculous teenage escapades. Liz knows that she’s seen much worse in her old neighborhood in London, but Ben’s family disparages his foolish and embarrassing behavior.
The reason why he isn’t there when Liz first arrives is that he’s taking a bicycle tour of Wales. His family starts to worry about him because he doesn’t return when he was supposed to. Then, they get a call that explains his latest escapade. In a wave of patriotism because of the starting war, he tried to enlist in the RAF, even though he was underage. At the recruiting office, he tried to avoid telling the recruiters much about himself, so they wouldn’t know that he was really too young, but he forgot that he wrote his name and address on the outside of his kit bag. The recruiters contact his parents and send him home. It’s the sort of well-meaning but thoughtless mistake that Ben often makes. His parents again disparage his thoughtlessness, and Miles makes fun of him, but Simon angrily tells them all off. He says that he understands Ben’s feelings of wanting to make a difference. Even if what he tried to do was clumsy and not well-thought-out, it was still noble. The grandfather of the family says that he and their grandmother certainly won’t make fun of him when he returns home. Liz gets the feeling like Ben might be more her kind of person than the other Breretons.
Liz and Ben get along well with each other when they meet. Liz learns that the room where she is staying used to be Ben’s art studio. Liz feels badly that she’s taken his space, but he tells her that it can’t be helped. He tells her that he wants to be an artist, although his parents disapprove. His mother doesn’t think that it’s possible to make a living off of art, and his father doesn’t think his paintings are any good. Because his father is an historian and an intellectual, he thinks of art in terms of fine art. He had another professor he knows, an art expert, take a look at Ben’s work, and he didn’t think much of it, so Mr. Brereton concluded that his son had no art potential. Ben’s family whitewashed over all the artwork he did on the walls of his studio before Liz arrived. Liz thinks this is terribly unfair because there are many different styles and tastes in art. Just because Ben’s father and one art critic didn’t like Ben’s art doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have talent. Ben is still determined to be an artist in spite of what his parents say. He and his brother Simon are very close and understand each other because neither of them quite fit their parents’ expectations and have different priorities from their parents. Liz understands how both of them feel because her family also never understood her or supported what was important to her. She comes to view both Ben and Simon as brothers and enjoys spending time with them. Ben takes her out on the river in the family’s punt, and during the winter, he teaches her how to ice skate.
The book continues through the next year and a half, through the developments of the war and the lives and education of Liz and the Brereton boys. Although Mrs. Brereton didn’t initially want Liz, the Breretons become fond of her as she shares in their lives, and they come to understand one another. Each of them finds a way to make a difference in the middle of war, and through the hardships they face together and their shared lives, they become a family. When Liz gets a letter from her grandmother that lets her know that Rose is “in trouble” in London, she and Ben make a daring trip into the bombed city to rescue her cousin. The book ends at the beginning of 1941, just after the New Year, with the war still going on, but by that time, each of the young people in the story has found a direction in life and hope for the future.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). Because of the themes and some of the language in the story, I would recommend this book for teens and young adults. There are descriptions of bombings, war deaths, a teenage pregnancy (Rose, not Liz), and some mild swearing in several places. The violent parts aren’t as graphic as some descriptions I’ve seen in other books, but there is definite violence and death, so it’s not really a book for young children.
My Reaction and Spoilers
The Atmosphere
This story could fit well with both the Cottagecore aesethic and Light Academia. In the countryside, Liz is living in an unusual, atmospheric house, a converted mill, and the descriptions of her room sound enchanting! In some ways, the beginning of the book reminds me a little of Anne of Green Gables: an unwanted orphan who is taken in by a countryside family that originally wanted a boy, and a girl who loves books and is determined to pursue an education and make something of herself. Liz is a true book lover, and the story mentions the books that she reads and loves, like Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, and Beau Geste by P. C. Wren. Liz doesn’t just read because she is required to read for her classes but because she really enjoys books. She also comes to understand things from books she reads, like the war around her and the feelings of some of the Breretons from reading Shakespeare’s Henry V. The insights that people gain from reading are part of the reason why literature is regarded as one of the disciplines of the humanities, the areas of study that provide insight into human nature and human potential. Liz combines the insight and knowledge she gains from reading and what she perceives around her to better understand the world and other people. In some ways, she fits a little better with the intellectual Brereton family than she thinks she will at first.
Later in the book, after Liz has seen more of the war directly, she wonders if there’s really a point to continuing her education or if she should just try to get a job in a factory and do her part. Studying things like poetry and Shakespeare in class just feel pointless and irrelevant in the face of the larger, life-and-death events happening around her. She could relate to the themes in Henry V, but Romeo and Juliet begins sounding pretty silly to her. Her teacher persuades her to continue her education, telling her that the more educated she is, the better she will be as a worker and an asset to her country. At first, Liz doesn’t see how, and her teacher explains that she is learning mathematics, which are used for the construction and calibration of weapons. She is also learning biology, which would be useful if she becomes a nurse or has to care for someone who is wounded. As for things like poetry and literature, anything she studies will teach her humility and give her mental maturity and greater understanding of other people – the goals of the humanities. We don’t know about all of her long-term career goals by the end of the book, but along the way, Liz continues her education, takes on part-time jobs, and finds ways to help the war effort and the people she loves.
Evacuees, Social Class, and Socialism
The experiences of the evacuees in the story are very realistic. It’s important to note that child evacuations went in waves throughout the war, and Liz and her friends are part of the very first wave of Operation Pied Piper. When the war started, people expected that bombings would start almost immediately, which was why they tried to hurry as many children out of London as fast as they could. However, the book covers the real events and attitudes of the early war years, including the fact that the bombings didn’t begin as quickly as expected. When the bombings didn’t start right away, people started to think that the fear of bombings was an overreaction, and many families brought their children back to London from the countryside. Some called this phase of the war the “Phoney War” because people on the home front didn’t feel like there was a war really happening yet, and even on the front lines, there was relative quiet because the large scale operations hadn’t started yet. Liz feels more alone in Chiddingford when some of her friends from school return to London and leave her behind in the country. Liz knows that there’s no point in going back to London herself because her aunt won’t want her, and remaining with the evacuation program will allow her to finish her education. Of course, readers know that the Blitz is coming before the characters in the book do, and the people who returned to London will probably end up regretting it.
In real life, some of the children who returned to London prematurely were killed in the coming bombings, and others were sent away again in the next wave of evacuations. In the case of the kids in the story, Liz’s friends Annette and Naomi return to London, thinking that the risks of bombings were overrated. After the bombings start in the Battle of Britain, Liz’s grandmother writes to Liz and says that Naomi has been sent away again, this time to Wales, which was a destination for many evacuees. We never hear what happens to Annette.
The book did a good job of showing how evacuees and their host families experienced some awkwardness with each other because of their different lifestyles and social classes. Not only is Liz not from an intellectual family like the Breretons, but she also comes to realize that she lacks some of the table manners and social graces of people of their class. The book also explains how Liz and her friends speak differently from the Breretons. Liz and her friends are described as being “bilingual in two kinds of English.” When they’re with family and friends, they speak cockney English, but at school, they speak a more “posh” version of English. However, even their more “posh” English isn’t as high class as the way the Breretons speak because they are a family of people who have been to boarding schools and have higher levels of education. You can hear what a cockney accent sounds like, how it works, and the social significance it has from these videos:
1976: COCKNEY accents from the BCC Archive (about 11 min.) – The people talking would have been alive during WWII, some of them probably around Liz’s age at the time. Some of them talk about the differences between the way they talk and how younger generations speak.
The Story of COCKNEY the (London) Accent and its People (about 35 min.) – Explains more about the social history and cultural identity of Cockney people. This includes some of the historical information that Mr. Brereton, history professor, could recite, although Liz knows that doesn’t mean that he fully understands the realities of day-to-day life in the East End. Toward the end of the video, at about 27 min., there is a clip from a 1930s film as an example of how the accent used to sound because accents change over time.
The Breretons are using “received pronunciation” (RP), which is called “received” because people in England don’t tend to speak that way until they are taught to do it in the higher-class schools. It comes directly from having an education, particularly a higher education, so people who speak that way are immediately announcing their social class and education level with the way they speak. You can hear it and get an explanation of how it works from these videos:
Make Do and Mend (about 3 min.) – A 1940s educational film about making and mending clothes, to save on material for the war effort. Received pronunciation (RP) is also sometimes called “BBC pronunciation” because this is the accent that radio announcers would use. The announcers in this short film, one male and one female, are using 1940s RP.
1967: John REITH explains the “BBC ACCENT” (about 10 min.) – From the BBC Archive, about why the BBC particularly wanted its announcers to speak RP. John Reith was the Director-General of the BBC, beginning in the 1920s and ending in the late 1930s. During WWII, he became Minister of Information, and from there, moved to various other governmental roles. This interview was his very last appearance on television. It took place when he become Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. The interviewer asks him about the reason why, during his BBC years, he wanted his broadcasters to speak with an RP accent. Basically, the logic behind RP was to put more emphasis on education and ability to communicate clearly rather than the speaker’s regional origin. Particularly in radio, where listeners only have the voice to rely on and no visuals to clarify anything, it was important to have an accent that would be as clear as possible to the general population, where there would be no confusing regional pronunciations and slang. In the video, John Reith specifically says that they didn’t want there to be any accents that would seem comical or irritating to the listeners by seeming overeducated, undereducated, or too regional. They also debate the social implications of this and the effect of television, which was relatively new technology to them in the 1960s. Both of the men in the video are speaking a kind of RP, although they’re not completely the same as each other. John Reith admits that his speech still has regional influences because he’s from Scotland.
The RP English Accent (about 9 min.) – About who speaks RP, how it sounds, and the social implications. It also mentions how there are people, like the presenter, who speak a kind of RP but still with regional influence, which is similar to the way Liz and her friends are learning to speak in their school. It also discusses how WWII changed the way this accent was perceived and who would speak it because of social changes.
RP (Received pronunciation) vs POSH ENGLISH (about 23 min.) – Explains the origins and evolution of RP and the differences between standard received pronunciation (RP) and the more high-class or “posh” version that the upper classes would speak and how regional accents influence even RP. It also explains that, although this accent was known for being used by radio broadcasters, during WWII, radio broadcasters started using more regional accents to make it clear that they were authentic British people because Germans broadcasting propaganda were speaking English with an RP accent. This is one of the factors influencing changes in professional and social views about different types of British accents.
Why does all of this stuff about accents matter? It comes back to social class and education, both of which influence people’s prospects in life. A person’s accent, particularly during the mid-20th century and earlier times, reveals their background and the type of level of education they have. (Less so in the 21st century, after the influences of mass media – tv and the Internet – which enable people to hear more accents than they encounter in person in daily life, changes to the education system, and changing cultural attitudes.) Schools of the time knew that and would make sure that their students could speak in a way that would make them sound as educated at possible. A person who sounded as educated as they said they were would sound more skilled and competent to potential employers, enabling them to get “white collar” jobs, involving more clerical or specialized skills rather than manual labor, and rise up in the middle class. People who only had the the minimal level of education, like Liz’s relatives, wouldn’t have this influence on their speech, and that could be a barrier to finding better jobs, keeping them at a lower, working class level.
Liz and her friends have been learning some RP in school, which is why they can speak more “posh” than the general cockney spoken around them in daily life, but the Breretons speak a higher level of RP because of their boarding school backgrounds and college educations, so even Liz’s more educated version of English isn’t up to their level of RP. Liz and her friends are learning to speak at a middle class level because they’re being prepared for possible white collar jobs and middle-class living. The students’ cockney families speak like the working classes because that’s what they are, and they’re less likely to move up in the world because listeners can tell that they don’t speak in an educated way. The Breretons speak like academics because that’s what they are, that’s what they’ve trained to be, they’ve had higher-class education, and they’re relatively upper-class or upper-middle class. Although the girls’ families think that the girls are learning to speak “posh”, and they are when compared to their relatives, the Breretons can still hear their background in their speech and know they’re not from the same class. This ability to almost diagnose someone’s background and education from a person’s accent influences the way people in the story and society of the time would think of each other right from their first meeting. Because they can tell some significant factors of a person’s background immediately, there was a tendency to jump to conclusions about a persons’ life, habits, and capabilities. Part of this story is about how they assumed too much before getting to know the details of other people’s lives and personalities, and that’s a factor that influenced social attitudes before and after the war. As the videos that I’ve referenced explain, the modern, 21st century versions of the dialects and accents in this story wouldn’t be quite the same as the ones the characters would have spoken in the 1930s/1940s because language evolves over time, but the videos will give you a sense of how the characters hear each other.
When Liz tells Lady Brereton that her father was a Communist, Lady Brereton is intrigued and fascinated but not overly shocked or disparaging. Liz is happy that Lady Brereton appreciates that he was a good and loving father and that Liz badly misses him even if his political views were unorthodox. Today, Britain is more of a democratic socialist nation than the United States, and the social programs of WWII, like the child evacuations, are part of the reason. Britain was a country that was very focused on social class, and before the war, the social classes seldom mixed. However, the war was a nationwide effort. People of all social classes were expected to do their part and work together, and programs like the child evacuations brought people of different social classes together in ways they had never been before. The result was that people of different social classes learned more about the ways other people lived, and because the evacuation system saved many lives and led to improvements in living conditions for some children from poor areas of the city, people in Britain became more interested in social programs to help the poor and create a more stable society. This isn’t the only reason for such social programs, but it was a contributing factor.
In the book, when Liz looks back on her father’s political views, she realizes that she shares some feelings with him but wouldn’t agree on everything he used to say, and that’s because of her own experiences. The social programs of the war helped her to continue her education and find a more stable life than the one she had with her aunt, but she also knows that she can’t rely on that type of support for everything and starts to look for ways that she can earn money herself and live an independent life. Her experience with and approach to social programs seems like a broader, more blended view. She has had experience with different social classes and different systems and can see the benefits and downsides of different ways of living.
For more information about the conditions and experiences of child evacuees, I recommend the following videos:
This series of interviews with former child evacuees is much longer than the other one, about 40 minutes long. Part of this one brings up the subject of racial minority children who were evacuated. Children of different racial backgrounds or ones who looked like they might be could be discriminated against by people who were reluctant to host them because of the way they looked, but there were also some nice families who were willing to host them.
An hour-long documentary about evacuees’ experiences, good and bad, with interviews with individual evacuees as older adults. It includes the experiences of evacuees who were sent overseas and not just to the countryside. It also covers the effects that the experience had on their education and how they found it difficult to relate to certain types of lessons, like poetry lessons, because the themes were so far from their wartime lives. It also explains what happened to them after the war was over and the long-term effects that their experiences had on t hem.
Explains what conditions were like for those who remained in London during the war and what the evacuees were escaping. Timeline Documentary. About 50 minutes.
For other children’s books about WWII and child evacuees, I have a list of WWII books with additional resources. For books about child evacuees, I especially recommend Carrie’s War (1973) and All The Children Were Sent Away (1976).
Education and Children
A detail that I particularly liked about this book was the explanation of the the 1940s British school system at the beginning of the book. I’ve seen other explanations of the British school system online (like this one from Anglophenia on YouTube), but the explanation in this book does help because the main character’s education and future prospects are a major part of the story.
The attitudes about class and education surprisingly still resonate today. The type of education a child receives is often determined by the economic level of their parents and the type of life that the adults expect that the child will lead. All of the parents in the story have their own notions about what the young people should be doing with their lives, but the young people know that the world is changing, especially because of the onset of war. The things they want to do and the things they will have to do no longer match their elders’ expectations.
Liz knows that getting a good education is vital to her future, where she will have to make a living by herself, even though her aunt tries to shame her for being grand about her education and tries to make her feel like she should just go out and get a job like her kids did. The Breretons are just the opposite, seeing higher education as the only path to a secure future, while their sons realize that there are more immediate problems shaping their world and posing real threats to all of their lives. Each of the young people come to realize that there are decisions that they each need to make for themselves to take charge of their lives and handle what life has given them, even if the adults don’t understand.
Overall levels of education in society have risen in the decades since World War II. Technically, where I live, children are only legally required to attend school through 8th grade, but in actual practice, almost everyone gets at least a high school education because even the lowest levels of jobs in our society expect a high school level of education or an employee who is working toward one. There is very little that anyone can do with only an 8th grade education in the 21st century, and almost everything that provides a living wage requires either a college degree or some kind of vocational training beyond high school. There are almost no jobs that will take a person with a minimal level of education and no prior experience.
In 1940s England, there were more opportunities for people with little education to get jobs, which is how Liz’s cousins get jobs even though they leave school at about age 14, but even then, there aren’t many opportunities for jobs that pay well and little opportunity for advancement. Rose later has problems when she gets pregnant as an unmarried teenager, and her cruel mother throws her out of the house, into the bombed streets of London with no way to make her living. Liz and the Breretons help her, but they worry about her future prospects. She has little education and has worked in a shoe store, but she doesn’t know much else and has no other experience. Without an education or other means of support, there isn’t much else she can do. She doesn’t even have very many domestic skills and can’t sew or knit. The end of the book implies that Rose will learn to manage because she decides that she is determined to keep her baby and find a way to support them both, learning whatever she has to learn along the way, and Liz’s teacher, Miss Garnett, will also help her.
Liz loves her cousin enough to take some risks to reach her during the bombings of London and bring her to Chiddingford, but she comes to realize that she has underrated her cousin for being less educated and a bit foolish in her life choices. On the one hand, she is irritated with Rose for her foolish love affair with a man who doesn’t really seem to care about her and marries someone else instead. She and Ben face some real dangers going to London to find her and get her out of the terrible situation she’s in, so a foolish choice on her part does create some risks and hardships for others. However, she finds out that Rose understands some things about life and human relationships that Liz is just now beginning to understand. The reason why she had that love affair was that she felt emotionally neglected by her hard-hearted mother and desperately lonely after Liz left for the countryside. Her choice of lover turned out to be a bad decision, but she was so starved for companionship and affection that she was vulnerable. Part of the reason why Rose is now determined to keep her baby and not place it out for adoption is because she saw the awful way her mother treated Liz as an orphaned child and how badly Liz was starved for affection. Rose’s mother was cruel to her as well, but much more cruel to Liz because Liz wasn’t her own child. Rose wants her own child to know what it is to be genuinely loved and wanted, in spite of the hardships and stigma of being a single, unmarried parent in the 1940s. Liz is touched that Rose truly understands that important emotional need just to feel loved and wanted by someone, something Rose’s mother never seemed to understand or care about. Rose might turn out to be a better parent than her own mother.
The feeling of not being wanted and only reluctantly accepted was one that real-life evacuees experienced, and I thought that was well-represented in the book. When Liz first meets Mrs. Brereton, she reminds her of her aunt. She puts her own children first and is so absorbed with what she thinks are in her family’s best interests that she sees Liz as an inconvenience and possible threat instead of the vulnerable girl she really is. However, where Liz’s aunt never warmed up to her after they lived together for years, Mrs. Brereton does become fond of Liz and starts to think of her as part of the family. With her elder sons going off to war, she admits that it’s a comfort to her to have Liz there. Liz shares in the family’s ups and downs through the war and really becomes one of them. Her attitude contrasts with Liz’s aunt, who is self-absorbed and ready to abandon any of the children in the family, including her own, when they become too much of an inconvenience to her. Mrs. Brereton is different. There are times when she is disappointed or worried by decisions her sons make, but they’re still her sons. Once she starts thinking of Liz as one of the family, she extends the same loyal affection to her. She worries about Liz when she disappears for a time instead of being relieved that she’s gone, and she even takes in her cousin when Liz brings her from London.
It’s hard to say how much of the differences because Liz’s aunt and Mrs. Brereton are due to their relative social positions and how much are because they have different personalities. I’m inclined to think that it’s a combination of both. I can see that Liz’s aunt may feel more precarious in life because she’s a poor, working class woman and feels less able to provide for an extra person or someone in a situation that might require some sacrifices, like her orphaned niece or pregnant daughter. However, Liz’s gran, who is part of the same social class, thinks that Rose’s mother has behaved horribly, both for mistreating Liz for years and for sending her pregnant and penniless young daughter out into the streets while the city is being actively bombed, so it seems that not everyone in that social group would have the same reactions to these situations, and some might be willing to make more sacrifices to help someone in desperate circumstances.
There are themes all through the story about the human need for affection and relationships with other people. Partly, the ability to build relationships with others is recognizing the need for them and being open to building relationships. Mrs. Brereton isn’t really open to building a relationship with Liz at first, and Liz and the Breretons don’t really understand one another, but relationships are also built through shared experiences. Not all of the experiences that the characters in the story share are positive ones, but facing difficult situations together can also be a bonding experience. Mrs. Brereton bonds with Liz and Rose because, even though it’s difficult for her at first, she comes to recognize how Liz supports her family in difficult circumstances, and she’s willing and able to help them through difficult circumstances in return, as a family. Liz’s aunt loses her relationship with both girls because she never develops that appreciation for them or willingness to share in their lives and troubles.
War
The war is always around the characters, and the story is shaped by it. I thought the author did a good job of representing the early events of WWII and how characters would have reacted to them as they actually happened. Each of the young people in particular wants to actively participate in the events that are shaping their world, even though Mr. and Mrs. Brereton would prefer to keep their sons out of it.
The grandfather of the Brereton family understands how the young people feel, having once been a soldier himself. Ben and his grandfather are very much alike, noble-minded and eager to participate. Liz joins Ben and Sir Rollo when they take Sir Rollo’s boat to participate in the Dunkirk Evacuation as one of the “Little Ships.” They know that British soldiers need help returning to England, and they hope to rescue Simon, who has joined the army, and others like him. They end up leaving Liz behind at Ramsgate because they decide that it would be too dangerous to take her the rest of the way with them. Sir Rollo is in bad health and probably shouldn’t be undertaking such a long-shot mission, but family love and his desire to once again be in the thick of things, making a difference, override any thoughts for safety. In the end, he helps save many people, and because of his prior experience in war, he is able to teach Ben how to avoid the floating mines and sandbars in their way.
However, he doesn’t survive the mission himself. He is killed by enemy fire, but Lady Brereton reveals that he knew he was ill and dying anyway. One of the pen-and-ink pictures in the book is actually of Sir Rollo after he got shot, and I was a little surprised that the book would show a blood-stained dead body in that way. It’s not overly graphic, even in the illustration, and because it’s a black-and-white drawing, it’s a less alarming than seeing someone with a red blood stain. Still, I think sensitive readers should be aware that it’s there. The book doesn’t sugarcoat the nature of war at all.
Lady Brereton knew her husband very well and loved his noble qualities. Although he didn’t tell her ahead of time what he and Ben were planning to do, she suspected that he was going to attempt something of that sort. He was a veteran of the First World War, and he wanted his last act to be something heroic, to feel like he made a difference again before he died. Ben is injured during the mission, but he and his grandfather still manage to save many soldiers. It’s Ben’s first view of war directly, and although it was a terrifying experience, it doesn’t change his mind about wanting to join the RAF. His parents finally agree to let him enlist after he finishes his school exams that summer.
At the time the book ends, none of the young people are killed in the war. We don’t know what’s going to happen to all of them by the time the war is over because the story ends in early 1941, but their experiences have made them all realize what’s important to them and given them the determination to do their part in the war effort. The overall situation by the time the book ends is that Britain is feeling like it’s largely fighting the war alone because France has fallen to Germany and is now occupied, and while Britain is getting some supplies from the US, the US would not fully enter the war until the attack of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. For a more detailed explanation of the war situation in Britain in 1940, I recommend the Timeline documentary 1940: When Britain Stood Alone In WW2 on YouTube. Understanding the general course of events in context adds depth to the story.
Toward the end of the book, there seems to be a romance developing between Liz and Ben. Personally, I like to imagine that Liz and Ben might marry after the war. I’d like to imagine, too, that Rose might end up marrying Simon and have a comfortable life as a doctor’s wife after the war. That’s left to the imagination, though.
The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree by Gloria Houston, pictures by Barbara Cooney, 1988.
Ruthie is a little girl living on a farm in Pine Grove in the Appalachian Mountains during World War I. (The story calls it The Great War because that was its name before WWII.) During the spring, Ruthie’s father selected a tree for the village church’s Christmas celebration. The local families take turns providing the tree, and it’s their family’s turn. Ruthie goes with him to pick out the right tree and mark it with a red ribbon.
However, during the summer, Ruthie’s father has to go away to be a soldier overseas. Ruthie and her mother tend the farm while her father is away, but money is tight. Ruthie thinks ahead to Christmas and prays for her father to come home and for a special Christmas present for herself – a pretty doll with a cream-colored dress with ribbons and lace.
In the fall of that year (1918), Ruthie’s father writes a letter, saying that the Armistice has been signed, meaning that the war is over, so he’s sure he’ll be home for Christmas. Ruthie and her mother keep waiting for him to arrive any day, but he doesn’t seem to come, and they don’t know exactly when to expect him.
At school, Ruthie is told that she will have the role of the heavenly angel in the Christmas play and that they are still expecting Ruthie’s father to supply the Christmas tree. Ruthie is looking forward to it, but Ruthie and her mother don’t have enough money for a new dress for the angel costume, and there is still the worry about when her father will return home, and if he will make it in time to cut the Christmas tree and take it to the church.
The local preacher tells them that the person who is due to provide a Christmas tree next year is willing to do it this year instead, if Ruthie’s father can’t get home in time, but Ruthie’s mother is still sure that their family can manage the tree. Ruthie’s mother decides that she and Ruthie will go get the tree themselves. It isn’t easy, but they manage it, and Ruthie’s mother also finds a way to make a dress for Ruthie’s angel costume.
However, there are two more things that would make this Christmas perfect for Ruthie – if her father returns home in time for Christmas and if she somehow receives the doll of her dreams.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
This is a sweet, old-fashioned Christmas story about wishes coming true. Wishes coming true at Christmas is a popular theme in Christmas stories, and in this book, they come true because Ruthie’s mother and Ruthie do what they need to do to make everything work out the way they want it to. They could have let someone else provide the Christmas tree, and no one would have thought less of them for doing it because the father of the family was still away, but they were determined to see their family’s promise to provide the Christmas tree through. The mother also uses her old wedding dress for the material for Ruthie’s angel costume, and it’s implied that she also made the angel doll for the top of the Christmas tree that becomes Ruthie’s special Christmas present.
The pictures are charming, and they fit well with the Cottagecore aesthetic that’s been popular in recent years.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 