Samuel Eaton’s Day: A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Boy by Kate Waters, 1993.
This is the story of a boy who traveled to America from England on the Mayflower and whose family lived in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The book focuses particularly on how a boy like Samuel would have helped with a harvest during the year 1627. The role of Samuel in the book is played by a boy who is one of the reenactors at the Plimoth Plantation living history museum.
Samuel’s mother died when he was a baby, but his father remarried, and he now has a stepmother (whom he calls “Mam”) and a younger half-sister, Rachel. Now that Samuel is seven years old, he is considered old enough to help the men bring in the rye harvest. Samuel is eager to help because he wants to prove that he is no longer just a little boy and that he is capable of doing a man’s work.
The book begins with Samuel waking up and getting dressed in the morning. He has a few routine chores to perform, such as getting water, gathering firewood, and checking a snare that he has set for catching wild game, before he and his father go to the fields to help with the harvest. After breakfast, Samuel and his father meet up with a neighbor, Robert Bartlett, and go to the fields with the other men.
Robert Bartlett tells Samuel that it will take a few days for them to complete the harvest. Samuel isn’t considered old enough to wield a sickle by himself, so he is given the task of gathering up the rye that his father and Bartlett cut and binding it into sheaves. It’s hard work, and at times, Samuel wonders if he’s really up to the task. When his Mam comes with lunch, she gives Samuel the chance to come home with her, if he is too tired, but Samuel is determined to stay and finish out the day.
At the end of the day, Samuel is very tired and has blisters, but he is proud of the work he has done, and the men congratulate him.
The end of the book has a section that explains a little about the real Samuel Eaton, who eventually had his own farm when he grew up, and the boy who reenacted his life, Roger Burns. There is also information about the clothing of the period, the Wampanoag people (seen briefly when Samuel is helping to gather mussels for the family’s dinner), the rye harvest, and the Plimoth Plantation living history museum. The book also provides the lyrics to the song that Samuel and the others sing to entertain themselves while they’re working in the fields, The Marriage of the Frog and the Mouse.
Sarah Morton, a girl who was featured in an earlier book in the series, also appears briefly in this book.
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.
One Halloween, Jenny goes to visit Nancy, a woman who local people say is a witch. Jenny is curious about magic and, knowing that there are magical creatures abroad on Halloween, she wonders if she might see something unusual at Nancy’s house.
This is a kind of cautionary story about the dangers of curiosity. Jenny’s curiosity invites the attention of dangerous creatures and leads her into a frightening situation, something that she never wants to repeat. For the most part, I think that curiosity is a trait that should be encouraged, but Jenny did deliberately seek out a person with a dangerous reputation and pry into the things she was doing, even trying some herself because she wanted to know more about it, so she could be considered to have gone looking for trouble.
A boy called Nicky and his mother are looking for a new place to live somewhere in New England. The mother wants to buy an old cottage with the idea of turning it into a tea room. At first, they have trouble finding a place, but finally they buy an old house that badly needs fixing up, not knowing that there is an old witch living there.
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