This vintage children’s series is set contemporary to when it was written, during the early 1940s. There are four children in the Melendy family, each of them with their own talents and ambitions:

Mona – She is 13 years old in the first story and wants to be an actress. She likes to recite Shakespeare and poetry.

Rush – He is 12 years old in the first story and wants to be an engineer, practicing his building skills with a Meccano set. He is also a piano prodigy.

Miranda (called “Randy“) – She is 10 years old in the first story and artistic. She likes to dance and paint.

Oliver – He is 6 years old in the first story and wants to be a train engineer, although he changes his mind and has other ideas later.

The children’s widowed father is a writer, and they are cared for by the housekeeper, Cuffy. They also have a handyman named Willie who lives with them as part of the family and helps the children with various projects. At the beginning of the series, they live in a brownstone townhouse in New York City, and they later move to the country.

The children age through the series and go through changes in their lives, getting first jobs, first dates and dances, going to boarding school, and acquiring pets (two dogs named Isaac and John Doe (or Johnny), some snakes, and an alligator named Crusty (briefly in the second book, before he escapes), a goat named Persephone, and a horse named Lorna Doone) and an adopted sibling.

The series is by Elizabeth Enright, who also wrote Gone-Away Lake and Thimble Summer.

Books in the Series

The Saturdays (1941)

The four Melendy children are bored, and they think about how they don’t have enough allowance money to do things they want to do. Then, they get the idea of sharing their allowance money, pooling their money once a week so they can take turns having a special adventure of their own.

The Four-Story Mistake (1942)

The Melendy family moves to a big house in the countryside.

Then There Were Five (1944)

The Melendy children are left alone when their father is away and the housekeeper needs to go help a sick relative, and they befriend an orphan boy living with an abusive relative.

Spiderweb For Two (1951)

The eldest children in the Melendy family are away at boarding school, with only Randy and Oliver left at home. The two youngest children become involved in a treasure hunt.