Christmas is going to be different this year for Samantha and her family. Uncle Gard is bringing his girlfriend, Cornelia, to spend the holidays with them. Christmas had started out so hopeful for Samantha, with an invitation to a friend’s Christmas party, elaborate plans for building a gingerbread house, and the secret presents that Samantha has been making for everyone. Cornelia’s visit changes Samantha’s plans.
For Samantha, Cornelia’s visit makes Christmas more difficult. At first, she says that she will help make Cornelia feel welcome and thinks to herself that she will have to get a present for Cornelia that is as elegant as she is. However, when Samantha tries to put up the usual homemade decorations that she made herself, the maid angrily takes them down, calling them “dustcatchers.” The house must be perfect for Cornelia’s visit, and Samantha is insulted that people see her decorations as an eyesore or inconvenience. The cook, who was going to help Samantha with her gingerbread house, says that there probably won’t be time for it now because her grandmother has asked her to make extra, special foods for Cornelia’s visit. Grandmary even tells Samantha that it would be better for Samantha to “stay out of the way” of their Christmas preparations.
With Cornelia coming, no one seems to notice or care about Samantha. Samantha finds out that she won’t be able to attend her friend’s party because it is the night that Cornelia is arriving. It doesn’t seem likely that her grandmother will care about her secret Christmas wish for the beautiful Nutcracker doll in the toy store window. Samantha has been without a doll since she gave her own beloved doll, Lydia, to Nellie, who had never owned a doll before. Cornelia is an extra person Samantha needs to supply a present for, but she can’t summon up any enthusiasm for giving a present for someone who is making things so difficult for her.
Throughout the book, Samantha considers different presents that she could give to Cornelia, beginning with the most basic, convenient token gifts that she could give and then forget about, unlike her homemade, heart-felt gifts for everyone else. However, Samantha’s attitudes toward Cornelia change as she gets to know her better during the holidays and comes to see her as a source of fun and support.
When Cornelia actually arrives and begins participating in the usual Christmas activities, Samantha sees that she is far less fussy than the people who were preparing for her arrival. Unlike most other grown-ups, Cornelia is not too dignified to have fun while sledding or get messy while making gingerbread houses. Cornelia even suggests sledding, to Grandmary’s surprise. Cornelia always mentions how nice it would be to decorate a gingerbread house, like she did when she was a girl, Samantha says that she would like that too, but the cook is too busy to help this year. Cornelia says that is no problem because she and Samantha can make the gingerbread house themselves. Cornelia even makes sure that some of the decorations that Samantha made are prominently displayed on the Christmas tree.
By the end of the book, Samantha changes her mind about Cornelia completely. While everyone else seemed to be ignoring Samantha and going out of their way to make Cornelia feel welcome, Cornelia was paying more attention to Samantha and really thinking about what would make Samantha happy at Christmas. Cornelia is the one who correctly guesses what Samantha would really like for Christmas, and in return, Samantha decides to give her best present to Cornelia.
The story ends with Uncle Gard officially engaged to Cornelia.
In the back of the book, there is a section with historical information about how people would celebrate Christmas during the early 1900s.
The book is currently available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.
Samantha is turning ten years old! She is having a birthday party with some other girls, and Aunt Cornelia’s younger sisters, the twins Agnes and Agatha, are coming to visit. Samantha’s grandmother is very strict, with very precise ideas about the way that things should be done. The twins are accustomed to being raised more permissively. When Samantha complains that her grandmother makes her wear long underwear for most of the year, even when it’s really too hot to wear it. Her grandmother thinks that it will help ward off illness. The twins encourage Samantha to think for herself. Few people wear long underwear anymore or believe that they will get sick by not wearing it, the twins say, and if Samantha doesn’t want to wear it, she should be allowed to make up her own mind about it. Samantha agrees that ten years old should be old enough to decide about simple things, like what kind of underwear to wear.
The twins have a lot of interesting ideas about how to do things differently, and they encourage Samantha to be a little more daring and try new things. When the cook talks about Samantha’s birthday cake and how it will have ten candles on it, the twins suggest that she could make ten smaller cakes, called petite fours, and put one candle on each of them. Samantha thinks that sounds so elegant that she wants to try it, although the cook thinks that it sounds a little strange for birthday cakes. They’re also going to have ice cream at the party, homemade. Samantha and the twins help to make it, although they are annoyed by Eddie, the nosy and bossy boy from next door, who shows up and tries to tell them what to do, hoping for a taste of ice cream himself.
At first, girls the party act a bit self-conscious, trying to be polite and grown-up in their party clothes. After Samantha opens her presents, her Uncle Gard and Aunt Cornelia show up with a special surprise: a puppy named Jip. Jip is a little wild and doesn’t know how to obey commands. He runs off with Samantha’s new teddy bear (a recent invention in Samantha’s time), and the girls have to chase him and get him to drop the toy. Samantha distracts the dog by offering him her shoe, and Eddie, who was watching, picks up the bear. At first, he says that he’ll give it back if they give him some ice cream and let him play with the dog, but Samantha refuses because he was not invited to the party, and she doesn’t like him nosing in. Agatha wrestles the teddy bear away from Eddie before Samantha’s grandmother arrives and tells them that young ladies shouldn’t fight or make spectacles of themselves. Most of the rest of the party is elegant, and the girls are a little more relaxed, now that they look a little less elegant from chasing the dog. However, Eddie gets revenge on the girls by adding salt to the ice cream they made. Even though everything else is fine, including the petite fours, Samantha is still angry at Eddie for ruining the ice cream.
Since Samantha didn’t get to eat the ice cream at her birthday party, the twins and Aunt Cornelia suggest that Samantha return to New York City with them for a visit, and they can all go to a fancy ice cream parlor there. Grandmary agrees and says that she would like to go to New York City herself. On the way to Uncle Gard and Aunt Cornelia’s new house, Grandmary says to Samantha that she hopes that she thinks that the twins get too carried away with some of their ideas. She thinks that they’re too impulsive and don’t think before they act, and while they’ve been raised to be very modern children, she still thinks that some of the old ways are best.
When Grandmary and Samantha see a protest held by women’s suffragists, Grandmary is annoyed at the women, making public spectacles of themselves and inconveniencing passing traffic. She thinks that it’s just another “newfangled notion” that’s a lot of fuss and bother over nothing. She’s never had to vote in her entire life, and she doesn’t see why any other woman would need to. Samantha can tell that this opinion bothers Aunt Cornelia and the twins when Grandmary says it in front of them, but they don’t seem to want to discuss it further.
The twins and Samantha ask to take Jip to the park, and Aunt Cornelia says that’s fine. She has a meeting to attend, but she wants them back home in time to go to the ice cream parlor after her meeting. However, Jip gets away from the girls when they try to put him in Samantha’s doll carriage, and they chase him to the place where the suffragists are meeting. Although Samantha knows that her grandmother doesn’t approve of the suffragists, they have to go after the dog. There, the twins tell Samantha that Cornelia is also a suffragist, and she is speaking at the meeting.
Jip charges right up to the stage where Cornelia is giving her speech, and Cornelia lectures the girls about not thinking about the consequences of their actions and not following her instructions for taking proper care of Jip. Sometimes, they are too impulsive and don’t think ahead. Cornelia explains to the girls about the need to follow agreed-upon rules for safety and how that is different from the changes that her group is advocating. While Grandmary has been saying that the suffragists are also too radical and impulsive and making a fuss about nothing, Cornelia says that much thought, planning, and hard work has gone into their movement to ensure that the changes they’re advocating will be for the better. Grandmary doesn’t appreciate how much thought and preparation the group has done and how long it has taken them to get this far because she hasn’t really thought about the issues at all herself and she has not been to any of previous meetings, where the planning has taken place.
Note:The women’s suffrage movement was already decades old by 1904, when this story takes place, so it’s not really as “newfangled” as Grandmary describes it. It had been building for a long time. However, Grandmary may not have been aware of that because she never needed to be aware. Consider what her life has been like. Remember that Grandmary is a wealthy lady and that marriage and social connections have been the basis of her life. Her husband was wealthy, and she was likely born into a wealthy family. Her life has always been comfortable without her needing to have a job or vote or do anything other than be a wife and mother. Growing up, becoming a well-behaved young lady, and getting married set her for life, and up to this point, she hasn’t had any major problems with money or her lifestyle and hasn’t really needed to think much further than that. She’s used to letting the men in her life handle business and politics and provide her with money, and she now lives on the money that her husband left to her, which is more than ample. Mostly, what Grandmary has needed to manage in her life are the social graces necessary for entertaining her husband’s business associates and their wives and for helping to facilitate her children’s marriages and careers. Grandmary’s daughter was also married to a well-off man before their early deaths. Her son is also a wealthy man, who can provide for his wife, and Cornelia is also from a wealthy family in New York City, a natural extension of their social circle. Grandmary assumes that Samantha, raised in this wealthy social atmosphere, will also naturally meet and marry a wealthy man through the connections of her friends and family, one who will support her and their children in a comfortable fashion. She thinks that, besides caring for her future children, Samantha will likely occupy her time with good works for the less fortunate and that she will give elegant parties for the fashionably-dressed ladies of their social level to solidify their social connections. The elegant affair that her tenth birthday was supposed to be was also practice for her future, as Grandmary envisions it. Grandmary thinks that life will continue to follow this same general course in their family and that there will never be a need for anything different because her own life has been fairly smooth, comfortable, and predictable, largely unshaken, even by the deaths of her husband and Samantha’s parents. But, she’s about to change her mind.
The girls are a little disheveled when they go to meet Grandmary at the ice cream parlor because there is no time to go home and change. As they explain to Grandmary about why the girls look a little disheveled, she tells them that she already knows because she was there, watching the speech. When she saw that Cornelia was the one speaking, she decided to stop and listen, and she was impressed by what she heard. She liked the part where Cornelia talked about the importance of standing up for what is right, and that’s something that Grandmary believes in, too. She is now more open to the suffrage movement than she was before.
The story is partly about growing up and how Samantha realizes that she needs to learn to make her own decisions. She can’t always go by what her grandmother tells her, and sometimes, listening to the twins isn’t always the wisest choice, either. Samantha also begins to see that she has choices to make about the kind of young lady that she will grow up to be. She can be the elegant lady at the party or the public crusader for the causes she believes in or maybe something that combines aspects of both. In the end, Grandmary also begins to see the possibilities of change.
In the back of the book, there is a section about babies and children during the early 1900s. It discusses what children liked to do for fun and how adults would begin training children to be young adults early in life, emphasizing social skills, like dancing, how to behave at the dinner table, and how to engage in polite adult conversation. A girl from a wealthy family, like Samantha, might go to a finishing school instead of college after completing her basic education. At finishing school, she would learn how to manage a household, including how to manage servants (how to hire them, how to tell if they were doing a good job, etc.) and how to throw elegant dinner parties. She might have a coming out or debutante party to introduce her to society as an adult, which meant that she would be ready for introductions and dates with young gentlemen and would probably soon be considering marriage. (This is likely the path that Samantha’s grandmother took in life and the one that she is considering for Samantha.) However, some young ladies did go to college, had careers, or become suffragists, and some did some combination of the above. Samantha’s life is full of possibilities, and her future hasn’t been decided yet. Because Samantha was ten years old in 1904, she would have been eighteen in 1912. For an example of what college life would have been like for an eighteen-year-old girl at a college in the eastern United States in 1912, see the novel Daddy-Long-Legs.
The book is currently available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.
Samantha and her family are spending the summer at their summer home at Piney Point. Besides Grandmary, Uncle Gard and Aunt Cornelia will be there. Cornelia has also brought her younger sisters, a set of twins named Agnes and Agatha. They are close in age to Samantha. Grandmary’s friend, Admiral Archibald Beemis, is also visiting from England.
The family’s summer home isn’t just a single house. They have a lodge in the style of a log cabin and separate guest cottages. This summer, Samantha and the twins will get a cottage to themselves with no adults. The girls have fun exploring the area around the lake together. However, there is one place that Samantha is afraid to go, the island in the lake called Teardrop Island. The only way to get to the island is by boat, and there are sharp, treacherous rocks in that part of the lake. That was where Samantha’s parents had their boating accident and drowned during a storm. To Samantha, Teardrop Island is a place of sadness and danger.
One rainy day, the three girls go up to the attic of the lodge to look for more paintbrushes so they can paint pictures. In the attic, they find old clothes and pictures of Samantha’s family. They also find Samantha’s mother’s old sketch book, labeled “Happy Memories of Teardrop Island.” In the sketch book, she drew pictures of Samantha and her father as they had picnics and played by a waterfall. Samantha was a very young child at the time, and she has no memories of having been on the island with her parents. From the pictures, it looks like it used to be her family’s favorite place.
Seeing the pictures makes Samantha want to visit the island once more, hoping to bring back memories of her earlier visits and her parents. The next day, the three girls go out to the island and try to find the places that Samantha’s mother drew in her book. Teardrop Island turns out to be a beautiful place, and Samantha loves it. The more time she spends there, the more she feels like she has been there before, although her memories are vague and dream-like.
However, the girls forgot to tie up their boat, and they find themselves stranded on the island! A storm comes, and the girls are afraid. When the Admiral tries to come out to the island to help them, he is injured, and the girls realize that they are going to have to find a way to save him! Can they make it home through the storm, or will they meet the same fate as Samantha’s parents?
In the back of the book, there is a section with historical information about how people would spend their summers during the early 1900s. Wealthy families like Samantha’s would go to summer homes in the countryside to escape the heat of the cities.
The book is currently available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.
Samantha attends Miss Crampton’s Academy for Girls in Mount Bedford. She is doing well and has some friends at school, but she misses her friend Nellie. She knows how poor Nellie’s family is and worries about how they are doing.
One day, Samantha comes home from school to a surprise: Nellie has returned to town with her family. Samantha’s grandmother recommended Nellie’s family to a friend, Mrs. Van Sicklen, who has hired Nellie’s father as a driver and Nellie’s mother as a maid. Nellie and her sisters will also be helping with household chores. They will also get the chance to go to school, although they will be attending public school and not the private school that Samantha attends.
When they begin attending school, Nellie’s younger sisters do fine in the first grade, where they are expected to be beginners, but Nellie herself has trouble in the second grade. Nellie is a little old for second grade, so the other children make fun of her for being there, and she is so nervous that she makes embarrassing mistakes in front of her teacher and the other students. Nellie thinks that perhaps she’s too old to start going to school, but Samantha realizes that what she needs is a little extra help.
Samantha talks to her own teacher and explains the situation. She says that she would like to help teach Nellie what she needs to know, but she is not sure what Nellie needs to know in order to pass the second grade. Samantha’s teacher, Miss Stevens, thinks that it is nice that Samantha wants to help Nellie and gives her a set of second grade readers to study with pages marked for assignments. Samantha tells her grandmother what she is planning to do, and she says that it is fine, as long as the extra tutoring doesn’t interfere with Nellie’s house work too much.
Nellie accepts Samantha’s help at their secret, private “school” that Samantha calls “Mount Better School.” During their lessons, Samantha discovers that Nellie is very good at math because she used to have to help her mother with shopping and had to keep track of her money. Nellie cannot always come for lessons because of her work, but Samantha’s tutoring helps her to improve.
One day, when Samantha is walking home from school with Nellie and her sisters, a mean girl from Samantha’s school, Edith, sees them and criticizes Samantha for spending time with servants. She says that her mother would never allow her to play with servants. Samantha asks her grandmother what Edith means, and her grandmother says that Edith is a young lady. When Samantha asks why she is allowed to play with Nellie, her grandmother says that they are not really playing, that Samantha is helping Nellie, which makes it different. That explanation doesn’t entirely satisfy Samantha.
However, her grandmother is both understanding of the help that Samantha has been giving to Nellie and serious about the need to help others. When Edith’s mother and other ladies of the neighborhood come to visit and complain about Nellie’s family and how Samantha is spending time with them, Samantha’s grandmother defends them and says that Samantha is doing good.
Meanwhile, Samantha’s school is preparing for a public speaking contest with the theme “Progress in America.” To prepare for her speech, Samantha asks her grandmother, her Uncle Gard, and other people what they think about progress and what the best inventions are. They mention inventions like the telephone, electric lights, automobiles, and factories. Samantha is fascinated by the idea of factories and the variety of products that they can make. However, when Samantha reads her speech to Nellie, Nellie is not nearly so enthusiastic about factories as a sign of progress. Nellie used to work in a factory herself, and she knows that they are not pleasant places. She tells Samantha how factories are noisy and how dangerous the machines are for the workers. The factory workers are also very poorly paid, which is why the products they make are so cheap.
Nellie’s stories about factories bother Samantha. When it is time for the public speaking contest, Samantha delivers a changed version of her speech in which she discusses the dangers of child labor and how some form of progress, particularly ones that endanger children, are not good forms of progress. Samantha’s thoughtful speech wins the contest, and her grandmother understands that Samantha has been learning things from Nellie even while teaching her.
In the back of the book, there is a section with historical information about education and child labor during the early 1900s.
The book is currently available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.
Samantha Parkington is a nine-year-old orphan. She belongs to a wealthy family and lives with her grandmother, called Grandmary, in the Hudson Valley in New York. Grandmary is often strict with Samantha, trying to teach her to be a proper young lady, but Samantha finds it difficult. Samantha’s grandmother loves her, but she has very old-fashioned ideas about how girls should behave. When Samantha wants to try making and selling boomerangs in order to earn money to buy a doll, using instructions from The Boys’ Handy Book, her grandmother stops her, saying that young ladies do not earn money. She would rather that Samantha earn the doll as a reward for doing what she is told and practicing her piano lessons. Samantha also has an uncle, Uncle Gard, who has a girlfriend named Cornelia. Cornelia is a more modern woman, who would see nothing wrong with Samantha wanting to earn some money.
One of her grandmother’s servants, a black woman named Jessie, is kind and motherly to Samantha. Jessie often patches Samantha up after her various escapades and mishaps. Jessie’s husband, Lincoln, is a train porter, and Jessie tells Samantha exciting stories about the places that Lincoln has seen in his work, like New Orleans. Sometimes, Lincoln brings Samantha post cards from these places.
Samantha soon learns that a new girl her age is coming to a neighbor’s house. She has been wanting a playmate, so she goes over to the neighbor’s house to introduce herself. The new girl’s name is Nellie, but she has come to be a servant for the neighbors, the Rylands. Nellie’s family is poor, so Nellie needs to work as a maid help her parents earn money and support her younger sisters. Samantha is surprised when Nellie describes her family’s circumstances in New York City. Samantha has never been poor, and she doesn’t know what it’s like to be cold and hungry. Nellie says that the air in the countryside is better for her, and she gets better food working for the Rylands. Nellie tells Samantha that she has never been to school, and Samantha offers to teach her.
Then, Jessie suddenly announces that she is leaving her job at Grandmary’s house. Grandmary doesn’t seem surprised, but Samantha is. Jessie offers no explanation for leaving, and when Samantha tries to ask, Grandmary and the other servants do not want to talk about it. Samantha tells Nellie about Jessie leaving, coming up with fanciful reasons why she might leave her job, but Nellie offers the practical explanation that Jessie might be having a baby. Nellie knows more about it than Samantha because she has younger sisters, but she acknowledges that adults of this time period do not like to talk about people having babies, particularly in front of children. Neither Nellie nor Samantha entirely knows why.
However, Samantha is still concerned about Jessie. Samantha doesn’t know where Jessie lives, but Nellie does. The two girls sneak out one evening to visit Jessie and learn for themselves what the matter is. This is the first time that Samantha has been to the part of her town where black people live, further opening her eyes to the lives of people from lower classes of society. Nellie is a little surprised at how Samantha, who is more educated, sometimes knows so little about the ways that other people live.
It turns out that Jessie does have a new baby. Jessie reassures Samantha that she and the baby are fine, but since her husband needs to travel because of his job as a train porter, she needs to stay at home with her baby now. Samantha thinks of a way to help Jessie keep her job and care for her baby at the same time, persuading her grandmother to let Jessie come back. Unfortunately, Nellie soon has to leave because Mrs. Ryland doesn’t think that she’s strong enough to work as a maid and decides to send her back to her family in New York City. Samantha gives Nellie her new doll as a going-away present, and she is very concerned about how Nellie and her family will manage.
In the back of the book, there is a section with historical information about how wealthy people and their servants lived during the early 1900s.
Something that occurred to me later is that Jessie is about the right age to be Addy‘s daughter, from another American Girls series. I don’t think that there’s a real connection between Jessie and Addy because the Samantha books were written before the Addy series. However, when I stopped to think about their relative ages (Addy would be about 49 years old in 1904, and Jessie is probably in her 20s), it occurred to me that if Addy had a daughter, she would probably be an adult at this time, and she might be doing something very similar to what Jessie is doing, working as a seamstress.
The book is currently available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.
Felicity’s Craft Book by Rebecca Sample Bernstein and Jodi Evert, 1994.
This is a companion book to the Felicity, An American Girl series. It explains about the types of crafts that people would do in Colonial America and gives instructions for projects that readers can make at home.
In the beginning of the book, there is a brief history of crafting in America. It explains that, in the earliest days of the American colonies, people had to get most of their goods from Europe because they had to spend their time and energy on building homes and establishing farms in order to survive. However, as the colonies became more established, people were more able to make goods for themselves, both in their own homes and as professional craftspeople. By the time that Felicity lived, during the late 1700s, there were many skilled craftspeople, and those craftspeople also trained new people in their professions in apprenticeships.
Before presenting craft projects that readers can make, the book also offers a few tips for safety and neatness while making things. The crafts are also divided into sections relating to topics like writing, sewing, games and toys, and scented objects that you can make with plants.
The projects explained in this book include:
A quill
pen and two types of ink – The book gives instructions for making ink from
different types of berries (such as raspberries, strawberries, and blackberries,
which make red or purple ink) and walnut shells (which makes a brown ink).
A wax
seal – To be used with sealing wax or wax from a candle. These were used to
seal letters before the invention of envelopes with glue. (I know that there
are people and companies that still make these because I have one myself and
the sealing wax to use with it.)
Game of
Graces – A hoop with a pair of sticks that were used for a tossing game.
Cup and
Ball Game – A common toy in which a cup is attached to the end of a short stick
and a ball is tied to it. Players have
to move the toy around and make the ball swing into the cup.
Kites –
Made with lightweight paper.
Folding
Fan – Made with poster board and ribbon.
Fancy
Straw Hat – Explains how to decorate a hat with flowers and ribbon.
Fruit
Pyramid – Used as a table centerpiece.
Cross-Stitch
Sampler – A basic sampler using only the cross-stitch. (Colonial girls would create
more elaborate samplers to show off the range of stitches they could make.)
Sachet –
A small bag of potpourri (sweet-smelling dried plants). Colonists would put sachets into trunks and
wardrobes where they were storing their clothes to make them smell nice. (Some people still do this in modern times.) In a later part of the book, they also give instructions
for making potpourri with herbs and flower petals.
Friendship
Pincushion – An embroidered pincushion.
Tussie-Mussie
– A small bouquet, like the kind that bridesmaids and flower girls might carry. (The book says that people in Colonial times
might carry one or maybe a pomander ball if they went to visit a sick person
because they had an idea that breathing bad air would spread sickness and they
were trying to freshen the air with fresh scents. That’s not quite how sickness is spread, but
they were partly correct about sicknesses being airborn.)
Pomander Ball – An orange scented and decorated with spices and cloves. Besides freshening the air, they can also make nice decorations.
In the sections about different types of projects, there is additional historical information about life and crafts in Colonial America. Because, in the books, Felicity’s grandfather owns a plantation and one of the books takes place there, the craft book also has a section about plantations that includes a brief description of plantation life and slavery, noting that the lifestyle and pastimes that plantation owners enjoyed would not have been possible without their slaves to take care of the plantation chores for them.
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.
Molly’s Cook Book by Polly Athan, Rebecca Sample Bernstein, Terri Braun, Jodi Evert, and Jeanne Thieme, 1994.
This is a companion book to the Molly, An American Girl series. It has recipes from the 1940s that people would have made during World War II. A section at the beginning of the book explains how shortages and rationing during the war changed the way that people shopped for food and cooked. For example, people on the homefront didn’t have many canned foods because many canned foods were shipped overseas to soldiers and much of the metal that would have been used to make more cans for food was being used to make other war supplies. Because certain types of food were in short supply, individuals and families would receive ration books, which contained stamps that represented which types of foods they would be able to buy and how much. Cookbooks printed during the war focused on creating meals that used little or no rationed products. People also planted Victory gardens and grew their own vegetables to fill out their meals.
The cookbook
is divided into sections for different meals:
Breakfast – Fried Potatoes, Toad-in-a-Hole (not the British dish – this is eggs cooked in a frame of bread, what I first learned to make as Eggs-in-a-Frame), Fried Bacon, Quick Coffee Cake, and Frozen Fruit Cups.
Dinner – Vitamin A Salad (made with carrots and lemon gelatin), Deviled Eggs, Carrot Curls and Celery Fans, Vitality Meat Loaf, Parsley Biscuits, Volcano Potatoes, and Applesauce Cupcakes.
Favorite Foods – French toast, Waldorf salad, PBJ Roll-ups, Jelly Flags, Victory Garden Soup, Nut-and-Raisin Bread, and Fruit Bars.
In each section of recipes, there is more historical information about food in World War II. There is also a section in the back with party ideas from the 1940s.
For more World War II recipes, I recommend The 1940’s Experiment, which is a blog with recipes from World War II and an explanation of how they can be used to both save money and lose weight because they were intentionally designed to make maximum use of limited resources, both economically and nutritionally. In Molly’s Cook Book, there is a chart that government experts during World War II used to give people guidance on how to budget their food money among seven food groups. The diet that they recommended, both nutritionally and to limit certain rationed foods, was heavy on vegetables and fruits and lighter on meats, grains, and dairy products. This type of diet is basically in keeping with modern nutritional advice, which also emphasizes the importance of vegetables and fruit.
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.
Christmas hasn’t been the same in the McIntire house since Molly’s father went overseas as a doctor during World War II. As Molly writes her father a letter before Christmas, she and her mother and siblings talk about whether or not he might send them presents. Molly is sure that he’ll send something and adds a “thank you” to the letter she’s writing, but her older sister, Jill, is less sure and worries that he’ll feel bad if Molly thanks him for presents that he was unable to send. The boys talk about whether or not any presents that he might send could be shot down before reaching them, and Brad, the youngest child in the family worries about whether Santa might get shot down, too. The children’s mother reassures them, but it’s just another sign of how the war has changed the feeling of Christmas.
Jill tries to be realistic and tells Molly that she should be, too. Jill thinks that there probably won’t be many presents this year, and what they get will be mostly practical things, handmade gifts, or hand-me-downs because of war rationing and the family’s need to be frugal. Everyone is determined to be practical and patriotic, but Molly finds all this “realistic” talk depressing. When her father was home, Christmas was always a time of surprises, and she likes to believe that, somehow, he will still find a way to surprise them.
When the children’s grandparents call and say that they won’t be able to come after all because of car trouble, and they won’t be able to bring them a Christmas tree as promised. The kids are depressed, but Molly says that they’ll just have to do as their mother told her earlier and rely on themselves to make their own Christmas surprises this year. Jill, Ricky, and Molly pool their money and go out to buy a tree. As in the Charlie Brown Christmas special, the only tree they can afford is small and scrawny, but it’s better than no tree at all.
Once they get the tree decorated, it looks much better. As they decorate the tree, Jill admits that some of her attitudes about how this Christmas should be different and more simple from others is because she really misses their father, and when everything looks the same as it did before he left, it just reminds her of how much she misses him. Molly also admits that she doesn’t really care what presents their father sends; she’s only worried that, if a package doesn’t arrive, it might mean that something bad had happened to him. All of the kids want the reassurance that their father is still okay.
The next day, when the children go out to play in the snow, they find the package from their father that they’ve been waiting for! However, there is a note on the package that says, “KEEP HIDDEN UNTIL CHRISTMAS DAY!” Probably, their father wanted their mother to hide the package from the children, but since Molly and Jill are the first to find it, they decide to do the hiding themselves, putting the box in the storage room above the garage. Jill thinks they should tell their mother about it, but Molly persuades her to wait because she doesn’t want to ruin their father’s surprise.
On Christmas Eve, the girls retrieve the box and put it under the tree after everyone else is asleep. However, that’s not the end of the Christmas surprises. Their father has one more special surprise for them . . .
There is a section in the back of the book with historical information about Christmas during World War II. Many families couldn’t be together during the war because families members were overseas and because many civilians limited their traveling during the war in order to save gasoline. In fact, speed limits were greatly reduced in order to save gas – the “Victory Speed Limit” restricted people to driving no faster than 35 mph. Public transit, like trains and buses, was often needed to transport soldiers, so civilians avoided traveling as much as possible.
People also had to get creative about Christmas treats because some essential ingredients, like butter and sugar, were rationed. People also made their own decorations. The selection of toys was somewhat limited because factories had been converted to making war materials, and many families gave their children practical gifts. However, there were still toys available, and people managed to give their children a few special surprises.
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.
The year is 1908, and eleven-year-old Innocenza Moretti lives with her relatives in Boston. They are immigrants from Italy. Innie, as her family calls her, is an orphan. According to the story that her grandmother told her, she was the only one of her parents’ children to survive infancy, her siblings being born prematurely and dying shortly after birth. Innie’s mother was so grateful that Innie survived that she promised her to the Holy Mother at her baptism. Then, Innie’s parents died in a fire in their tenement building when she was about two years old. Innie and her grandmother, Nonna, survived the fire only because little Innie had started crying in the night, and she took her outside to walk her around so that she wouldn’t wake her parents. Because of that experience, Nonna is deathly afraid of fire and also has become convinced that the Holy Mother must have spared Innie (as well as herself). She thinks that Innie is destined to become a nun and has continued to promise her to the Holy Mother in prayer, repeating the promise regularly. Although Nonna thinks that the miracles surrounding Innie’s life are signs of a future life in the Church for Innie, her grandmother’s promises in prayer terrify Innie.
Innie feels trapped by her grandmother’s expectations for her, expectations that the rest of her family don’t even know about. She doesn’t want to be a nun, but her grandmother is sure that she will be. Because of her fears that her grandmother may force her to become a nun when she grows up, Innie is never on her best behavior. She thinks that if she gets a reputation as a trouble-maker, the Church will decide that she is unsuited for a religious life. Unfortunately, Innie’s long-practiced habit of ignoring rules and her problem child reputation lead her to be suspected of something worse than just minor misbehaving.
Innie’s family owns a boardinghouse where they provide food and lodging for young immigrant men. Innie and Nonna live on the ground floor, and Innie’s aunt, uncle, and cousins live above them. Innie spends a lot of time with her cousins, especially Teresa, who is about her age. Her older cousin, Carmela, persuades both Teresa and Innie to join a library club at a new settlement house with her. The settlement house helps girls and young women from immigrant families by teaching them work skills and aspects of American culture that they can use as they become American citizens in exchange for some of the work that the girls do on behalf of the settlement house. Carmela has taken a new job as a pottery painter there and tells her parents that it will be good for Teresa and Innie to go there as well because they will receive help with their schoolwork and they will also have classes to teach them skills like sewing, knitting, and pottery, that they can use to make money later. However, the real attraction of the club for the girls is that they get to listen to music, have dancing lessons, read books, and socialize with other girls about their age. The prospect of sewing classes isn’t appealing for Innie, but she loves books and looks forward to borrowing some from the settlement house library.
At the settlement house, Innie meets a variety of girls from other immigrant families, not just Italian ones. In particular, Innie makes friends with a girl named Matela, who is a Jewish girl from Russia. As the girls talk about a recent, large fire in town, Matela talks about the czar’s soldiers burning things back in Russia and how she misses her grandfather, who is still there. Innie understands Matela’s feelings because she knows what it’s like to miss someone. She doesn’t really remember her parents, but she feels the lack of them in her life. Teresa also becomes friends with Matela, but the three girls agree to keep their friendship secret because each of their families prefers them to associate with girls from backgrounds similar to their own. Innie’s uncle wants the girls to spend time with other Italians, and Matela admits that her father prefers her to spend time with other Jewish girls. The adults don’t really understand the cultural mix at the settlement house.
However, from the very first day that the girls begin going to events at the house, strange things start happening. Things disappear or are oddly moved about. Food disappears. A silver teapot belonging to the ladies who run the settlement house is stolen. Then, someone steals some pottery and a shawl.
To Innie’s horror, she ends up becoming the prime suspect for the thefts because she was caught snooping in an area of the house where she didn’t belong and because she accidentally broke one of the pieces of pottery that the others girls made and tried to sweep it up without telling anyone. When she and her friends snoop around and try to find the missing objects, Innie discovers one of the missing pottery pieces. However, instead of being happy for the clue, the ladies who run the house just think that Innie must have broken more of the pottery and tried to cover it up, like she did before, by hiding the rest of the set. After all, if she was doing some things she shouldn’t have been doing, it’s plausible that she could be a thief, too.
If Innie is going to remain a member of the library club (and continue to have access to books that she can read), she’s going to have to prove her innocence. In fact, proving her innocence may also be important for Carmela, who is supposed to have a citizenship hearing soon. If Innie’s bad reputation causes problems for her at work, she may lose her job and be denied American citizenship!
Matela thinks that the thief could be a ghost from the nearby Copp’s Hill graveyard, but Innie is sure that it must be a human being. There are secrets at the settlement house that even the ladies who run it are unaware of and someone who desperately needs help and can’t ask for it.
Teresa and Matela continue to help Innie, and in the process, Innie confesses to Matela her fears about becoming a nun. It is Matela who helps Innie to find the solution to her problem, urging her to step outside of the small community of Italian immigrants that her family clings to and to seek advice from a priest in the Irish area of the city. As a priest, he has the knowledge that Innie needs to understand her faith, and because he doesn’t know Innie’s family personally, he has the objectivity to help Innie to see her grandmother’s promise in a new light and to understand that her future destiny is still in her own hands. No one can speak for another person or make important promises on their behalf. A religious vocation is a serious decision that only a mature adult can make for herself, or not make, as the case may be. The priest tells her that, as young as she is, Innie should focus on learning to be a good person, and then she will see what direction life leads her. With that knowledge, of course, Innie realizes that she will have to put more effort into behaving herself, but it’s a relief to her to realize that she doesn’t need to purposely misbehave in order to control her life.
Eventually, Innie’s aunt also learns about the grandmother’s promise and Innie’s worries and reassures her that, although her grandmother can be an intimidating woman with what she wants, Innie’s family loves her and that she shouldn’t be afraid to come to them with her questions and concerns. Innie has thought of herself as parentless, at the mercy of her grandmother’s wishes and expectations, but her aunt says that she loves Innie like she does her own daughters and that Innie is as much a part of their family as they are. If Innie has problems, her aunt will be there for her, helping her find whatever answers she needs.
There is also a subplot about how girls in immigrant families (at least, in ones like Innie’s family) aren’t as highly-regarded as boys. When the family is discussing important matters, Innie often tries to comment on what she thinks, but her grandmother keeps telling her to be quiet because it isn’t a girl’s place to comment on business that men should handle and her male cousins sneer at her because they don’t think she knows anything. However, when Innie’s uncle is worried about the legal papers he has to sign in order to open his new grocery business because his English still isn’t good enough to understand them, Innie points out that Carmela’s English is the best of the family because of all the books she had to read and the paperwork she had to complete when she was applying for citizenship and that she would be the best person to study the paperwork. At first, her grandmother makes her try to be quiet and her male cousins laugh, but Carmela speaks up and says that she can help her father, if he wants her to, and her father agrees, on the condition that she act as translator and adviser and let him make the final decisions about the business. Carmela is happy because the arrangement allows her to use her skills without taking her away from the pottery painting that she loves. The point of this part of the story is about acknowledging the talents that people possess and not disregarding them because they are outside of the usual roles and expectations. It fits in with the subplot about the grandmother’s expectations for Innie’s future, which are not really in keeping with either her talents or character. The young people in the story are growing up under different circumstances than their parents, and they will have to learn to find their own way in life, using the abilities they have and the education they can find.
In the back of the book, there is a section with historical information about Boston in 1908. The fire that happens around the time that the story takes place was a real event. The settlement house with its library club was also real, and the ladies who run the settlement house, Miss Brown and Miss Guerrier, were also real people. The book explains more about what life was like for immigrant families like Innie’s and about what the future held for girls like her. Many of the girls who attended the library clubs later became librarians and teachers themselves, which may be Innie’s eventual destiny when she grows up. The book also mentions that the area of Boston where Innie’s family lived still has many Italian restaurants and groceries that were started by immigrant families like Innie’s, so we can imagine that the grocery store that Innie’s uncle wants to open will be successful.
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.
Everything is changing for Felicity. To begin with, her horse, Penny, is expecting a foal. Penny has been happy and healthy since she came to live with the Merrimans, but Felicity worries about what will happen when Jiggy Nye, her abusive former owner, gets out of prison. He has been in jail for not paying his debts. Felicity learns that he was once a respected member of the community and an expert with animals, but he became an alcoholic after his wife’s death. However, Felicity can’t bring herself to feel sorry for Nye after the way he’s behaved, even when she learns that he is sick. Felicity’s friend, Elizabeth, convinces her that they should send him some medicine and other supplies in prison, partly to have pity on him and partly so that he will feel grateful to Felicity when he gets out and not make trouble for her.
Unfortunately, Elizabeth’s father also soon ends up in prison. Tensions between Patriots and Loyalists are high. The former governor has fled Williamsburg, and Patriots are arresting Loyalists. That Mr. Cole is a Loyalist has been well-known for some time. Felicity fears for Elizabeth and wonders what will happen to their friendship.
Then, Felicity’s grandfather also becomes ill. He soon dies of his illness, devastating her family, but before his death, he takes steps to make things better for Elizabeth’s family, Jiggy Nye, and his own family, especially Felicity. In return for Felicity’s charitable gift and her grandfather’s honorable payment for the horse, Jiggy Nye also helps Felicity and Penny when they need him the most, redeeming himself in everyone’s eyes.
With the war everyone has dreaded finally becoming reality, there are still more changes yet to come. Elizabeth’s father must leave Williamsburg, Felicity’s father decides how he will support the war effort, and Felicity begins to play more of a role in the running of her father’s shop, as she had wished to do before.
In the midst of Felicity’s grief over her grandfather’s death and worries about the coming changes in all of their lives, her mother has some poignant thoughts about the nature of death and change. While Felicity wishes that it were summer again, back when her grandfather was alive and they were all happy, her mother says that not all changes are bad ones. As she points out to Felicity, even though it might be tempting for her to wish that she were a child again herself, when both of her parents were still alive, to go back to that time would mean giving up her life with her husband and her children. She loves her children and enjoys seeing them grow up and change. The ability to witness those happy changes is worth dealing with the less happy changes in life as well. Death, like change, is just another part of life, and Felicity’s mother points out that love still connects us to those we’ve lost. Like everyone else, the only way Felicity can move in her life is forward, and that’s a good thing. Felicity still has growing up to do and happier changes yet to come.
In the back of the book, there is a section of historical information about the Revolutionary War.
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.
This is part of the 
Unfortunately, Elizabeth’s father also soon ends up in prison. Tensions between Patriots and Loyalists are high. The former governor has fled Williamsburg, and Patriots are arresting Loyalists. That Mr. Cole is a Loyalist has been well-known for some time. Felicity fears for Elizabeth and wonders what will happen to their friendship.
With the war everyone has dreaded finally becoming reality, there are still more changes yet to come. Elizabeth’s father must leave Williamsburg, Felicity’s father decides how he will support the war effort, and Felicity begins to play more of a role in the running of her father’s shop, as she had wished to do before.
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