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.
It’s 1851, and Professor Carver of Boston is living in an apartment above a candle shop with his wife and two children, his son Jamie and daughter Lorna. One day, a man named Mr. Giddings comes to see Professor Carver to request his help. For years, he has wanted to buy a particular farm with a beautiful house called Windy Hill. However, when he finally succeeded in buying the house and he and his wife went to live there, his wife became very upset. She said that she felt strange in the house and that she had seen a ghost. Now, she is too upset to return to Windy Hill. Mr. Giddings has heard that Professor Carver once helped a friend get rid of a ghost haunting his house, and he asks the professor if he would be willing to do the same for him.
Jamie and Lorna are thrilled by the house, which is much bigger than their apartment in town. They can each have their own room, and there is an old tower in the house that was built by a former owner, who was always paranoid about Indian (Native American) attacks (something which had never actually happened). However, their new neighbors are kind of strange. Stover, the handyman, warns them that the house is haunted and also tells them about another neighbor, Miss Miggie. Miss Miggie is an old woman who wanders around, all dressed in white, and likes to spy on people. There is also a boy named Bruno, who apparently can’t walk and often begs at the side of the road with his pet goat, and his father, Tench, who is often drunk and doesn’t want people to make friends with Bruno.
Then, strange things do start happening in the house. The quilt that Lorna has been making disappears and reappears in another room in the middle of the night. At first, the family thinks maybe she was walking in her sleep because she had done it before, when she was younger. However, there is someone who has been entering the house without the Carvers’ knowledge, and Jamie and Lorna set a trap that catches the mysterious “ghost.”
Midnight Magic by Avi, 1999.
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.
Felicity’s grandfather is a wealthy man who owns the Kings Cross Plantation. Every summer, Felicity and her family go to visit him there, and Felicity loves it. Her grandfather teaches her a lot of things, like which plants can be used for food and medicine, and takes her for horse rides around his estate.
Ben tells Felicity that he ran away from his apprenticeship to join the revolutionary army. He wants badly to fight for the colonies’ freedom from England, but he had a bad fall while traveling and hurt his leg. Felicity tries to convince Ben to let her get help for him and to return to her father to finish his apprenticeship, but Ben doesn’t want Felicity’s grandfather to find out that he’s there or why he ran away because he knows that he disapproves of the revolutionaries. Because Ben kept her secret when she used to sneak out to see Penny, Felicity reluctantly agrees to keep Ben’s presence a secret for awhile, sneaking him some food and supplies. She tells Ben that, while she thinks that standing up for what he believes is good, he’s going about it in the wrong way because breaking his apprenticeship was dishonest.
The Secret Life of the Underwear Champ by Betty Miles, 1981.
Now, Larry is wondering what he’s gotten himself into. He worries about his filming schedule conflicting with baseball practice and makes up excuses about needing to visit the dentist when he has to film a commercial. Money or no money, Larry just wishes that his life would return to normal!
Sixteen-year-old Aaron Maguire thinks of himself as a typical teenager, even though his family is far from typical. His mother is a buyer for a fashion boutique, and his father does special effects for monster movies in Hollywood. They’re also officially “separated” and preparing for a divorce, even though they’re still living in the same house. So far, they’ve just kind of divided the house in two in order to have their own space. Aaron goes back and forth between the two halves of the same house as his parents share him. It’s a little weird (and, to Aaron, also a little depressing), but there’s weirder to come.
However, when Aaron meets the divine Penelope for pizza and she asks to borrow a mirror to check her hair, Aaron lets her borrow Anaxagoras’s mirror. He instantly regrets it because the mirror suddenly changes in Penelope’s hands. Now, it has a tortoiseshell frame and is shaped like a heart. Penelope, who has low self-esteem in spite of her prettiness, is suddenly really happy when she looks in the mirror and refuses to give it back, insisting that she wants to borrow it for a few days. Because Aaron is in love with Penelope, he finally agrees to let her keep it for awhile.
Angelo the Naughty One by Helen Garrett, pictures by Leo Politi, 1944.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 