Two Are Better Than One by Carol Ryrie Brink, 1968.

This is a gentle coming-of-age story about two thirteen-year-old girls in Idaho during the early 1900s, but it’s told in a interesting format, as the reminiscences of one of the girls as an old woman and focusing on a story that the girls were writing together as teenagers. It’s like a story about a story within a story.

One Christmas, elderly Chrystal Banks receives a special present from her old friend, Cordelia Crump. The package contains two miniature dolls (she calls them “pocket dolls”) that Chrystal gave to Cordelia 60 years before. At first, Chrystal doesn’t remember giving her friend Cordy” these dolls but admits that her memory is starting to fail her. As she studies the little china dolls and their exquisite details, she begins to remember them and when she gave them to her friend. The dolls’ names are Lester and Lynette, and Chyrstal remembers how Cordy used to say that the little dolls were magical because any day she carried them seemed to become special and exciting. Even when Chrystal and Cordy grew older, supposedly too old for dolls, they still continued to love and believe in the magic of their special pocket dolls.

Before young Chrystal Reese (as she was known before her marriage) gave the dolls to Cordy, they were a Christmas present to Chrystal from her Uncle Dick. That was the Christmas when the girls were in seventh grade and were early thirteen years old. Uncle Dick had acquired a number of interesting presents for Chrystal on his trip to Europe. He doted on his niece because she had no parents or siblings, living only with her grandmother and Aunt Eugenia and their dog, Rowdy. All of the presents are wonderful, but the little dolls are something special. As she unwraps them, they are hidden within a small box inside another box inside of another box (not unlike the story itself). Chrystal loves the elegant, detailed, jointed dolls immediately and names them Lester and Lynette because they just seem like the right names for the dolls.

Immediately, she goes to see if the little dolls will work well in the dollhouse that she’s made out of orange crates. She has spent considerable time and most of her allowance money putting paint and wallpaper into the little house and making furniture for it. She made all of the dollhouse furniture to fit two small dolls that she already has, Elsie and Eileen. However, Elsie and Eileen are four inches tall, and Lester and Lynette are only about two-and-a-half inches tall, so they won’t work in the house. At first, Chrystal is unsure what to do with the tiny dolls. She loves them, but she’s going to have to figure out where to put them and how to play with them if they won’t fit into the doll house. Then, she gets the idea to give the little dolls to her best friend, Cordy. It’s a sacrifice to part with such a lovely present so soon after getting it, but she wasn’t satisfied that the little bottle of perfume she was going to give Cordy was really a good present. Besides, the girls are so close that they already share everything with each other, and as they like to say “Two are better than one.” Giving the dolls to Cordy won’t be like giving them so much as sharing them with someone who can help to make them even more fun.

Cordelia Lark (her maiden name) grew up in a well-off family with mostly boys. Her father was president of the local bank and president of the school board and a civic leader in other ways, and Cordy had four brothers and no sisters. Cordy and Chrystal are kind of like the sisters neither of them ever had. They like to call each other “Tween”, which is their special pronunciation of “Twin.” They justify being twins because their birthdays are only two weeks apart, so they’re almost exactly the same age.

On the way to Cordy’s house to give her the special Christmas present, Chrystal passes by the courthouse. When she and Cordy pass the courthouse, they can see the barred windows of the jail, and they make up stories to spook each other about how one of the prisoners might escape. On this particular day, Chrystal sees one of the prisoners gripping the bars of his window and looking out. He’s the first prisoner Chrystal has ever actually seen. She’s a little afraid of him, and when he starts talking to her, she doesn’t know what to say at first. The man first asks her what she’s staring at, and then he wishes her a Merry Christmas, even though he’s not having one. Not knowing what else to do, Chrystal murmurs “Merry Christmas” back and hurries on.

When Chrystal gets to Cordy’s house, the two girls exchange presents. It turns out that each of them almost got the other some perfume, but each of them changed their mind at the last minute and decided on something better. Cordy’s present to Chrys (as she sometimes calls her) is a book, which makes Chrystal happy because she loves books and didn’t get any for Christmas this year. But, it’s not just any book. This is Chrystal’s first grown-up novel instead of a children’s book. (They mention the Oz books, the Little Peppers, and the Little Colonel series as books they’ve read.) It makes Chrys feel grown-up. It’s a romantic story about a Southern girl during the Civil War who falls in love with a Northern soldier and eventually marries him. Chrys says that Cordy shouldn’t have told her the ending before she’s read it, but she’s still thrilled at having her first grown-up book.

Chrys worries that, since Cordy gave her a grown-up present, she’ll think that the little dolls are babyish, but Cordy loves Lester and Lynette immediately. She says nobody gave her a doll this year, and she felt disappointed because she loves dolls, and it just didn’t seem like Christmas without one. Chrys explains that these are pocket dolls, and they’re meant to be carried around in pockets, so they can go everywhere with the owner. Cordy says that they’re so tiny and perfect that they must be magic, and she decides to keep the names that Chrys gave them, Lester and Lynette. Cordy thinks that the little dolls are perfect to take along on adventures.

When Chrys tells Cordy about the prisoner, the two of them are nervous, although they don’t really think he can escape. Chrys asks Cordy to walk her home, but after they pass the courthouse, Cordy realizes that she’d have to walk past the courthouse alone on her way home. So, Chrys and Cordy turn around and walk the other way again, but then, they realize that they still have the same problem. No matter which way they go, they have to pass the courthouse, and no matter who walks who home, one of them will have to go alone at least partway. After they go back and forth a couple of times, they pause in front of the courthouse, and Cordy has an idea. She gives Chrys the Lester doll, keeping the Lynette doll for herself. That way, each of them will have someone to keep them company, and it will be like they aren’t alone. It gives each of them enough courage to go the rest of the way home, and it’s the beginning of their adventures with the dolls.

Chrys is inspired by her first grown-up book, and she thinks that maybe she’d like to write novels when she grows up. When the girls are in school, they like to write notes and funny poems with each other when they’re supposed to be studying, and Chrys suggests to Cordy that they start writing a novel together. Cordy agrees, and they decide to take turns writing chapters. They decide that the story will be about Lester and Lynette, and Chrystal writes the first chapter. Chrystal calls the story “The Romantical Perils of Lester and Lynette.”

However, the girls get in trouble for goofing off and not paying attention in class. Their strict teacher, Miss Hickenlooper, decides that the two girls can’t sit together anymore, and she confiscates Lester and Lynette and locks them in her desk. The girls are devastated. If the teacher wanted them to move desks, that was disappointing but justified, but she had no right to just take the dolls. The girls think that they’ll have to wait until the end of term to get them back, but they continue writing the story about the dolls. Chrystal had been going to write the first chapter about an elopement, but because the dolls are now imprisoned in the teacher’s desk, she decides to write it as a prison escape instead.

In the new version of the first chapter of the story, Lester and Lynette are brother and sister, and they are imprisoned in a castle overlooking the Rhine river in Germany (part of the the girls’ geography lesson in school) by their evil guardian, Baron von Hickenlooper. Lynette is rescued/kidnapped by a Viking pirate named Oskar, who carries her away from her brother, who still remains in the castle.

From this point on, the events in Chrys and Cordy’s lives alternate with new chapters of their tandem story about Lester and Lynette. Pieces of the girls’ lives work their way into the story. When the girls are ready to trade turns writing the story, they give each other what they’ve written so far and say “Muggins!” (The word comes from playing games like Dominoes and Cribbage where, if one player spots that another has missed a score or failed to count something properly, they can call “Muggins!” and add the overlooked points to their own score. I think what they’re implying is that this story is a game where one person picks up whatever the other one has left unfinished.) The girls also continue adding verses to an unflattering poem that they started writing about their teacher.

By accident, the girls loose track of the mean poem about their teacher, and Miss Hickenlooper finds it. At first, the girls are terrified that Miss Hickenlooper is going to be furious with them and do something horrible in punishment, but to their surprise, she starts crying. Miss Hickenlooper end up having a heart-to-heart talk about the girls’ experiences in Miss Hickenlooper’s class, what Miss Hickenlooper hoped for when she started teaching, and why she took Lester and Lynette from them. Miss Hickenlooper had wanted to be a teacher for a long time and was looking forward to it, but she had been away from it for a long time because she had to take care of her mother during a lengthy illness. Since she started teaching again, she can tell that her students haven’t been happy with her, but after reading the poem, she realizes that it’s worse than she thought. Even strict teachers can be respected by their students as long as they’ve taught their principles well and the students are learning valuable lessons. Miss Hickenlooper feels like she’s failed as a teacher because she hasn’t managed to connect with her students at all, and she’s making them miserable. The girls come to the surprising realization that their teacher really does care about her students and what they think of her.

The talk between the girls and Miss Hickenlooper was a little uncomfortable because the girls realize that they’ve done an injustice to Miss Hickenlooper by writing the mean poem about her, but I actually liked this part of the story because it’s the kind of honest communication that I often find missing in stories. Rather than anyone blustering or dodging or trying to save face, the girls and their teacher honestly discuss what happened and how they feel, and everyone involved learns something from the experience. The girls appreciate having this “human” communication with their teacher, and it earns their respect, more than any angry tirade or show of strength on their teacher’s part ever would have. It’s this very kind of open honesty and humanity with real feeling behind it that’s been missing from the class so far, and it’s what has prevented Miss Hickenlooper from really connecting with her students.

The girls apologize to Miss Hickenlooper about the poem, and Miss Hickenlooper admits the justice of some of their complaints. Miss Hickenlooper admits that maybe she went a little far in making Cordy turn out her pockets and taking her dolls from her for an extended period of time. Getting into someone’s pockets and taking personal possessions is a kind of invasion of privacy, and Miss Hickenlooper says that she only did it because the girls weren’t paying attention in class, which is true. In return, Chrys and Cordy acknowledge that they only wrote the poem to blow off steam because they were angry, but they also went too far, and they really should have considered their teacher’s feelings. The girls promise not to write any more poems like that, and Miss Hickenlooper gives Lester and Lynette back to them. Miss Hickenlooper says Cordy can keep the dolls in her pocket if she wants as long as the girls pay attention in class from now on. To further apologize, the girls make cards for their teacher and give her the two bottles of perfume that they almost gave each other for Christmas (“Two are better than one.”), and they start going out of their way to be nicer to her.

The girls’ talks with Miss Hickenlooper through the rest of the school year give her feedback that helps her to improve as a teacher. Later, when the girls are watching a lightning artist (someone who paints pictures very fast, not the more modern definition of someone who works in animation) at work and happen to see Miss Hickenlooper in the store as well, they point out that one of the artist’s pictures reminds them of the Rhine that they studied in class. Miss Hickenlooper doesn’t think much of the quality of the painting, but she admits that it does look like the Rhine and that another painting the artist did reminds her of Switzerland when she was there. The girls are amazed that Miss Hickenlooper has been to Europe because, other than Chrys’s Uncle Dick, they don’t know anyone who has. They ask her why she never talked about it in their geography lessons because that would have made them much more exciting, hearing about other countries from the perspective of someone who was actually there. Miss Hickenlooper is surprised. She says that she was only focused on teaching the lessons that she was assigned to teach and just never thought about including anything personal because she didn’t think her students would be interested in her personal stories. Again, it’s that personal element that Miss Hickenlooper needs if she wants to connect with her students on a personal level.

As the story continues, the girls also start to consider their attitudes about boys and men and future husbands. So far, most of their knowledge of boys has come from the boys at school and Sunday school and Cordy’s brothers, all pretty immature and rowdy. But, the girls are growing up, and so are some of the boys. New young men also come into the girls’ lives.

A friend of Chrystal’s grandmother asks her if she would be willing to rent a room to her 19-year-old son, who is looking for a place to stay as he takes his first teaching job at the local college. (That sounds young for a college teacher. In modern times, a nineteen-year-old would be a college student himself. Remember, this is the early 1900s, and education in the United States was very different then. Back then, teachers didn’t need to have the advanced degrees that they do now, and Mr. Banks later explains that he skipped grades when he was younger to get through school faster.) Chrystal’s grandmother agrees, although Chrystal isn’t anxious to have a teacher living in her house after her problems with her own teacher at school. Chrys also isn’t sure what to expect from a man living in the house because there’s never been a man in this house before. Cordy’s brothers are pretty rowdy. However, their new lodger, Mr. Banks, turns out to be quiet, polite, and very nice. (His last name is an indication that he’s going to be Chrystal’s future husband. There’s six years’ difference in their ages, but as times goes on, and Chrystal gets older, that’s not going to seem like as much of a gap.) He is the first person to ever address Chrystal as “Miss Reese”, which makes her feel grown-up.

Cordy’s family also has a boarder, Mr. Crump, who is attending the local college (obviously, Cordy’s future husband, based on her future last name). Mr. Crump is working his way through college by selling pots and pans, and Cordy goes with him to help carry things, bringing along Chrys because “Two are better than one.” The girls end up giving him some advice on his sales patter that helps him make more sales.

Meanwhile, the girls’ Sunday school class, which calls itself the Dorcas Club, decides to host a masquerade party with the boys’ class (who have dubbed themselves the Armored Knights) as their guests. Chrys and Cordy think of the boys as immature and uncouth and roll their eyes at the older girls who are boy-crazy. Then, because the party is on Presidents’ Day, all of the girls in the group want to go dressed as Martha Washington, and there’s a big argument about it. Originally, Chrys and Cordy wanted to be Martha Washington, too, but since that’s what all the others want, they decide that they want to do something completely original. Inspired again by the dolls, they decide to go dressed as dolls. However, because they don’t want to be like the prissy girls trying to be pretty and impress the boys, they decide not to go as elegant dolls but as old rag dolls in patched clothing.

The girls do win prizes for both the funniest and most original costumes at the party because they’re the only girls who don’t show up as some version of Martha Washington. However, the triumph turns against them because the girls who are in charge of the main entertainment for the evening have decided to turn it into the girls’ very first dance party with the boys, something that Cordy and Chrys weren’t expecting. Rag doll costumes are good for fun and games, but not so much for serious dancing and the possibility of budding romance. While all of the boys are wearing various fanciful costumes themselves, like pirates and clowns and cannibals, it turns out that they’re only interested in the girls who dressed in pretty clothes as Martha Washington, and none of them want to dance with the rag dolls. Chrys and Cordy were proud of themselves for being more original than the other girls, but it seems that the boys prefer “pretty” to “original.” At the end of the evening, none of the boys even want to walk Chrys and Cordy home. Chrys and Cordy feel embarrassed because their efforts to be “original” seem to have strayed a little into the outlandish at a time when the other girls and boys are starting to seriously get interested in each other.

Fortunately, their families guessed that something of the sort might happen and asked the young men boarding with them to go to the house hosting the party and walk the girls home if they had no one else to walk with them. Mr. Crump confirms to the girls that boys would prefer to walk with girls who made an effort to look pretty instead of girls who look like rag dolls. Mr. Crump says that there will be other parties, and next time maybe they’ll go as something more elegant, like Martha Washington, but the girls aren’t too thrilled about doing this type of party again. Mr. Banks takes a different view and says that he actually thought that the rag doll costumes were rather clever and that it was really better for the girls to be different instead of trying to be like every other girl in order to not stand out. “Sometimes it may hurt, but I think it’s better to be original.” Mr. Banks the college teacher is more mature than Mr. Crump the college student, and I think he has the right idea. Looks and clothing styles change, and people have different priorities when they get older, but original thinking and an interesting personality are hard to replace and never go out style. When Chrystal says that she doesn’t even know how to dance, Mr. Banks offers to teach her, so she can be more confident at future parties.

Having the boarders walk them home actually turns out to be an unexpected victory for Chrys and Cordy because, while the other girls were making fun of them for not having any of the boys dance with them or walk them home, Chrys and Cordy ended up being escorted by young men. Getting boys is all well and good for young girls, but being escorted by young men makes Chrys and Cordy look like young women, putting them on a higher level than mere girls. Chrys and Cordy don’t see it that way at first because Mr. Crump and Mr. Banks are just their families’ boarders and friends and treat them like younger sisters (at this point in their lives, anyway), but the other girls notice that the young men are more mature than the Sunday school boys, and it causes them to look at Chrys and Cordy with a little more respect for having their attention. In some respects, Chrys and Cordy might seem less mature than the girls who are excited about wearing makeup and getting boys because they’re into outlandish costumes and dolls and “romantical” stories, but in other respects, they may actually be a little more mature than the other girls for being confident in their individuality and the new awareness they’re acquiring of other people’s feelings. In the end, girls want to marry men, not little boys, anyway.

Through the spring, the girls have other adventures and continue writing their story with their dolls. Along the way, there are other signs that the girls are growing up. They notice that this is the first year when they’re more interested in getting new Easter bonnets than they are in their Easter eggs. Cordy’s family is heavily involved in the social life of the local college because two of their boys are students there, and Cordy even gets to go to some of the campus parties. She helps to serve punch there and sometimes gets to dance. She eventually arranges for Chrys to come with her to help with serving and have her first dance, too. Miss Hickenlooper also discusses the girls’ future with them, suggesting that they take exams to see if they can skip the eighth grade and go straight into high school because she thinks they’re smart enough to pass. The girls are uncertain if they want to go on to high school so quickly. They know they’re growing up, but they haven’t thought about high school yet (and this is a time period when not everyone even attended high school). There is also the horrible thought that one of them might pass the test while the other didn’t, and they might end up going to different schools and being in different grades. Miss Hickenlooper says that they don’t necessarily have to go on to high school yet, if they feel that they’re not ready, even if they’re offered the opportunity, but she urges them to take the tests anyway to see if they have the option. It makes the girls start questioning their future lives, what they really want, and where their education will take them.

At one point, Cordy’s brothers find their unfinished novel in Cordy’s room, steal it, and use it to make fun of the girls. The story isn’t really very well written because Chrys and Cordy are only thirteen years old. As readers will have noticed, there are spelling mistakes all through the story, and the girls also get mixed up about geography because they’re just focused on making the story exciting instead of really thinking about the setting. After their characters’ adventures on the Rhine, the girls send them floating in a boat to a tropical island with coconuts and palm trees because they don’t think about just how far away the tropics actually are. (Being shipwrecked on an island is also a common trope of vintage and antique children’s books, so they’ve probably read this type of story themselves. Just scroll through my lists of children’s books from the 1900s and earlier, and you’ll see what I mean.) Although Mr. Crump was laughing at the girls, too, he rescues the story from Cordy’s brothers and gives it back to them when he sees that the joke is going too far. However, the girls are somewhat dispirited, thinking that their story might be deeply flawed. At first, they don’t know if they really want to continue writing it, but in their desperation, they turn to the one person they know will be honest with them about what they’ve written and can not only tell them whether or not the story can be fixed but how to do it – their teacher, Miss Hickenlooper.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

Themes, Spoilers, and My Reaction

The story is one of those gentle, calm stories with a few funny episodes and some genuinely touching moments. Fans of slice-of-life historical books like the Betsy-Tacy series will like this book. It is a coming-of-age story for Chrys and Cordy, as they begin to develop new attitudes and come to a deeper understanding of themselves and other people and start thinking about the future. However, the girls’ adventures also teach other people around them some lessons.

One of the themes of the book involves how people let their personalities show. Although the girls were originally thought silly for their outlandish rag doll costumes at the party, they were more bold and creative than the girls who just wanted to look like everyone else. Even though their creativity wasn’t fully appreciated at first, it ends up working in their favor in the long run.

One of the biggest developments in the story is the relationship between the girls and their teacher, and the keys to that relationship are learning how to see other people as people, how to be open about showing their personal sides, and how to appreciate people with different personalities. The girls begin as thoughtless students, and their teacher is a strict disciplinarian with little patience for their goofing off, which is why the girls see her as their antagonist. However, the girls’ eventually realize that, through their mean and complaining poem, they’ve hurt their teacher’s feelings as much as she’s hurt theirs, maybe more. It leads them to see her in a new light, as a person and just just their jailer (the role of her alter ego in the girls’ story). The honest talks between the girls and their teacher not only helps the girls to become more thoughtful and considerate of others’ feelings but also show their teacher that the key to improving her teaching and developing a better relationship with her students is to be a little more personal with her students. She gradually learns that letting her students see her as a person with interesting life experiences earns their respect more than just acting like an unfeeling drill sergeant enforcing discipline. Inspired by the girls’ interest in her travels when she was younger, Miss Hickenlooper starts bringing postcards and souvenirs from her travels to class to show during geography lessons. The students are fascinated by her souvenirs and stories and start thinking of her as an a kind of intrepid explorer or sophisticated world traveler instead of a dull woman who focuses on dry memorization and gets mad at them for daydreaming in class. As she tries new ways of approaching her lessons and adding in personal experiences, Miss Hickenlooper takes on a whole new role in the children’s lives and sparks all of their imaginations. All of the students, not just Chrys and Cordy, start behaving better because they become genuinely interested in what Miss Hickenlooper has to say and show them. They don’t want to make her angry because she’ll stop telling the interesting stories if they don’t get their work done. Just because she’s gotten more interesting and personal doesn’t mean she’s gotten soft. Don’t be afraid to be interesting and different!

The girls never actually show Miss Hickenlooper their story because they’re a little embarrassed by what they’ve gotten wrong, but they ask her questions about some of the things that they put in their story to find out what’s right. They do end up finishing the story and giving Lester and Lynette a grand wedding, but they also acknowledge that they are getting too old and busy with other things to continue playing with dolls, even Lester and Lynette. They plan to put Lester and Lynette away for now as souvenirs of their childhoods. Later, they do tell Miss Hickenlooper about their novel, and while she hasn’t read it, she has the feeling that she knows what it’s like from knowing the girls and their writing. (The girls wrote about scenes from their novel when asked to describe places they know for their high school entrance exams.) She tells them that she appreciates their imaginations but that they should remember to focus on the real world around them and gaining real experiences to write about in the future.

There are also themes that focus on what growing up and maturity mean. Because the story focuses on one school semester in the girls’ lives, there are many questions that the book leaves unresolved about what happened in the girls’ later lives, but it seems that their lives turned out well, and they look back on their experiences with Lester and Lynette as a turning point when they really started growing up. Toward the end of the story, the girls begin appreciating some of the possibilities of life and the wider world that they never considered before. Through it all, there is also the girls’ constant friendship. At the very end, elderly Chrys writes a letter to elderly Cordy, thanking her for sending the dolls and reminding her of this special time in their lives.

The author of this book, Carol Ryrie Brink, was also a child around the time that Chrys and Cordy were children. There is a picture of her as a child above her biography on the dust jacket of the book. She is also the author of Caddie Woodlawn, which is better known than this book.

I love books that contain details about life in the past, and there are a lot of fun details included in this story. I’ve mentioned some above, but that’s just scratching the surface. At one point, Chrystal says that the only paper she has that’s good for painting pictures is the pieced of paper that separate pieces of Shredded Wheat in the box. The lined paper from the notebooks she uses for school isn’t as good. When she’s out of those pieces of paper, she has to eat more Shredded Wheat to get more. I don’t remember seeing any similar kind of paper in shredded wheat boxes in my lifetime, so this must be something that existed before modern packaging.

At the college dances, the girls have dance cards for the young men to write their names and initials in to secure spots for dances. There are also occasional mentions of food, and Chrys mentions having floating island pudding for dessert, which I’d never heard of before. It’s a kind of meringue that floats on a base of vanilla custard.