Ameliaranne Keeps School by Constance Ward, Illustrated by S.B. Pearse, 1940 This sweet series of books was published between 1920 and 1950, and features the kind and resourceful Ameliaranne Stiggins. Ameliaranne is often left in charge of her five younger siblings while her mother is at work as a washerwoman. Needless to say, things rarely go smoothly, but Ameliaranne always…
Happy Halloween to you! Here are the Bobbsey Twins putting the finishing touches to their pumpkin, taken from the vintage 1950s children’s book, The Bobbsey Twins at School by Laura Lee Hope. The Bobbsey Twins were two sets of fraternal twins: the older Nan and Bert and the younger Flossie and Freddie. Did you know, there were a whopping 72…
Cosy reads for autumn 🍁🍂 If you’re a fan of crisp autumn days, watching the birds and reading under a blanket with a brew, you are clearly a person after my own heart and will enjoy any of these. They’re all wonderfully comforting without being twee, and as good as a large cinnamon and oatmeal cookie and a pair of…
Paul Gallico wrote two of my favourite books EVER, and one of them is The Man Who was Magic. You’ve probably heard of Paul Gallico, even if you think you haven’t. If you frequent secondhand book stores (and you probably do, if you’re here), you’ll have seen some of his work. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a secondhand…
The Ultimate List of Must-read Children’s Books: The Top Five First, an apology. I posted my introduction post to the Ultimate List of Must-Read Children’s Books in July last year, and have left you hanging ever since. Shocking. I could give you a list of excuses and reasons as to why the blog has been much neglected this last year,…
So this post was supposed to have been finished in time for Halloween, but at the moment I’m about as hopelessly disorganised as Eglantine Price, so it’s a tad late. However, it was Bonfire Night last night, and Mary Norton’s Bedknob and Broomstick is nicely fitting for that too, so I feel like I’ve just about gotten away with it.…
Years ago, when I was a young and enthusiastic new student at university, I went along to the Freshers’ fair. The Freshers’ fair was a gathering of all the social groups organised by the students of the university, each one promising fun, frolics and a ready-made circle of friends if you joined up. Did I join the film society? The…
The Ultimate List of Must-read Children’s Books Many moons ago, I got to thinking that there were probably quite a lot of great children’s books that I had never read. But how to narrow it down? Which ones were the best? Which were the ‘must-reads’ that I shouldn’t possibly miss? So I set about looking for a list of the…
The Puffin Challenge So, as if my TBR wasn’t completely unmanagable already, I’ve decided to give myself the challenge of tracking down and reading the first 200 Puffin Story Books. I know, I know, it probably isn’t at all sensible for a number of reasons – I already have far too much to do, and it might prove difficult to…
For the last few years now, I have been feeling increasingly bah, humbug about Christmas. It just seems to get earlier and pushier every year, which frankly always makes me want to dig my heels and fold my arms. I’m usually busy pretending it isn’t happening until at least the first week in December, at which point I start to…