author - "Amy Walton"
This is another story by Amy Walton about life in the English countryside towards the end of the nineteenth century. It is a sequel to "The Hawthorns", except that, for some reason, the name has become "Hawthorne".
On the whole the principal dramatis personae, the Hawthorne household, are unchanged. The additions are Miss Barnicroft, an eccentric old lady from the village; Kettles, an impoverished child from Nearminster, the cathedral city close by; Dr Budge, a learned old man in the village, who takes on the grounding of one of the boys in Latin; Mrs Margetts, who had spent her life in the Hawthorne family's employment as a children's nurse; the Dean of the Cathedral and his family, particularly Sabine, who is the same age as Pennie; and Dr Budge's pet Jackdaw.
There is no reason why a child of today should not read this story and profit by it. They will perhaps be surprised to find how much more civilised life was a hundred years ago and more, than it is today
This charming little book was expressly written for younger children, aged about 11 or 12. There's plenty in the book for children of that age to enjoy, but older children might be a bit impatient.
Susan and her family live in London, but she has a brother of ten years old who has a nasty chronic illness, and is bed-ridden. His family are advised to take him for the rest of the winter to a warmer climate, so his mother takes him to Algiers. During this interlude Susan is to go to stay with a great-aunt who lives at Ramsgate, a small town by the sea in the eastern part of Kent, the county of England to the south-east of London.
There are several other girls staying with the aunt, two of them a bit older than Susan, grown-up, almost, while Sophia Jane is Susan's age. Sophia Jane appears to have what we would now call behavioural problems, but during the course of the book we learn to see her in a better light, and it is Susan who can be not altogether excellent.
Both little girls learn a lot about life from each other.
Intertwined with the story are the affairs of a charming French brother and sister.
This is a nice little book, which would certainly appeal to its intended audience of eleven- or twelve-year-old little girls. Its background is distinctly late Victorian, but nevertheless a modern child would find nothing it could not relate to other than the more pleasant general atmosphere of those days.
A gently moving story for girls. Anna is aged fifteen, and her father needs to go abroad on business for a while. Her mother had died before Anna could remember. Anna is to go to Dornton to stay while her father is away, and she is looking forward to meeting her relatives, including her grandfather, who had been estranged from her father for many years.
The grandfather is living quietly in a small house "with no servants" and has a job as organist in Dornton church. He is well-known as an excellent teacher of music, especially the violin.
Frank thinks life at home is a bit hard, as his father expects so much of him, so he runs away. After several adventures he finds himself in a very awkward situation, as the young companion he had fallen in with turns out to be a thief. Luckily the thief's victim realises that Frank is not a bad lad after all, makes no charge against him, and even takes him home. So all is well that ends well.
For the most part the other stories have a moral to tell, but they are all charming, and you will enjoy reading to them or listening to them.
Mrs White had had several children before the birth of this one, but they had all died. This makes her quite determined to make sure that this one survives. She was telling a visitor that she thought of calling the baby Annie, in honour of the visitor, but she had just been saying how much she loved white lilacs, and her husband had brought a branch of it over from a nearby village. So the visitor said, call her Lilac White, as there were already too many Annie Whites in the village. Unfortunately the father dies shortly after, and the mother has to bring the child up on her own.
Now she is twelve, and a pretty child. A visiting artist asks if he may put her in one of his pictures. Lilac goes off with her cousin Agnetta, who believes she needs a new hair-do. Needless to say, the result is not attractive to the artist, who now refuses to put her in the picture.
Other characters in the story are Uncle Joshua, who is a good and well-loved man, and Peter, probably in his late teens, who is a farm worker, well-intentioned but clumsy. A big event in the village is May Day, and there is rivalry among the girls about which of them shall be Queen of the May. It is Lilac. Yet that very day her mother is taken ill and dies. She is taken to their home by a farmer and his wife, and taught the dairymaid arts such as butter and cheese making. In those days a girl such as Lilac would hope to be taken into domestic service and trained up to such high levels as house-keeper or cook. Lilac has some opportunities--will she or won't she take them up? A lovely book that takes us back to long-gone days in the pastoral England of the 1850s.
Some young children, whose parents are working in India, are being brought up by an aunt in a small English village called Fieldside. The aunt lets them have a lot of freedom, but there are some "Rules of the House" which must be obeyed. When the cat has some lovely kittens, one black, on white, and one grey, they are not allowed to keep them, because there would then be too many cats than the Rules allowed, but they are given three weeks in which to find homes for them.
How these homes are found, and what happens then to the kittens, is the subject of this book. As always with Amy Walton's books, reading them gives you a feeling for the happy days in our English countryside, now long past, that existed at the end of the nineteenth century.
In the first of the stories a young girl-child is stolen by the gypsies. Yet they decide to give the child up, and they leave it in an out-house owned by a young clergyman. The latter isn't very pleased at this, but his wife certainly is, and they bring the child up.
After a few years, and in a particularly tense moment, the true mother is found. An agreement is reached, whereby the child is shared.
As with Amy Walton short stories, there is not only a well-told tale but also a moral.
This is another story by Amy Walton about life in the English countryside towards the end of the nineteenth century. It is a sequel to "The Hawthorns", except that, for some reason, the name has become "Hawthorne".
On the whole the principal dramatis personae, the Hawthorne household, are unchanged. The additions are Miss Barnicroft, an eccentric old lady from the village; Kettles, an impoverished child from Nearminster, the cathedral city close by; Dr Budge, a learned old man in the village, who takes on the grounding of one of the boys in Latin; Mrs Margetts, who had spent her life in the Hawthorne family's employment as a children's nurse; the Dean of the Cathedral and his family, particularly Sabine, who is the same age as Pennie; and Dr Budge's pet Jackdaw.
There is no reason why a child of today should not read this story and profit by it. They will perhaps be surprised to find how much more civilised life was a hundred years ago and more, than it is today
This charming little book was expressly written for younger children, aged about 11 or 12. There's plenty in the book for children of that age to enjoy, but older children might be a bit impatient.
Susan and her family live in London, but she has a brother of ten years old who has a nasty chronic illness, and is bed-ridden. His family are advised to take him for the rest of the winter to a warmer climate, so his mother takes him to Algiers. During this interlude Susan is to go to stay with a great-aunt who lives at Ramsgate, a small town by the sea in the eastern part of Kent, the county of England to the south-east of London.
There are several other girls staying with the aunt, two of them a bit older than Susan, grown-up, almost, while Sophia Jane is Susan's age. Sophia Jane appears to have what we would now call behavioural problems, but during the course of the book we learn to see her in a better light, and it is Susan who can be not altogether excellent.
Both little girls learn a lot about life from each other.
Intertwined with the story are the affairs of a charming French brother and sister.
This is a nice little book, which would certainly appeal to its intended audience of eleven- or twelve-year-old little girls. Its background is distinctly late Victorian, but nevertheless a modern child would find nothing it could not relate to other than the more pleasant general atmosphere of those days.
A gently moving story for girls. Anna is aged fifteen, and her father needs to go abroad on business for a while. Her mother had died before Anna could remember. Anna is to go to Dornton to stay while her father is away, and she is looking forward to meeting her relatives, including her grandfather, who had been estranged from her father for many years.
The grandfather is living quietly in a small house "with no servants" and has a job as organist in Dornton church. He is well-known as an excellent teacher of music, especially the violin.
Frank thinks life at home is a bit hard, as his father expects so much of him, so he runs away. After several adventures he finds himself in a very awkward situation, as the young companion he had fallen in with turns out to be a thief. Luckily the thief's victim realises that Frank is not a bad lad after all, makes no charge against him, and even takes him home. So all is well that ends well.
For the most part the other stories have a moral to tell, but they are all charming, and you will enjoy reading to them or listening to them.
Mrs White had had several children before the birth of this one, but they had all died. This makes her quite determined to make sure that this one survives. She was telling a visitor that she thought of calling the baby Annie, in honour of the visitor, but she had just been saying how much she loved white lilacs, and her husband had brought a branch of it over from a nearby village. So the visitor said, call her Lilac White, as there were already too many Annie Whites in the village. Unfortunately the father dies shortly after, and the mother has to bring the child up on her own.
Now she is twelve, and a pretty child. A visiting artist asks if he may put her in one of his pictures. Lilac goes off with her cousin Agnetta, who believes she needs a new hair-do. Needless to say, the result is not attractive to the artist, who now refuses to put her in the picture.
Other characters in the story are Uncle Joshua, who is a good and well-loved man, and Peter, probably in his late teens, who is a farm worker, well-intentioned but clumsy. A big event in the village is May Day, and there is rivalry among the girls about which of them shall be Queen of the May. It is Lilac. Yet that very day her mother is taken ill and dies. She is taken to their home by a farmer and his wife, and taught the dairymaid arts such as butter and cheese making. In those days a girl such as Lilac would hope to be taken into domestic service and trained up to such high levels as house-keeper or cook. Lilac has some opportunities--will she or won't she take them up? A lovely book that takes us back to long-gone days in the pastoral England of the 1850s.
Some young children, whose parents are working in India, are being brought up by an aunt in a small English village called Fieldside. The aunt lets them have a lot of freedom, but there are some "Rules of the House" which must be obeyed. When the cat has some lovely kittens, one black, on white, and one grey, they are not allowed to keep them, because there would then be too many cats than the Rules allowed, but they are given three weeks in which to find homes for them.
How these homes are found, and what happens then to the kittens, is the subject of this book. As always with Amy Walton's books, reading them gives you a feeling for the happy days in our English countryside, now long past, that existed at the end of the nineteenth century.
In the first of the stories a young girl-child is stolen by the gypsies. Yet they decide to give the child up, and they leave it in an out-house owned by a young clergyman. The latter isn't very pleased at this, but his wife certainly is, and they bring the child up.
After a few years, and in a particularly tense moment, the true mother is found. An agreement is reached, whereby the child is shared.
As with Amy Walton short stories, there is not only a well-told tale but also a moral.