My friend Faith Elizabeth Hough (who blogs HERE) and I decided to create a fun reading challenge called Vintage Kidlit Summer. If you missed any of the details on how this challenge works, just go here and you can catch up! Basically, we’re doing 12 categories over 12 weeks, and each week has its own theme. All you have to do is choose a vintage/classic book that fits that week’s theme, read it, and share about it! You can write about it on your blog, or you can post your thoughts on Instagram (or Twitter) as well, by using the hashtag #vintagekidlitsummer. And if you’re in need of recommendations for each week’s theme, check out this blog post!

Our tenth week’s theme was Adventures of Longer Ago, and for this theme I got a little creative and chose to re-read Magic Elizabeth by Norma Kassirer. I hadn’t read it since the first time I discovered this story in 2018, and I was in the mood to read it this past week. It’s a bit of a time-travel story, where our heroine gets to experience the adventures lived by another little girl in 1899.

Magic Elizabeth opens with a great atmospheric scene where Sally is sent to stay with her great-aunt until her parents can return from a business trip. It’s pouring rain, and Sally isn’t at all sure about going to stay in the grand old house. But she is soon fascinated by a picture of a girl who used to live in the house back at the turn of the century, and most of all, she’s interested in the lovely doll that the girl used to have. She soon learns that the doll  went missing back in 1899 and sets out to try to find her. But then the strangest things begin to happen …

It’s a wonderful, gentle story for those who like time travel stories but want something non-scary. The best part of all is how Sally overcomes her initial fears of the house and grows to care about her aunt, who seems gruff at first but soon grows interested in Sally’s adventure.

(P.S. The illustrations by Joe Krush are an added bonus!)

What did you read for the Vintage Kidlit Summer this week? Let me know in the comments!

I’m 4,000 words into my latest work-in-progress, a novella set in 1911 England. (A bit of trivia: my first historical story, written at age seven, was actually set in 1911 England. But there, the similarities of the two tales end.) 🙂

My last novel, entitled A Heart’s Memory, was set in a small English village on the cusp of World War II. I finished writing the first draft about a month ago, but I discovered that I wasn’t quite ready to leave England behind yet! So I chose this awe-inspiring nation as the setting for the novella I’m currently writing, which is called The Mistress of Half Moon Hall.

I polled my followers on Twitter to name the title of my novella, but it ended up tied between Half Moon Hall and Melody Hall. I ended up choosing the former:

Which estate name do you all like best? 🙂 The title of my new book will be “The Mistress of ______.” #amwriting #workinprogress

— Anna Rose Johnson (@GymnasticsRosie) August 9, 2018

Writing this story – which is currently feeling like a mash-up of Jane of Lantern Hill, Celia’s House, and Caldicott Place – is shaping up to be a perfect excuse to read through my old British issues of Victoria. This luscious, old-fashioned magazine has given me so many ideas for novels over the years, and the combination of sparkling photography and remarkable writing makes each issue very re-readable.

I’m so excited to continue working on this story, which will hopefully be available as an ebook this fall! (Or should I say ‘autumn’? After all, that sounds more British.) 🙂

CURRENTLY READING: A Tangled Web by L.M. Montgomery (This has made me laugh out loud more than once already!)

JUST FINISHED READING: Magic Elizabeth by Norma Kassirer (A middle grade novel from the 1960s featuring a lonely girl, time travel, and a mysterious old house. The story is a bit slow, but the writing is rich and beautiful.)

PLANNING TO READ NEXT: The House on the Cliff by D.E. Stevenson, Mine for Keeps by Jean Little, and Beany Malone by Lenora Mattingly Weber