Spring is here at last in the northwoods, with the grass finally starting to grow and all the birds returning. There’s still a tiny bit of snow here and there, but not much. And now I’m back to writing in my studio, Golden Moon Cottage. It’s not insulated and was buried under snow for four months! But now it’s accessible again, and it’s a joy to get to write in there again.

My reading has been rather sporadic so far this year, but April has been a better reading month. A few recent favorites: Ginnie and the Wedding Bells by Catherine Woolley, which was a total delight; Coal Camp Girl by Lois Lenski, and The Ghost Rock Mystery by Mary C. Jane.

I also started re-reading Elizabeth Enright’s The Four-Story Mistake, which I often read in the spring! (Even though it mostly takes place in the fall, LOL!)

I’ve been reading a chapter of Gladys Taber’s Stillmeadow Daybook each month, and this month I’m reading (of course!) the April chapter. Taber’s writing is soothing, gentle, and witty, and it’s perfect for perusing a few pages before bed.

The weather should be perfect for front porch reading soon! I have fond memories from last spring/summer reading What Katy Did Next by Susan Coolidge, The Well-Wishers by Edward Eager, The Growing Summer by Noel Streatfeild, and many others. What else will I read this spring? We will soon find out!

I’d love some book recommendations for spring, if you have any! Any fun vintage books or sweet new middle grade novels would be especially appreciated!

Today I’m sharing a list of some of my favorite vintage MG novels that don’t get discussed much, but I love them and hope you enjoy them too! These are not always easy to find, but they’re worth looking for. 🙂

• The Golden Name Day by Jennie Lindquist: Although it’s a 1950s Newbery novel, this one isn’t talked about much, perhaps because it was out of print for decades until Purple House Press released a new edition! I love the tidbits of Swedish culture in this one (I have a lot of Swedish heritage and enjoy reading about it).
• Maggie Rose: Her Birthday Christmas by Ruth Sawyer: It’s a charming gem of a novel, one that I have recommended so many times but never see discussed, possibly because it also was out of print for decades and has yet to be re-released. Maggie Rose is set in Maine, features a hardworking young heroine determined to make life better for herself and her family, and has the happiest ending you could imagine. What more could you want in a book?
• Jill’s Story by Jean Fiedler: I am not sure I’ve ever seen anyone else discuss this book about a family vacationing at Cape Cod for the summer. Jill longs to become a writer, and this story inspired me a lot when I was ten years old and daydreaming of being an author!
• The Sea Is All Around by Elizabeth Enright: The only Enright novel currently not in print, this is more slow-paced than some of her other books, but the rich language and evocative setting is brilliant. I’m currently rereading this right now!
• Family Sabbatical by Carol Ryrie Brink: There are two very sweet books in this series, but I just re-read Sabbatical last November, so I’ll recommend it especially. This one follows the Ridgeway family to France for a year, and there are some delightful adventures!
• Caldicott Place by Noel Streatfeild: There are so many excellent Streatfeild stories but this one is great if you’re looking for one of her non-theater stories (there is some ballet, of course! but it’s not a big aspect of the book).
• Mine for Keeps by Jean Little: I love so many of Jean Little’s books, but this was her first novel and it’s such a good one. And the best part? It’s easy to find, because Puffin reprinted it just two years ago!
• Time at the Top by Edward Ormondroyd: This is a fantastic story if you’re looking for light fantasy–it’s a time travel tale, set in both “present-day” 1960s and the 1880s. I won’t go into too many spoilers, but when a girl goes into an elevator in her apartment building, it whisks her off to a time much different than her own …

I hope you find a great read from this list! 🙂 What are you reading right now? I’d love to hear!

This post originally appeared on my Patreon.

Surprise! I’m doing another one of my Patreon book clubs in July, and this time we’re reading Theater Shoes by Noel Streatfeild!

Here are the details:

⦁ It’s free! And it starts July 1st, but you can sign up now.

⦁ It’s hosted on my Patreon! You can subscribe to my Patreon for free and I will make all the book club content available for everyone. 🙂

⦁ This book is available not only in the US but also in the UK (and if you get the UK Puffin edition like the one shown here, it has the full unabridged text)! It’s also an audiobook.

⦁ I’ll be doing posts about the book, and anyone can leave comments! There won’t be official discussion questions to answer–we will only be listing the things we enjoyed in the book and chatting about that!

⦁ There’s no set schedule for reading: all you have to do is read the book whenever you want to during July and leave comments with your thoughts.

So if this sounds good to you, head over to my Patreon and sign up! I can’t wait to discuss this story. 🙂

Will you be joining the book club? Leave a comment!

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! 

I can’t believe we’ve reached our last week of the challenge, though! There obviously is still time to catch up (for example, you can do this challenge on your own whenever you like!) and then enjoy the archive of blog posts afterward.

Our eleventh week’s theme was Little-Known Newbery, and for this theme I re-read The Golden Name Day by Jennie D. Lindquist. What a wonderful novel! It won a Newbery Honor in 1956, and actually was out of print for some time. I believe that Purple House Press recently brought it back into print, though! My copy is an ex-library edition.

Here’s what I wrote about this book on Instagram a while ago: 

This is such a darling book! Set at the turn of the 20th century, it follows the adventures of a little girl named Nancy, who goes to live with a big Swedish family when her mother is ill. It’s one of the few children’s books I’ve read that explores Swedish culture/traditions (which I love because I’m of Swedish descent). I recently read the sequel, THE LITTLE SILVER HOUSE, which was also a lovely book.

My name day is December 9!

I’ve been reading the lovely Cobble Street Cousins chapter books by Cynthia Rylant lately, and I was struck by how the style of those books reminds me of The Golden Name Day. The elegant yet down-to-earth prose, the sweet adventures of a group of girls, the flowers and the parties … I love the similarities!

Much of the book revolves around Nancy’s wish to have her own Name Day celebration, but she can’t have one because the name Nancy doesn’t appear in the Swedish almanac. Eventually Grandma Benson has to remind Nancy to think about other people’s problems instead of focusing so much on her own small dilemma. By doing this, Nancy discovers new friends and learns an important lesson.

The thing I love most about this book–even more than the gentle humor, the Swedish culture, and the happy ending–is that this is one of the few stories that (for me) truly captures what it feels like to be a child, in such a vivid way. For example, there is a scene where Nancy is reading a mysterious fairy-tale on the staircase, and when the sun shines through the stained-glass window above the stairs, it reflects a rainbow onto the pages of her book, creating an enchanting moment that she remembers forever. (And tries to recreate over and over again.) This small vignette feels so extraordinarily real to me.

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

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!

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 fifth week’s theme was A Book in a Series, and for this theme I chose to read Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine by Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin, which was recommended by Faith for this category. I had never read it before, but I enjoyed it so much and I’m looking forward to checking out the other books in the series (Homework Machine appears to be the third book in the series).

This book follows Danny Dunn and his two best friends, Irene and Joe, as they try to use a sophisticated new computer to help them with their homework. They give all the information from their textbooks to the computer and program it to understand their homework test questions, and then the computer provides them with perfectly typed homework pages. Their teacher isn’t quite sure what to think at first, but after some brainstorming with Danny’s mother, she assigns them more advanced homework. But of course, this doesn’t stop them either—until an act of sabotage does!

What a fun book! I loved the conversation that Danny has with his teacher about whether or not the computer is merely a tool like a typewriter.

It’s interesting to think about how different technology was in the 1950s, when this book was published. The amazing computer in the story is enormous, not small and compact! The whole premise reminds me of 1960s-70s Kurt Russell movies, only a bit less fantastical. 🙂 

So glad I read this one, and I can’t wait to read the other books in the Danny Dunn series!

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

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 fourth week’s theme was Everyday Adventures, and for this theme I chose to read Katie Kittenheart by Miriam E. Mason. It’s from 1957, and my copy is a somewhat battered Scholastic paperback. (Really, is there anything much more fun than old Scholastic books? I have found so many wonderful stories in those editions.)

Katie Kittenheart is the story of 10-year-old Katie Kattenhart, who is often informed that her kindhearted nature ends up causing problems (such as when she wants to adopt a homeless kitten that the housekeeper most definitely does not want). But over the course of the book, Katie realizes that her tenderness is a blessing, and others in her life come to realize this too. I like the fact that Katie loves helping people, and that’s what she most wants to do when she grows up–she would like to be a teacher or a nurse. 

This book was contemporary to the 1950s and features a very endearing heroine, which was delightful. I hadn’t read this book since I was ten years old. It’s a very quiet and gentle story, which I appreciate—I just might have preferred (both then and now) a bit more happening in the plot. 🙂 

As far as “everyday adventures” go, this book fit the bill perfectly. Even when more unusual things happen to Katie (and they do!), they fit within the very ordinary framework of the setting.

I’d been hoping to re-read this for a while now, and I’m glad I did!

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

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 third week’s theme was Magical Adventures, and for this theme I chose to read Half Magic by Edward Eager. First published in 1954, this is the first book in the Tales of Magic series that have been a joy to several generations of readers.

I don’t typically read an entire book in one day—in fact, I’d say that’s extraordinarily rare for me, unless it’s something like a picture book—but when I first read Half Magic, that’s exactly what I did. And I also don’t typically read fantasy—it’s not my favorite genre and it’s hard for me to find books I love that also contain magical elements. But I wouldn’t really categorize Half Magic (or any of the Edward Eager books) as fantasy … they’re more just stories of ordinary children who happen to find some magical object.

Such is the case in Half Magic, when four siblings find an ancient coin that grants their wishes by halves. It takes them a while to discover the coin’s secret, but when they do—well, then the fun can begin!

Of course, in Eager’s stories, the kids never quite get what they bargain for when they’re attempting their extravagant, wild, and sometimes frivolous wishes. But in the end, they always try to do the right thing and use the magic to help someone. I wish I could tell you how this happens in Half Magic, but that would be giving spoilers!

One of my favorite chapters in Half Magic is when one of the children—Jane—loses her temper and wishes that she belonged to another family. The wish is granted, but growing up as someone else isn’t what Jane had hoped it would be. I also love the scene when the children’s mother makes a wish on the coin, not realizing that it’s magical.

The reason why I tried these books in the first place is because my copy of The Penderwicks said that it was perfect for fans of Noel Streatfeild, Elizabeth Enright, and Edward Eager. Having read (and loved!) books by the first two of those authors, I knew I had to try Edward Eager. I vividly remember my delight when I opened the book and realized that it was set in the 1920s. A historical book with gentle, humorous magic! What a delight!

And then of course, I had to go read Magic by the Lake when I was finished re-reading Half Magic. I couldn’t resist!

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