Nancy and Plum

Two orphaned sisters are sent to live at a boarding home run by the cruel and greedy Mrs. Monday, where they dream about someday having enough to eat and being able to experience a real Christmas.

This book was first published in 1952 and there are elements of it which are dated. I was a child in 1952 and so have no problem with it but today's children might need some explanations about lighting wood stoves and lanterns. The story is about two orphaned sisters, Nancy 10 and Plum 8. Their Uncle put them in a Boarding House for children in Heavenly Valley. The Boarding House is run by a Mrs. Monday and she takes the money for these thrown away children, uses the children as servants, feeds them on gruel and prunes, and takes even that away for the least provocation. She and her niece, Marybelle, dress well and eat well at the expense of their wards. The sisters are close and keep each other going by imagining, literally, a better life. This book is about values, about making do with next to nothing and helping others. Nancy and Plum help the other children at the Boarding house, and are helped by Old Tom, their teacher, Miss Waverly, the librarian, Miss Appleby and the Campbells. Plum is very funny and full of antics and high spirits. Her sister Nancy is quiet, very truthful, imaginative and dreamy. I enjoyed the fact that the girls were so independent and self-sufficient. Granted, even that does not make up for no parents. Perhaps the ending is a little overly happy but children seem to have no problem with that. ( )

This was my favorite book at about age 10. I can't count the number of times I took it out of the library. When it came time to buy a book for my 9-year-old grand-niece, I decided that it had to be this charming tale of sisters living in a boarding house run by the joyless Mrs. Monday. Nancy and Plum are a little too perfect to be real, of course, and the fairy-tale ending is a little too neat, but as I reread it this morning, I got a little misty. Betty MacDonald's humor shines through in some of the things Plum says, and there is more than one "lesson" to be learned: about kindness, loyalty, the value of reading and literature, fairness, the meaning of Christmas. It's not that easy to find, and the version that I finally unearthed for my grand-niece was published in England, so has British spelling and a couple of Briticisms ("sledge" instead of "sled"), but that in no way diminished the pleasure of the rediscovery. ( )

Really exciting book about two little orphans.
As a matter of fact I would like to check it out of the library and read it again. ( )