The Saturdays (1941)

The Melendys consist of 4 children: Rush, Mona, Randy and Oliver, one housekeeper, Cuffy, and one largely busy with his own life Dad. The mother is dead. Action takes pace in 1941 in a brownstone on 57th St. in Manhattan.


The chldren, aged 13, 12, 10 and 6, receive an allowance every week. They decide to pool their resources on rainy saturdays so that each child gets a chance to use the whole amount on whatever she likes. With permission from the father, the children may leave the house on their own so long as they return by 5:30 for supper.

Saturday 1 Randy goes to an art gallery to look at French paintings, runs into Mrs. Oliphant, a family acquaintance, who treats her to tea and stories.

Saturday 2 Rush goes ot the opera, and finds a dog.

Saturday 3 Mona gets her day of beauty.

Saturday 4 Oliver goes to the circus

Saturday 5 there is a picnic, with gas poisoning back home

Saturday 6 tea with Mrs. Oliphant and an invitation for the summer

Saturday The Lighthouse for the summer. Renovations to the house.

Just about the most charming book ever. ( )

Such a fantastic, classic, children's book. Funny that I only read it for the first time at age 31. When I was a kid, I really enjoyed and actually sought out books that took place in New York City. I found it so thrilling to read about city kids and their adventures taking the subway and walking around Central Park. This story is so sweet and funny and really, really well written.
I can't wait to read more Elizabeth Enright. ( )

6/11 Re-read. I don't know if I think this book is practically perfect because I know it by heart, because I love each and every one of the characters, or because the writing is stellar. Maybe all of those things. Enright was a genius, and it makes me sad when people have never heard of her.

This time through, the Isaac-the-dog storyline seemed somehow more touching than usual. I love Mona's sadder-but-wiser moment, and Oliver's adventure. But my favorite favorite is the story of Gabrielle and the Gypsies. But Willy Sloper on opera is classic, and close to my heart.

Seriously, just read this book, okay?

1/10 Re-read of an old favorite. I love it, but not as much as I love the Gone-Away books. It's somewhat dated, but not in a painful way. It's particularly odd to read about a family who lives in New York City who have a house and a yard and who are decidedly not rich.

This book feels less like a whole book to me now and more like an introduction to the family who one comes to adore over the next two books. It's a capsule, a moment, and a series of character sketches. All of the characters are interesting but it's the barest hint of what comes next, how we come to know them in The Four Story Mistake and Then There Were Five. I will confess publicly to having no memory whatsoever of Spiderweb For Two, though I remember carrying it home from the library in my daisy-adorned bicycle basket.

I'm impressed with the sheer staying power Enright's images have- so many things I remembered as crisply as if I'd read them for the first time last week. Who can forget Randy on the trapeze in the Office? Or Oliver at the circus? Cuffy's teeth in a glass? The vignettes are very vivid, and in a lot of ways I think this book is a love poem to a vanished New York. ( )

The Saturdays is one of those books that I read over and over again when I was younger. Like Swallows and Amazons, it had a family doing adventurous things that I would never have the chance to, partly because of the accidents of location. (Believe me, I tried to make up for it–remind me to tell you how I made my sister pretend to be Nancy and Peggy Blackett with me.) Anyway, the Melendys were always an enchanting family. Despite being the oldest, and therefore having a great deal of sympathy for Mona, it was Randy I always loved the best.

The Melendys’ story continues on from The Saturdays through Four Story Mistake, And Then There were Five, and Spiderweb for Two. But here we first make the acquaintance of Mona, Rush, Randy, and Oliver. Then there is the supporting cast: Father, Cuffy (housekeeper), Isaac (the dog), and Mrs. Elephant. I always loved the idea of the book too: the children pool their pocket money and then each have one Saturday to do something delightful.

The Melendys aren’t cookie-cutter children, by any stretch of the imagination. They do things that turn out to be disastrous (and disastrously funny), all with the best intentions. But they are also one of the literary families whom it is a delight to know. I hope that someday I can introduce my own children to them. ( )

From Publishers Weekly
Welcome Back! Old favorites are being reissued in force this fall. Elizabeth Enright's Melendy Quartet follows siblings Mona, Rush, Miranda (Randy, for short) and Oliver. First published in 1941, The Saturdays kicks off the series and centers on the foursome's Independent Saturday Afternoon Adventure Club (I.S.A.A.C.), an allowance-endowed venture formed so one lucky Melendy can enjoy a solo sojourn each week. In The Four-Story Mistake (1942) the family moves from their city brownstone to the country; Then There Were Five (1944) describes what happens when the siblings befriend an orphan; and in Spiderweb forTwo: A Melendy Maze (1951), when everyone else leaves for school, Randy and Oliver are left to solve a mystery. The author's charming pen-and-inks punctuate all four volumes ( )