On This Page
Description
School is out for the summer! Betsy and her friends can't wait to run races and climb trees. There are more good times ahead as Betsy and Billy prepare to sell a strange sort of lemonade and try to fry an egg on the sidewalk. The summerhouse in Betsy's big yard is everyone's favorite place to play until the neighbors build a swimming pool. Betsy and her friends quickly form a swimming club. But a sign on the gate says KEEP OUT. Will their plans for a happy summer go down the drain?Tags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
A very gentle book. Almost timeless. Just a tiny bit sexist... no more than Walmart girls' and boys' departments are now. Funny, but with good lessons. I would have loved it when I was a young child in the 60s. A little younger and sweeter than Beverly Cleary's classics.
I adored the Betsy books when I was a kid, and I recently re-read the three listed here. I smiled the whole way through (which probably made fellow ferry passengers think I was insane). There's just something so comforting about these books for me--the wholesome 1940s values, the neighborhood really being like one big family, the general goodwill and lack of anything bad every happening. I still adore the Betsy books, but they're never going to be popular again--kids today aren't going to have the slightest clue what they're about. I mean, finding a woman and two kids stranded on a highway in a blizzard is one thing--but taking them home to live with your family for a week until help can arrive? The childless family that puts in a pool, show more and invites all the neighborhood kids over to swim in it? The 1940s must have been such a pleasant time to be a kid... show less
Betsy and her friends, Billy, Ellen and the rest, have a busy and delightful summer during the 1950s. From selling "Razburyaid"--that is, lemon, prune, and rasberry-jam-ade--to forming a "shwimming" club, their adventures and misadventures are delightful to follow and just as sweet as they are predictable.
--Catherine
--Catherine
Ratings
Members
- Recently Added By
Author Information
57+ Works 6,954 Members
Author and illustrator Carolyn Haywood was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on January 3, 1898. She graduated from the Philadelphia High School for Girls and the Philadelphia Normal School in 1922. After teaching one year at the Friends Central School, she received a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. While there, she studied show more portrait painting for three years, spent one year studying in Europe, and came back to study illustration. Her first children's book, When I Grow Up, was published in 1931. She is best known for her books in the Betsy and Eddie series. The first book, B Is for Betsy, was published in 1939. Her other works include Snowbound with Betsy, Hello, Star, and Eddie's Friend, Boddles. Besides writing and illustrating her own books, she also painted children's portraits and painted murals in banks and schools in the Philadelphia area. She received the distinction of a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania in 1969 and received the Pennsylvania Librarians Outstanding Pennsylvania Author Award in 1970. She stopped illustrating her own books in the 1970's, but started writing adult books including Book of Honor, a collection of biographies of famous Pennsylvanian women. She died of a stroke on January 11, 1990 at the age of 92. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Awards
Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Betsy's Busy Summer
- Original title
- Betsy's Busy Summer
- Original publication date
- 1956
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, Children's Books
- DDC/MDS
- 813.54 — Literature & rhetoric American literature in English American fiction in English 1900-1999 1945-1999
- LCC
- PZ7 .H31496 .B — Language and Literature Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Juvenile belles lettres
Statistics
- Members
- 200
- Popularity
- 163,085
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.95)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 5
- ASINs
- 5
