Honey Bunch: Just a Little Girl

I was given several Honey Bunch books in 1964. Honey Bunch: Just a Little Girl was not among them. I have finally read it 48 years later and I think it's delightful.

Although my copy is a later printing, I doubt that it was revised from the 1923 edition because the huckster and Mr. Jenson's coal delivery men use horses. Mrs. Morton can buy salad vegetables from the huckster. There are butcher shops with sawdust on the floor. Mrs. Morton can have their Thanksgiving turkey delivered to their home. The grocery store has a boy to deliver groceries to homes, too. Mrs. Miller comes to the Morton house on Mondays to wash their clothes in laundry tubs, using a washboard. The whites are first boiled in a tin boiler on the laundry stove. At least show more she has a wringer so she doesn't have to wring the clothes by hand. Also, in these days before air conditioning, Honey Bunch has a screened porch off her bedroom where she can sleep on warm nights. (I would have loved to have one of those when I was a child in the sixties and it was a big deal that we had an electric fan in the living room.)

Gertrude 'Honey Bunch' Morton will have her 5th birthday early in December near the book. She's a nice little girl who lives in a nice house with both of her parents and her cat. Her father is a lawyer. There's not the slightest hint that he's anything but honest, which is refreshing.

Besides these glimpses into the everyday ways of a middle-class American family who lived in town, we get to follow the fun Honey Bunch has with the other girls on her street. Sure, a cute little dog wrecks havoc at her tea party. Honey Bunch gets into well-meaning mischief. Then there's the problem of forgetting a visitor's name when he could help Daddy save lots of money...

I remember making my first batch of cookies with tiny cookie cutters when I was 5. They didn't turn out well, but not for the same reason as Honey Bunch's first apple pie. Speaking of treats, wish I'd known the recipe for snow ice cream that Mrs. Miller teaches Honey Bunch and her best friend, Ida.

This is a gentle book. If you like children's series from the earlier part of the 20th century, you should enjoy this. show less

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