Parsley Sage, Rosemary, and Time

This is a fun children's book from 1975. Young Rosemary, the daughter of uptight parents, stays with her eccentric Aunt Sibby in Maine. While exploring the overgrown garden at Aunt Sibby's house she discovers a curiosity which transports her back to early 18th century Maine. Adventures soon follow...

I enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next installment, The Magical Cupboard. Some words are unique to the time it was written/for American audiences, but otherwise the author has a nice style of writing. It transports you into another world and there are some lovely black and white illustrations to accompany the text.

A much-beloved book from my childhood. Some of you who have read this might not know about its sequel, The Magical Cupboard (see my review). It's been such a long time since I've reread it, though, that I'll have to summarize the plot using the blurb from the inside cover of the 1975 Athenium first edition:

Parsley Sage was an elderly cat. Rosemary was ten-year-old Rosemary Walpole. And the word "Time" that Rosemary discovered cut into a moss-covered stone in her aunt's old herb garden in Main should have been spelled "Thyme," because of the herb growing around it--or so Rosemary thought until she picked a sprig. Not only did it have a peculiar taste; it had a most astonishing power over Time itself. Everything but Rosemary was stopped show more motionless. flies hung in mid-flight, a measuring worm paused in mid-reach. Not a leaf rustled. Every time she touched the "thyme," time stopped!

Rosemary, until then a rather unimaginative, proper little girl, was plunged into an extraordinary adventure in spite of herself. She was thrust back into the eighteenth century. Who would have thought that a cat could grow younger before it got older? Or that Rosemary would be accused as "an imp of the devil" and popped into jail, along with old Goody Cakebread who was suspected of witchcraft? And who could have guessed that the puzzle she met in eighteenth century Bennickport, Maine,would be solved by a funny old photograph? show less

I seem to recall that the only good thing about this book was the title, and even that was sort of forced. I mean, yeah, sure, someone is going to name her cat "Parsley Sage."

Lovely. A great beginner's Time Travel story, with some history of witches of Salem, too.

I loved this book as a kid! One of my favorite books from that era.