Not as good as the original, but a nice follow-up to the original Five Little Peppers.

This book did not get a lot of good reviews, and lots of people say it is racist, but remember that this book was written quite a while ago! It is ok if you didn't like it, this series isn't my favorite, but it is still good. I have read the first book and I think my favorite so far is the third one. So overall, I believe this book is pretty good.

Not as amazing as the first book, but related to the first book, so I had to read it.
Now for the other ten follow-ups!
*sigh*

Though this is considerably shorter than the first book, it lost none of the homey, fun qualities that made it enjoyable. I look forward to reading much more about the Peppers, Whitneys, and Kings.

I loved the first book when I was little, mostly because my mother had loved it as a child, and her mother. The first book is definitely the strongest; the others are fine, episodic Victorian family stories, with all the requisite didacticism, melodrama, and saccharine emotions. Just go in expecting that, and you'll be fine. This one, in particular, I just couldn't tell the children apart, not surprising since there were nine of them! Hard to make that many characters distinct, and Sidney tried, but the boys were still interchangeable. Also, the representation of the black cook in the first chapter is fairly offensive to modern sensibilities.

Come check out more of my reviews of clean wholesome books at:

https://gdonahue23.wixsite.com/books/...

Five years after the Five Little Peppers and How They Grew comes this exciting sequel. It was fun to learn what happened to the Peppers after they came to live with the Kings and how they adjusted from being poor to living in a high-class society. The characters turned out to be pretty much how I thought they would, but I am disappointed in Polly's friends. They are rude and mean to everyone, including each other, except for Polly. I thought that Polly would find better friends because she is so lovely to everyone, but she didn't. Five Little Peppers Midway was a pretty short book, but it was very delightful nonetheless. I recommend this book to all ages and think this is a definite must-read in the Five Little Peppers Series.

Things to mention: There are a robbery and some broken bones.

The five Pepper siblings have a lovely life living with Mr. King in his mansion. They are all studying hard, but Polly studies harder than anyone, practicing her music so she can be a music teacher someday. When Mr. King's cranky relation Mrs. Chatterton comes to stay, she makes trouble for the whole family. She is rude to Polly, treating her like a servant. She complains that Mr. King's grandchildren will learn dirty habits from the Pepper boys. Finally, she convinces little Phronsie to run errands for her, resulting in a disaster that affects the whole family.

This is such a sweet and wholesome story! I love all the cute little Pepper children. The writing is charming, and the story is simple but interesting. I especially liked hearing about the preparations for Mrs. Pepper's wedding. Mr. King wants a big wedding with a huge party for all their friends, but Polly insists that a smaller wedding would make her mother and her new stepfather happier. It's just like Polly to think of her mother's happiness before anybody else's.

I also liked that storyline about Phronsie and her two-hundred dolls! How any child could accumulate so many dolls is utterly ridiculous, and she says that she doesn't have time to play with them all anyway. I liked the scene where she gives them away to poor children, but her brothers can't believe it!

We love this series! This edition wasn't our favorite because it wasn't illustrated and my kids are still young. They love pictures. But with time they settled in and loved the story just as much as the first one. Sweet, charming, surprising, and a bit dramatic. There is so much to learn and discuss about the different life of the early 1900s. Such a great series!

I wasn't a fan of FIVE LITTLE PEPPERS AND HOW THEY GREW, but it was solid gold compared to this trainwreck. The best part of the book was the fantastically kind and understanding afterword by Ouisa Sebestyen. She graciously excused the book's trite plot and cartoonish characters with the idea that it was wishful thinking on the part of the writer.

More great tales from Polly and friends. The family continues to live with the King family, and none of the honeymoon has worn off. Grandpapa (Mr. King Sr) is still smitten with young Phronsie, now eight (I think...), but there is the possibility of a rival in his cousin's wife - but only because Phronsie is more amazing than anyone would really ever be and likes the mean old lady...or at least has managed to charm her. I would have failed as a Pepper. Polly is the center of most universes - all, perhaps. All the young ladies adore her, the young men pine after her, yet she remains completely herself and focused on music and her family. It can be a lot to take, their perfection, but I like it anyway.

Sidney's stories remind me of Alcott - though Alcott has a darkness that makes hers better, I think - and they were writing in at least a similar time frame. Alcott's stories often present her abolitionist convictions. Sidney has some clear sympathetic notes - Phronsie adores and is courteous and respectful to the older African American cook in the household, and a favorite of an older African American lady in the neighborhood. Polly is too. Others - perhaps to highlight further the amazingness of both girls - less so (Mr. King, included though he treats everyone who isn't Phronsie with the same tone).

Today's literature doesn't have this moral compass.

What a joy. I read some of Margaret Sidney's books years ago. It's so uplifting to read a truly good story. They remind me of George MacDonald's stories. A pure heart will seek the higher ground. I wish every child was inculcated with the desire to strive for their best and higher self.

I had never read this book before and did so only only out of curiosity. I'm sorry that I did. It has two truly racist scenes: one involving Phronsie and the King's black cook, and the other involving a black dollmaker who makes Phronsie a black rag doll (judging by the description, the doll is a sort of toy called a golliwog, and is therefore a caricature of black people). In both cases, the black people are ridiculously sentimental toward the little blonde girl--seriously, this was a trope in Victorian lit--despite being scolded for Phronsie's mistakes while cooking or being mocked for their kindness. Phronsie is also patronizing toward the cook, telling him that she doesn't mind that he's black.

(I really wanted him to say in a dry voice, "I'll always be black whether you mind or not," but that would involve calling one of the Peppers out on their bullshit, and that never happens in this book.)

This book starts to show one of Sidney's key problems: Writers Cannot Do Math. Although five years have supposedly elapsed since the end of the last book, when Polly was eleven, you would never know it. Ben is supposed to be seventeen, Polly sixteen, Joel thirteen, Davie twelve, and Phronsie nine...but Sidney is apparently incapable of remembering that the children have gotten older. Throughout the book, the kids talk as if they just moved into Mr. King's house a few months before. Phronsie is an especially egregious offender, continually climbing into Mr. King's lap, holding his hand on walks, and speaking as if she was still four.

Polly, who could at least be mischievous before, is now a prig who cannot even bear to hear a group of girls briefly laughing at one of their number. She lectures the girls about how horrible they are--and yes, it's clear that the girl, Cathie, is upset, but it's also clear that this is not the calamity that Polly believes it to be--and then informs them that she doesn't want to be friends with them any longer. Naturally, this sort of emotional blackmail not only works, Polly ends up being admired for it.

There is a lot of passive-aggressive behavior in this book. When Joel, who is not academic and would prefer to be working, tells his mother that he hates school because he doesn't understand the lessons and the older boys keep bullying him--all perfectly reasonable problems--his mother's response is to tell him that she'll have to give up a long-planned trip because after all, a boy who doesn't like school is clearly a baby who needs his mother. Basically, she guilts him into shutting up. Which doesn't eliminate Joel's problems, but somehow Mrs. Pepper seems to think that his difficulties stem from immaturity, not from attending a school that is all wrong for him. (Also, apparently bullying is only bad when girls do it.)

Sidney also recycles a plot point from the last book--burglars breaking into Mr. King's house and then then being caught in the act by a Pepper child. In the first book, it's Phronsie. In the second, it's Joel, who gets shot in the shoulder. (After a feverish night or two, he's fine. Nothing of lasting badness EVER happens to the Peppers.)

There is also a wedding that comes right out of left field. Mrs. Pepper weds Dr. Fisher from Badgertown (where they lived before moving into Mr. King's house). Never mind that he barely spoke to her before this, even when the kids were sick with the measles; now he has loved her for years upon years, as any straight man must, and can't wait to be her husband and the kids' stepfather. Oh, and his name is Adoniam...though it's rarely used. (Mrs. Pepper...er, Mrs. Fisher...has a habit of calling him "the little doctor," and he calls her "wife" or "my little wife," as if they honestly don't know each other's names.)

And finally, there is Cousin Eunice. Cousin Eunice is the closest thing that this anecdotal novel has to an antagonist, as she detests the Peppers and feels that they have Mr. King wrapped around their fingers. (Which, spoilers, they do. It's stated several times in the text that the kids know how to get Mr. King to agree to anything--have Phronsie ask him. He can't turn her down.) Cousin Eunice likewise feels that they are low, common gold diggers who are taking Mr. King for all they can get. She has a particular hatred for Polly, whom Eunice feels should keep her voice low and her head bowed in the presence of her betters. Eunice persists in treating Polly like a scullery maid, and Polly insists on martyring herself by doing all sorts of favors for the old woman because anything else would upset Mrs. Pepper/Fisher.

Frankly, I thought that Mrs. Pepper/Fisher needed to be upset. And to have her kids defy her and tell her that she was dead wrong. But of course that didn't happen.

Things come to a head when Cousin Eunice speaks ill of Polly's mother. Polly, for once, tells Eunice what she thinks of her, Eunice falls ill from shock, and Polly is guilt-stricken and eager to be more self-abasing than ever. Eunice naturally doesn't understand why Polly is so upset, Polly bursts into floods of tears (as usual--the Peppers are in dire need of antidepressants), and Eunice tells Polly to stop as she can't abide tears. Polly stops talking to her, at least for a while. But she doesn't stick it, because that would be too mean.

Also, Cousin Eunice tries to inveigle Phronsie into total obedience, thus teaching her to be the perfect maid by the time she's grown, which results in Phronsie accidentally locking herself in a spring-locked wardrobe for the better part of twenty-four hours. Phronsie ends up with brain fever, for some reason, and even after she wakes up, she doesn't tell anyone that Cousin Eunice told her to look for something in the wardrobe in the first place. By the end of the book, Cousin Eunice has unaccountably decided to leave Phronsie Pepper her entire fortune. This is never explained. It just happens.

The book ends with Mr. King, Jasper, Dr. Fisher, Mrs. Fisher, Polly, Phronsie, and Marian Whitney sailing off to Europe for a year.

As you can tell, I didn't care for it. I loathed the racism and the treacly sentimentality, the plotting was poor, and the characterization was patchy and inconsistent. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

I will be covering Five Little Peppers Abroad, however...for completion's sake. If the books don't improve by then, I won't bother reading the other nine.