Josh and I enjoyed this cute story of children during summertime in the 1940's.

Here is a sweet, wholesome story of two city kids who move to the country and have adventures on a farm. They get into trouble (sliding down a freshly-painted bannister, eating the only pear on the pear tree because it smelled so good even though Daddy asked them not to), and they have fun escapades (playing dress-up with clothes found in the attic leads to discovering a treasure map, going to the circus for the first time). I think it's a safe read-aloud for young children - even though some of the references are old-fashioned by today's standards, my daughter could still identify with the children's adventures and moral dilemmas in the story and quite enjoyed the story.

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Read this aloud to my kindergarten class. They loved it and remembered each story of each chapter. No one writes sweet stories like Carolyn Haywood and this was no exception. There are lessons learned, consequences for foolishness, responsible parents, and adventures to make you laugh.

It was fine for reading aloud to the kids because I could edit out the culturally insensitive references to Native Americans, but I wouldn’t let the kids read it on their own. Besides that it was just a very simple old fashioned story about four kids playing together.

read with my first grade daughter. written in 1940 and very old fashioned but good. My daughter enjoyed it

El libro es una biografía de las lecturas de María Rosa Alonso comenta lo que leyó: poetas, cuadernos y temas relacionados con la cultura canaria.

Last Read May 2013

A low three stars. If you're looking for gentle novels for little ones featuring sweet childhoods of yesteryear, don't skip Haywood. Read "B" Is for Betsy or Little Eddie -- but don't read this. I found the writing style fairly dull and the characters bland. The adventures the children have are fairly tame (finding an old doll's treasure chest a great-great had buried in the yard long ago... getting a pony... riding a canal boat for 4th of July) and I would imagine it might capture the interest of the five or six year old crowd (my seven-year-old liked it okay, but it wasn't a favorite). As always, Haywood is sympathetic to children even when they make mistakes; I appreciate that lessons are learned but in an understanding manner. Do note it's very much a 1940s here: for example, six-year-old boys have knives and "guns" and are able to wander freely in the countryside on their own... in one chapter the children find a dead animal that someone had shot and left in the woods and bring it home to skin and make a doll's fur coat out of (one of the girls does say she thinks it's awful for anyone to shoot animals) but that plan doesn't pan out when the adults see it and realize it's a skunk.

Our family’s read aloud and we loved it as we were glued to the stories and wanted more. Each of us had our favorite chapters.