Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

  This isn't actually a review of Sue Barton, or any of Helen Dore Boylston's other books. Instead, I wanted to talk about the author, and what I discovered when I read her bio in the new Kindle editions of the classic Sue Barton nursing books. For many of us of a certain age (and in the case of these books, a fair bit older, as the first was written in the 1930s), these books were a childhood delight. For some, I'm sure, it influenced their decisions to become nurses (my own desire to emulate the main character, who is as red-headed as I am, lasted only until I thought about it for five minutes). But a part of me had always assumed that a) Boylston might be as much of a fiction as Caroline Keene (Nancy Drew) and/or b) this was totally made up. Imagine my surprise on discovering that Helen Dore Boylston was actually a nurse, that she served as a nurse in WWI (I told you these dated way back), and that she wrote books besides this series and her Carol Page, Actress series.  ...

  Title: Gone-Away Lake Author: Elizabeth Enright; read by Colleen Delany Publication Info: 2005, Listen and Live Audio. Originally published in 1957 by Harcourt, Brace & World, 180 pages. Source: Library digital resources Publisher's Blurb: Portia always expects summer to be a special time. But she couldn't imagine the adventure she and her cousin Julian would share this summer. It all starts when they discover Gone-Away Lake--a village of deserted old houses on a muddy overgrown swamp. "It's a ghost town" Julian says. But the cousins are in for a bigger surprise. Someone is living in one of those spooky-looking old houses.   
 My Review:   Just for fun, I have to start by sharing some of the historic covers for this one (one of the delights of old kids' books is seeing how the covers changed through the publication history ). This one was the original. It feels very 1950s to me--much like the covers of books I got in school a decade later. 1989 saw...

  Title: Five Little Peppers and How They Grew Author: Margaret Sidney. Read by Rebecca Burns Publisher: Tantor Audio, 2005. Originally serialized in the children's magazine Wide Awake in 1880. Approx. 300 pages in print editions. Source: Library digital resources Summary: Mrs. Pepper is a widow with five children: Ben, Polly, Joel, David and Phronsie. They are very poor, but managing as best they can in their Little Brown House in Badgertown. The greatest desire of the children is to have a nice birthday for their mother, and maybe celebrate Christmas, while the Mrs. Pepper most wants for her children to get an education--something she can't afford, either to pay school fees or to spare the pennies the older ones bring in working. Despite the challenges of their lives, they remain positive in outlook, and the reader is soon as convinced as they are that "their ship will come in" any day. Of course, it does, in a most unexpected way. Review: Although this book is mo...