[LISTENED TO: August 2017] Half Magic
I grabbed this book at the library not realizing that Tabby had just started reading it on her own.
The selling point for me on this was that it was described as being “set in Ohio in the 1920s, yet fresh and funny now as the day it was written.” And that was totally true. This book was very very funny and the location and time was pretty much irrelevant.
This is the story of four (very precocious) children: Jane, Mark, Katharine and Martha. The beginning of the book has a great time creating and addressing their characters:
Jane was the oldest and Mark was the only boy, and between them they ran everything.
Katharine was the middle girl, of docile disposition and a comfort to her mother. She knew she was a comfort, and docile, because she’d heard her mother say so. And the others knew she was, too, by now, because ever since that day Katharine would keep boasting about what a comfort she was, and how docile, until Jane declared she would utter a piercing shriek and fall over dead if she heard another word about it. This will give you some idea of what Jane and Katharine were like.
Martha was the youngest, and very difficult.
The children’s’ father was dead and their mother worked full-time. They were looked after by Miss Bick:
Miss Bick came in every day to care for the children, but she couldn’t seem to care for them very much, nor they for her.
I Just Read About That... 