Happy Little Family by Rebecca Caudill, illustrated by Decie Merwin. Holt, RInehart, and Winston, 1947.
“It was January, and the morning was very cold. Icicles hung from the porch roof in a stiff ruffle. Sparrows sat hunched in the bare branches of the cherry tree, saying nothing. Only the wind made a noise. It howled down the mountain and whistled through the valley. It moaned in the pine trees and roared at the kitchen door. And everywhere it blew, it swept snowflakes before it and left them in deep white drifts.”
p.1
Happy Little Family is the first in a series of books about a rural Kentucky family–Father, Mother, and five children–and their tame, but engaging adventures in growing up on a farm in the mountains. I’ve heard about these books for a long time, but I’ve never read them. I love Ms. Caudill’s writing style which uses repetition and simple but rich descriptors to set a tone for a story featuring Bonnie, the youngest child in the happy little family, and her quest to go from being little to being big. Bonnie is four years old at the beginning of the book, almost five at the end, and she is determined to be big enough to do all the things that her older brother and sisters do.
It’s a short book, only five chapters or stories, each one posing a question related to Bonnie’s growth over the course of the year. Is Bonnie really old enough to go ice skating with the older children? Which is better, a new straw hat with white streamers down the back or a pretty and practical pink sunbonnet? Who can win the special arrowhead that Father found by doing something very brave and very wise? What is to be done when one suddenly loses a special red toboggan? And what makes a journey complete?
This book would make a lovely January read aloud book for a group of four or five year olds over the course of a week (a chapter a day) or even five weeks (a chapter a week). And older children would enjoy it, too. I think the books get a little older in content and in vocabulary as the series progresses, but not too much. It’s probably a good series for ages four to about nine or ten.
The four books in the Fairchild Family series are:
- Happy Little Family
- Schoolhouse in the Woods
- Up and Down a River
- Schoolroom in the Parlor
My library copy of Happy Little Family has a note and signature from the author. James Ayars was Rebecca Caudill’s husband. I’m not sure why he signed the book with her, nor am I able to make out the inscription: “[something] your family happy too,” maybe?