skygiants: Mary Lennox from the Secret Garden opening the garden door (garden)
skygiants ([personal profile] skygiants) wrote2023-07-08 12:24 pm

(no subject)

Anne Lindbergh is one of those children's authors that nobody but me seems to remember, but her Three Lives to Live was wildly formative on me and seems to be quite rare these days, so I've picked up the habit of looking for her books any time I go into a used bookstore to see if I can build up a collection.

So far this has yielded me: one! The Worry Week, which I did not in fact read as a child but was quite pleased to experience for the first time last month -- it's a low-stakes survival story about a kid who convinces her siblings to go in on an elaborate plan to stay on at their summer cabin in Maine when their parents are called home for an emergency instead of getting sent to stay with their mean aunt.

It's quite a reasonable plan until the kids get back to the cabin and discover that their parents already told their neighbors to take all the perishable food out of the house, so instead of spending the week relaxing they instead spend it foraging, bickering, and hiding from the neighbors. There is also a little bit of a buried-treasure hunt, but the treasure is really not a driver and the main action is still mostly around the kids making sure that they actually have something to eat every day. It's not nearly as weird as most of the Lindberghs that imprinted themselves on my brain when I was small, but it's a very pleasant little read for people who enjoy Kids Living Off the Land and/or Atmospheric Maine Cottages.
conuly: (Default)

[personal profile] conuly 2023-07-08 05:14 pm (UTC)(link)
Anne Lindbergh is one of those children's authors that nobody but me seems to remember, but her Three Lives to Live was wildly formative on me and seems to be quite rare these days, so I've picked up the habit of looking for her books any time I go into a used bookstore to see if I can build up a collection.

That book and also The Hunky-Dory Dairy both appear with some frequency in book-finding comms.

You should order Dairy if you can, because it's quite a read!
snickfic: Buffy looking over her shoulder (Default)

[personal profile] snickfic 2023-07-08 05:43 pm (UTC)(link)
I loved that exact genre of book as a kid, but never encountered Lindbergh. This one sounds delightful.

(I did wonder if I'd read a book of Lindbergh's letters, but no, it turns out she and her mother were both named Anne.)
jazzfish: Jazz Fish: beret, sunglasses, saxophone (Default)

[personal profile] jazzfish 2023-07-08 08:01 pm (UTC)(link)
(I did wonder if I'd read a book of Lindbergh's letters, but no, it turns out she and her mother were both named Anne.)

... which neatly answers my question, "the author of Gift From The Sea wrote childrens' books?!?"
ethelmay: (Default)

[personal profile] ethelmay 2023-07-18 01:09 am (UTC)(link)
And four other full siblings, plus seven half-sibs from her father's three other families. Edited to add that my library has The Worry Week (no other AL juniors, alas), so I shall check it out!
Edited 2023-07-18 01:15 (UTC)
landofnowhere: (Default)

[personal profile] landofnowhere 2023-07-08 06:50 pm (UTC)(link)
The Shadow on the Dial made a big impression on me when I was a kid! But I don't think I've read any of her other stuff. (Though I have a vague memory of having seen Travel Far, Pay No Fare somewhere, maybe my sister had it?)
landofnowhere: (Default)

[personal profile] landofnowhere 2023-07-11 03:03 am (UTC)(link)
It looks like a lot of Anne Lindbergh is on OpenLibrary, I used it to checkout and reread The Shadow on the Dial, which is still (mostly) charming, but not as cracktastic as some of these others sound!
osprey_archer: (Default)

[personal profile] osprey_archer 2023-07-09 12:26 am (UTC)(link)
That sounds delightful! I do love books about Kids Living Off the Land, as well as Atmospheric Cottages. Not sure I've ever read about a Maine Cottage specifically, but it sounds like a worthy subgenre!
osprey_archer: (Default)

[personal profile] osprey_archer 2023-07-11 02:32 am (UTC)(link)
Yesss, I will trade you Anne McAffrey's Dinosaur Planet for it! And almost certainly get the better end of the bargain.
rachelmanija: (Default)

[personal profile] rachelmanija 2023-07-09 03:34 am (UTC)(link)
it's a very pleasant little read for people who enjoy Kids Living Off the Land and/or Atmospheric Maine Cottages.

Me! Me!
antisoppist: (Default)

[personal profile] antisoppist 2023-07-09 05:38 pm (UTC)(link)
If people are looking for more self-sufficient children stories, The Children Who Lived in a Barn by Eleanor Graham is an English version where parents have to suddenly go away and don't come back and the children end up living in a barn and fending off local do-gooders. I love it for the chapter in which oldest girl Sue goes on strike over having all the domestic responsibility and the bizarre explanation for the parents vanishing.
chestnut_pod: A close-up photograph of my auburn hair in a French braid (Default)

[personal profile] chestnut_pod 2023-07-09 09:48 pm (UTC)(link)
I used to love absolutely nothing better than Kids Living Off the Land books.
nnozomi: (Default)

[personal profile] nnozomi 2023-07-10 08:47 am (UTC)(link)
Slightly off topic sorry: another "kids make do on their own in a cabin" is Jean Little's Stand in the Wind, which I haven't thought of in years. I think it would stand up to rereading, though.
ethelmay: (Default)

[personal profile] ethelmay 2023-07-21 01:56 am (UTC)(link)
All I remember about that book is the bit that explains the title.
jothra: (I would read that)

[personal profile] jothra 2023-07-10 11:34 pm (UTC)(link)
How the hell have I never heard of this

[personal profile] vcmw 2023-07-11 01:10 am (UTC)(link)
I have a feeling that Travel Far, Pay No Fare was used as the theme book for a summer reading program one year in Vermont and that is why I read it, but I cannot verify this searching now.
nevanna: (Default)

[personal profile] nevanna 2023-07-12 11:38 am (UTC)(link)
As one of three sisters who enjoyed both beach vacations and survival make-believe games together, I vibed with this book hard as a young'un.