Category Archives: 1940s

Rereading Theater Shoes, with Jean Freedman

(You can listen to this episode here.)

Writer and scholar Jean Freedman joins us to talk about Noel Streatfeild’s 1944 book Theater Shoes (originally published in the UK as Curtain Up), the story of three children who attend a theatrical school. We discuss London during World War II and welcome the (offstage) reappearance of the three sisters in Streatfeild’s beloved Ballet Shoes (1936), who are now young women pursuing their careers.

Mentioned on this episode:

Books by Jean Freedman: Whistling in the Dark: Memory and Culture in Wartime London and Peggy Seeger: A Life of Music, Love, and Politics

Other books by Noel Streatfeild: Circus Shoes, Dancing Shoes, Tennis Shoes, Skating Shoes

Mrs. Miniver (1942), trailer here

A website on Streatfeild that includes a detailed discussion on Theater Shoes/Curtain Up

Books and other works of literature mentioned in Theater Shoes: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett, David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest by William Shakespeare, The Princess and the Pea by Hans Christen Andersen

Recommended by Jean: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett; Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare, Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, and Dress Rehearsal by Monica Stirling; books by Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume; fairy tales by Oscar Wilde

Recommended by Debby: The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright; Half Magic by Edward Eager

Recommended by Mary Grace: The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

Other episodes: Rereading Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild; Rereading Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren; Rereading Little Women, with Jamie Stiehm; Rereading The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare

The podcast is hosted by Buzzsprout at rereadingourchildhood.buzzsprout.com and is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other platforms.

You can find Deborah at deborahkalb.com, Mary Grace at My Life 100 Years Ago, and Jean at jeanfreedman.com.

This episode was edited by Adam Linder of Bespoken Podcasting.

Rereading Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes

Leave a reply

(You can listen to this episode here.)

On this episode, we discuss Esther Forbes’ Newbery Medal-winning 1943 novel Johnny Tremain, the story of an apprentice silversmith in Boston who gets caught up in the events leading up to the American Revolution.

Mentioned on this episode:

Other books by Esther Forbes:

Paul Revere and the World He Lived In (1942), winner of the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for History.

The General’s Lady (1938)

Miss Marvel (1935)

Also mentioned:

The 1957 Disney movie adaptation of Johnny Tremain (trailer here)

Gadsby’s Tavern, in Alexandria, Virginia, which was built in 1770 and is now a museum and restaurant. Mary Grace went there with her sixth-grade class.

The Biggest Bear by Lynd Ward, illustrator of Johnny Tremain, which won the Caldecott Medal in 1953.

The American Antiquarian Society, of which Esther Forbes was the first woman member

Redcoat in Boston by Ann Finlayson

Recommended for fans of Johnny Tremain:

Mary Grace: Answering the Cry for Freedom: Stories of African Americans and the American Revolution by Gretchen Wolfe. (Deborah interviewed the author on her blog, Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb.) Mary Grace also mentions that there are several picture books about Revolutionary-Era African American scientist Benjamin Banneker. These include Dear Benjamin Banneker by Andrea Davis Pinkney, illustrated by Brian Pinkney.

Deborah: The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare (1958)

Other Rereading Our Childhood episodes mentioned:

Rereading The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Rereading The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare

The podcast is hosted by Buzzsprout at rereadingourchildhood.buzzsprout.com and is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other platforms.

You can find Deborah at deborahkalb.com and Mary Grace’s adventures in the 1920s on her blog, My Life 100 Years Ago.

This episode was edited by Adam Linder of Bespoken Podcasting.

Rereading Little Town on the Prairie, with Judith Kalb

2 Replies

(You can listen to this episode here.)

We were delighted to welcome our first guest, Judith Kalb, to talk about Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little Town on the Prairie (1941), the seventh book in the beloved Little House series. Judy is, in addition to being Deborah’s sister, a literature scholar and a lifelong Laura Ingalls Wilder fan.

Mentioned on this episode:

Other books in the Little House series:

Little House in the Big Woods (1932)

Little House on the Prairie (1935)

On the Banks of Plum Creek (1937)

The Long Winter (1940)

The First Four Years (posthumously published in 1971)

Also by Laura Ingalls Wilder:

Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography (written beginning in about 1930; published in 2014)

Also mentioned:

The Complete Poetical Works of Alfred Tennyson (This 1875 version, which says Tennyson’s Poems on the cover, matches the description of the Christmas present Laura finds hidden in her mother’s drawer.)

Stuart Little by E.B. White, illustrated by Garth Williams

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White, illustrated by Garth Williams

The Beautiful Snow: The Ingalls Family, the Railroads, and the Hard Winter of 1880-81 by Cindy Wilson

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

The TV adaptation of Little House on the Prairie. (Here’s the trailer for the remastered edition.)

Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated by Alison Arngrim

A post on Little Town on the Prairie on the website American Indians in Children’s Literature criticizing the

Mary Grace expressed surprise that the phrase “lunatic fringe,” used by Pa to describe Laura’s bangs, dated back to the 1800. It turns out that this phrase originally referred to women’s bangs. Theodore Roosevelt is credited with its first political use, in a 1913 speech.

Recommended for fans of Little Town on the Prairie:

Judith: The rest of the Little House series, especially These Happy Golden Years

Mary Grace: Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, Two are Better Than One and Louly by Carol Ryrie Brink

Deborah: Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink

Other Rereading Our Childhood episodes:

Rereading Stuart Little by E.B. White

Rereading Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink

Rereading Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

The podcast is hosted by Buzzsprout at rereadingourchildhood.buzzsprout.com and is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other platforms.

You can find Deborah at deborahkalb.com and Mary Grace at My Life 100 Years Ago.

This episode was edited by Adam Linder of Bespoken Podcasting.

Rereading The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright

Leave a reply

(We’ve been publishing episodes regularly but have gotten behind on the website, so we’re catching up. This episode was published on October 31. You can listen to it here.)

On this episode, we reread Elizabeth Enright’s 1941 novel The Saturdays, about four children who pool their allowances and set out on adventures in New York.

Mentioned on the episode:

Other books in the Melendy family series:

The Four-Story Mistake (1942)

Then There Were Five (1944)

Spiderweb for Two (1951)

Also by Elizabeth Enright:

Thimble Summer (1938)

Gone-Away Lake (1957)

Return to Gone-Away (1961)

Other Rereading Our Childhood episodes:

Rereading Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

Rereading Stuart Little by E.B. White

Rereading Henry Reed, Inc. by Keith Robertson

Rereading Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild

Also mentioned:

Claude Debussy’s “Golliwog’s Cakewalk”

Under Two Flags by Ouida

Mary Grace’s blog post on children’s books from 1919, on which she talks about an illustrated edition of Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates with illustrations by Elizabeth Enright’s mother, Maginel Wright Enright.

Recommended for fans of The Saturdays: Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild and Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh (Mary Grace); All-of-a-Kind Family and its sequels by Sidney Taylor (Deborah).

The podcast is hosted by Buzzsprout at rereadingourchildhood.buzzsprout.com and is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms. You can listen to it on Buzzsprout here.

You can find Debby’s author interviews on her blog, Bo oks Q&A by Deborah Kalb, and Mary Grace’s adventures in the 1920s on her blog, My Life 100 Years Ago.

This episode was edited by Adam Linder of Bespoken Podcasting.

Rereading Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry

Leave a reply

(You can listen to this episode here.)

Mary Grace and Deborah discuss Misty of Chincoteague, Marguerite Henry’s classic 1947 novel about Misty and her mother Phantom, wild ponies from the island of Assateague, and Paul and Maureen, a brother and sister from the neighboring island of Chincoteague who long to own them.

Other books by Henry:

Stormy, Misty’s Foal (1963)

Justin Morgan Had a Horse (1945), a Newbery Honor Book

King of the Wind (1948), winner of the 1949 Newbery Medal

Sea Star, Orphan of Chincoteague (1949)

Misty’s Twilight (1992)

Also mentioned on the podcast:

The life of Thomas Downing, the proprietor of the famous 19th-century restaurant Downing’s Oyster House, is discussed in “Going Deep into Oyster Country,” New York Times, December 3, 2021. Downing, who was African American, grew up in the Chincoteague community.

Recommended for fans of Misty of Chincoteague:

Mary Grace: Homecoming (1981) and Dicey’s Song (1982) by Cynthia Voight. These stories and later books in the series tell the story of Dicey and her siblings, who make their way to their grandmother’s home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore after their mother abandons them at a shopping mall in Connecticut. Dicey’s Song won the 1983 Newbery Medal.

Deborah: Stormy, Misty’s Foal (1963) and Sea Star, Orphan of Chincoteague (1949) by Marguerite Henry (1963). Misty appears in both books.

An obituary of Maureen Beebe, the real-life model for Maureen in the story, appeared in delmarvanow.com in May 2019.

You can learn more about the real-life Misty in “The True Story of Misty of Chincoteague, the Pony Who Stared Down a Devastating Nor’Easter,” Smithsonian Magazine, October 16, 2018. According to this story, the account in Misty of Chincoteague of the original Chincoteague ponies escaping to the island from a shipwreck is just a legend; more likely, they had been owned by 17th-century settlers.

The podcast is hosted by Buzzsprout at rereadingourchildhood.buzzsprout.com and is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other platforms.

You can find Deborah’s author interviews on her blog, Bo oks Q&A by Deborah Kalb, and Mary Grace’s adventures in the 1920s on her blog, My Life 100 Years Ago.

This episode was edited by Adam Linder of Bespoken Podcasting.

Rereading Stuart Little by E.B. White

Leave a reply

(You can listen to this episode here.)

On this episode, Deborah and Mary Grace reread Stuart Little, E.B. White’s 1945 classic about the adventures of a New York boy who looks exactly like a mouse. They discuss their early memories of reading Stuart Little (or having it read to them), Garth Williams’ wonderful illustrations, and pioneering children’s librarian Annie Carroll Moore’s vehement opposition to the book.

Mentioned on this episode:

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White

The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White

Essays of E.B. White

Letters of E.B. White

“Death of a Pig,” essay by E.B. White, The Atlantic (paywall). (Mary Grace erroneously recalled that this essay was about the birth of a pig.)

“Celebrating Children’s Book Week–and a pioneering librarian,” Mary Grace’s post on her blog, mylife100yearsago.com, about Annie Carroll Moore

The Rabbits’ Wedding, the children’s book by Stuart Little editor Garth Williams that was banned from Alabama libraries because a black and a white rabbit get married

“The Lion and the Mouse: The Battle that Shaped Children’s Literature” by Jill Lapore, The New Yorker, July 14, 2008

Stuart Little, 1999 movie (trailer)

The podcast is hosted by Buzzsprout at rereadingourchildhood.buzzsprout.com and is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.

You can find Deborah’s author interviews on her blog, Bo oks Q&A by Deborah Kalb, and Mary Grace’s adventures in the 1920s on her blog, My Life 100 Years Ago.

This episode was edited by Adam Linder of Bespoken Podcasting.

Rereading Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren

Leave a reply

(You can listen to this episode here.)

On this episode, Mary Grace and Deborah discuss Pippi Longstocking, Astrid Lindgren’s 1945 classic (published in English in 1950) about an anarchic Swedish girl. They discuss their love for the book as children, their mixed feelings on rereading it, and Pippi as a feminist icon. Mary Grace, who spent a month in Sweden earlier this year, talks about Lindgren’s legendary status in Sweden, where she’s literally on the money.

Discussed on this episode:

The BBC News survey on the 100 greatest children’s books of all time, with Pippi Longstocking at #3

Pippi in the South Seas by Astrid Lindgren

The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren

The Children of Noisy Village by Astrid Lindgren

Beverly Cleary’s Ramona books

Joan Aiken’s Wolves Chronicles series

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsen

The virtual tour of Astrid Lindgren’s apartment on astridlindgren.com

Mary Grace couldn’t find the interview with Lindgren’s daughter Karin, who one night when she was ill asked her mother to tell her a story about Pippi Longstocking, but Karin discussed it in this 2016 Guardian article.

You can find Deborah’s author interviews on her blog Bo oks Q&A by Deborah Kalb and Mary Grace’s adventures in the 1920s on her blog, My Life 100 Years Ago.

This episode was edited by Adam Linder of Bespoken Podcasting.