I’m hoping that someone here will help me identify a children’s book I read around 1970. I’m pretty sure it was an Arrow Book Club book, as that is where I got most of my paperbacks then. It may actually be 2 books, by the same author about the same family. I read them and enjoyed them very much when I was in the 4th grade. When a cousin got sick and had to be hospitalized, my Mom suggested I send her something to read, and I never got them back.
Anyhow, the books were essentially a group of stories about a family of kids. I think there were 3 or 4 kids in the family. In one of the books, I think a major story was about them having to deal with a huge quantity of some kind of purple juice. (I can’t remember if they won cases and cases of it in a contest, or they were selling it, or what.)
The only other really memorable thing about them to me was that there was a younger brother who tended to sing fractured versions of Christmas Carols. The one I remember best was that his version of “Good King Wenceslas” went
OK, I realize the details are hopelessly vague and skimpy. But do any of you recognize these books? Any idea on the title and/or author?
I’m pretty sure the fractured Christmas carol you refer to was from “Mrs. Coverlet’s Magicians,” which was about a family with 3 kids (Molly, Malcolm, and Theodore “Toad” Persever), their dad, and their housekeeper, Mrs. Coverlet.
I know there’s at least one other Mrs. Coverlet book (I’ve never read it–I’d like to because I loved MCM) but I don’t know whether it had anything to do with purple juice. “Magicians” definitely didn’t, and it’s definitely a kids’ novel, not a series of short stories.
The time period would be about right, though, I think.
That’s it! The title doesn’t really ring a bell, but the names of the children definitely do. I thought I remembered the youngest one having a strange name, and once you mentioned them, Malcolm, Molly, and Toad sounded just right.
The books may very well have been novels rather than a series of short stories. Actually, I don’t remember them as short stories, per se; it’s just that I didn’t necessarily remember that there was an actual plot to the books other than a series of happenings with the kids.
Thank you very much, winterhawk11. I didn’t have nearly enough information to google on to find the books. I was just hoping that I would find someone else here who had read them and remembered them.
Now I know what to ask Santa for. I may even let my third grader read them after I’m through…
Thank you very much, Baker. I had googled up some links myself, but that looks like a really good source for used books.
And I think I’m remembering why the title doesn’t sound familiar — Scholastic/Arrow Book Club/Weekly Reader Books all tended to like to rename books from their original titles. I think I can even picture the cover of my old book saying that the original title was something else.
So I’m nearly certain that Mrs. Coverlet’s Magicians is the one with the Christmas Carols, but I’m wondering if the purple juice one is one of the others, or if I’ve mixed it up with another book. The titles didn’t sound familiar at all, but, looking at the way the publishers re-titled with abandon, maybe it will be.
I dug up my copy of “Mrs. Coverlet’s Magicians” just now, and it was from Scholastic Book Services, so it sounds like they didn’t rename it. I’m sure I got it from either the Tab or Arrow Book club, as I was a member of both in grade school.
