1939 - Thimble Summer

I hadn't been looking to pick up new Newbery Books lately, since I already had a handful in my library that I haven't done reviews on yet. But there I was in Goodwill, skimming through the titles and came across "Thimble Summer" by Elizabeth Enright. I did not remember seeing that one in the lists that I go over every now and then. The cover fooled me, as covers do, in thinking it had been published in the last dozen or so years. It had a sort of "modern look" about it, though I thought the subject matter might be perhaps, say, set in the 50's. But a page into it, I could tell it had been written in a more old fashion style. I checked the copyright, and it was written in 1938, and set in its time, I'd say.

The quaint interior illustrations, by the author,  clearly show the time period the book was written.

It is interesting to me to consider how the style, feel, and content of children's literature has changed over the last hundred years. The whole "Life was simpler then, blah blah," is definitely one factor. Thimble Summer is well-written, and not boring, but the big climax of the story is the county fair, when Garnet takes her pig in to see if it will win a ribbon.

There are other gentle enjoyments of the story. Perhaps the one with the most tension to a modern-day mom like me is when she gets mad and takes off hitchhiking to a town some distance away, staying most of the day there. Of course, kids did that then. My own mother tells me about doing that when she was a kid.

Garnet's family are farmers. It was hot and the rains wouldn't come. The bills were coming though, and her dad was plenty worried if they could make it, if everything shriveled and there were no crops.  While out playing in the creek with her brother, Garnet finds a silver thimble and feels that there might be magic in it. That night, the rains come.

That summer brings a lot of good things to Garnet and her family, a new family member, a new barn, adventures with her portly friend, Citronella. The thimble reappears later, but strangely is not referred to much during the story.

When I looked up the Newbery winners before and after Thimble Summer, I saw that the honor books bookending it were Ingalls Wilder's "On the Banks of Plum Creek," and "By the Shores of Silver Lake," which gives some context to the tale-telling of the era.
This was a decently good book, and it would be enjoyed very much by a reader who doesn't demand action-adventure and has an interest in some bygone ways.
I got this used at the thrift store for about 2 bucks.