This novel takes place during the Great Depression, and Charlie Anne’s family is desperately poor. They’re so poor that Papa has to leave home to get work on the roads in one of President Roosevelt’s WPA projects. Charlie Anne’s mama is dead, and Cousin Mirabel has come to help Papa take care of Ivy, Chalrie Anne, Pete and Birdie. Mirabel is determined to teach Charlie Anne to work hard and to use good manners and to act like a lady. To teach Charlie Anne to behave properly, Mirabel reads aloud maxims from The Charm of Fine Manners by Helen Ekin Starrett. Charlie Anne, of course, hates the advice and the admonitions of The Charm of Fine Manners.

Charlie Anne’s favorite phrase and response to unwanted events in her life is, “Well, we’ll just see about that!” Ms. Fusco does a good job of telling the story from Charlie Anne’s point of view. As far as Charlie Anne is concerned, Cousin Mirabel is a cruel tyrant who makes Charlie Anne work too hard and do all of the nasty, strenuous, and horrid jobs. And Charlie Anne’s older sister, Ivy, is a lazy, vain, and deceitful teenager. The reader suspects that Charlie Anne may not be quite fair in her assessments of Mirabel and Ivy, but this story is Charlie Anne’s story, and it’s her voice we hear as we read.

And Charlie has a fine voice, feisty and determined and full of spitfire. When Rosalyn and her adopted daughter, Phoebe, move in next door, Charlie Anne is excited to have a new friend. But Phoebe is “colored,” and some people, including Mirabel, can’t get used to the idea of associating on equal terms with a colored girl. As the story continues, questions are raised and answered. Will Charlie Anne’s mama continue to give her advice and counsel from her grave down by the river? Will Mirabel break Charlie Anne’s spirit with her book of rules and her seemingly endless chores? Will Rosalyn and Phoebe be accepted in the small Massachusetts where Charlie Anne lives? Will there be a school where Charlie Anne can finally learn to read?

Well, we’ll just see about that!

Other takes:
Bookish Blather: “Charlie Anne has a wonderfully earnest voice. She’s young enough to still believe in magic in the world, but the rapid succession of her mother’s death, her father leaving to build roads, and the ugly face of racism in her family and community, are forcing her to grow up.”
The Fourth Musketeer: “Charlie Anne’s charismatic voice narrates not only scenes of every day drama, such as bee stings, falls off swings, peeling potatoes, harvesting tomatoes, Christmas pageants, and kittens born in the barn, but also more profound problems, such as broken families and racism.”

Zilpha Keatley Snyder is still writing books? I remember reading The Velvet Room, The Egypt Game, and The Headless Cupid when I was a kid of a girl, and despite my youtful appearance and attitude, that was a long time ago. So, I looked at Ms. Snyder’s website to see how old she was and found there this note from the author herself:

As any reader of my books knows, some of them have been around a long time. As a matter of fact, so have I. Actually I’m quite a bit past retirement age. But for several reasons I keep on writing. The first and most important is that I like doing it. I just feel better when I’m involved with a set of characters whose lives I’m trying to unravel and turn into stories because . . .? well, because stories are things that have fascinated me since I was a very young child when, I am told, I wept bitterly when my mother’s nightly reading brought us to the end of a given book. (Heidi, Peter Pan, whatever) Not because it was a sad ending, but because it was done. The story was over.
So I keep on writing.

Isn’t that a delightful explanation from an octogenarian (b.1927)?

Well, all I can say is, more power to her. She hasn’t lost a beat. William S. and the Great Escape is a great story about an abused child during the Great Depression (1938) who loves Shakepeare and acting. In fact, William inserts the “S” in his name to emulate his favorite author, William Shakespeare. And he carries around a copy of Shakespeare’s Complete Works, given to him by his English teacher, everywhere he goes. And he acts out the part of Ariel from The Tempest to amuse his little brother and sister. Just great stuff.

Think The Boxcar Children. Or Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt. Maybe a touch of Ballet Shoes or some such similar siblings-helping-each-other kind of book. William S. and his younger sisters, Jancy and Trixie, and the youngest of all of them, four year old Buddy, decide to run away from home because things have become unbearable. The last straw is when the children’s older siblings do something really horrible to Jancy’s pet guinea pig. Can the the children travel over a hundred miles to their aunt’s house without getting caught? What will happen to them when they get there? Will their dad, Big Ed Baggett, come after them? Will their aunt let them stay if they do make it to her house?

I highly recommend this book. The abuse, consisting mostly of beatings and neglect, is bad, but not too graphically described for an audience of children. And the courage and determination displayed by the children plus the fact that the adults in the story do finally come to the rescue make this an inspiring read.