Title: Trailer Trio
Author: Emma Atkins Jacobs (1885-1983)
Date: 1942
Publisher: John C. Winston Company
Length: 280 pages, with drawings by Pelagie Doane
Quote: “A boy and two girls on their way to central Idaho were brought to the attention of authorities when they picked up a small child who appeared to be lost. They were on their way to the police station in their shabby car with a homemade trailer...”
The three lucky, plucky siblings (the eldest is twenty-one) drive from South Dakota to Idaho, with plenty of adventures along the way, making up verses and doing good deeds as they travel. Life hasn’t been so simple since 1942 and probably wasn’t then either, but this is a cheerful, goodhearted family story about teenagers who find pleasure in picking fruit, cooking, painting, and making ends meet.
Such incredibly nice kids deserve an incredibly happy ending. For parents who might have thought a fifteen-year-old girl was too young to find a boyfriend, the younger sister in this story gets a bit part in a movie instead. The brother gets a promising job, and the elder sister, who hasn’t gone to college due to poverty and ill health, gets a husband who’s guaranteed to put her back in school.
It’s all perfectly logical, given the use the kids make of the breaks that come their way, but the charm of this story is not in anything resembling suspense; it’s in the shabby chic and Creative Tightwaddery the kids practice. Recommended to all who enjoy old books and Creative Tightwaddery.
To buy it here, send salolianigodagewi @ yahoo.com $5 for the book + $5 for shipping. You pay only one shipping charge per package, so please add a Fair Trade Book, by a living author, in order to get this one for only $5.
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