Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin's Books and Stories

A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story

Young Adult

5.0

A Summer in a Cañon is a remarkable story of a late 19th-century California life from the point of view of a group of teens and children on the summertime adventure of their lives. The book is following lives of Polly Oliver and her friends and cousins a year or so before she takes off for San Francisco to earn a living and save her mother from destitution. It is a fun chronicle of a summer vacation, during which Polly writes some very clever and humorous letters home, to an invalid cousin in Santa Barbara, where she describes things such as a tarantula fight and donkey riding. Polly Oliver's Problem continues to follow Polly after she comes back from holyday and starts working on her life dream, which is becoming a kindergarten teacher. But her mother, who runs a boarding house, gets ill and Polly must take responsibility. When the doctor suggests a change of climate, Polly moves the family to San Francisco where she keeps trying to fulfill the dream with her mother's blessing. Kate Douglas Wiggin (1856-1923) was an American educator and author of children's stories, most notably the classic children's novel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. She started the first free kindergarten in San Francisco in 1878 (the Silver Street Free Kindergarten). With her sister during the 1880s, she also established a training school for kindergarten teachers. Kate Wiggin devoted her adult life to the welfare of children in an era when children were commonly thought of as cheap labor.

Mother Carey's Chickens

Young Adult

5.0

This carefully crafted ebook: "MOTHER CAREY'S CHICKENS (Children's Book Classic)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. The book tells the story of a poor but happy family of four children who, in spite of being fatherless, make the lives of others better. Newly widowed, Nancy Carey keeps her healthy spirit and folksy grit and takes her four children to live in the tiny Maine town of Beulah. There, they learn to love country life, country neighbors, country schools, and especially their new home, the Yellow House. They have little misadventures and learn to be better people. Their home life becomes complicated when Julia, a snobbish cousin, comes to live with them. The Carey children suffer many disappointments, but in the end, Julia is transformed when she realizes happiness has little to do with wealth. Kate Douglas Wiggin (1856 – 1923) was an American educator and author of children's stories, most notably the classic children's novel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. She started the first free kindergarten in San Francisco in 1878 (the Silver Street Free Kindergarten). With her sister during the 1880s, she also established a training school for kindergarten teachers. Kate Wiggin devoted her adult life to the welfare of children in an era when children were commonly thought of as cheap labor.

A Summer in a Canyon_ A Califor

Literature

5.0

A Summer in a Canyon_ A Califor by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

Rose O' The River

Modern

5.0

It was not long after sunrise, and Stephen Waterman, fresh from his dip in the river, had scrambled up the hillside from the hut in the alder-bushes where he had made his morning toilet. An early ablution of this sort was not the custom of the farmers along the banks of the Saco, but the Waterman house was hardly a stone's throw from the water, and there was a clear, deep swimming-hole in the Willow Cove that would have tempted the busiest man, or the least cleanly, in York County. Then, too, Stephen was a child of the river, born, reared, schooled on its very brink, never happy unless he were on it, or in it, or beside it, or at least within sight or sound of it.

Marm Lisa

Modern

5.0

Eden Place was a short street running at right angles with Eden Square, a most unattractive and infertile triangle of ground in a most unattractive but respectable quarter of a large city. It was called a square, not so much, probably, because it was triangular in shape, as because it was hardly large enough to be designated as a park. As to its being called 'Eden,' the origin of that qualifying word is enveloped in mystery; but it is likely that the enthusiastic persons who projected it saw visions and dreamed dreams of green benches under umbrageous trees, of a green wire fence, ever green, and of plots of blossoming flowers filling the grateful air with unaccustomed fragrance.

Half-A-Dozen Housekeepers

Modern

4.0

MARCH had come in like a lion, and showed no sign of going out like a lamb. The pussy willows knew that it was, or ought to be, spring, but although it takes a deal to discourage a New England pussy willow, they shivered in their brown skins and despaired of making their annual appearance even by April Fool’s Hay.