Sealed Five Little Peppers and How They Grew buy by Margaret Sidney read by Julie Harris Vinyl Record Album LP Spoken Word Abridged
Five Little Peppers and How They Grew is a story written by Margaret Sidney read in an abridged form by Julie Harris. From the back cover: The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew is the epitome of a “good old-fashioned story,” for it's about a warm and loving family and their adventures, about self-sufficiency in the face of hardship and poverty, and set in the 1880's. Margaret Sidney (pseudonym for Harriet Lothrup, 1844-1924)) first published a Little Pepper story in the popular children's magazine Wide Awake in 1878; that venture was so successful that in 1881 the first of the series was published in book form and went on to become one of the most beloved of children's books. The 1962 revision did much to keep this classic story available for a new generation, and this new recording by the famous and talented Julie Harris will greatly please the television-and-radio-trained children of the '70's.
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Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney read by Julie Harris
Vinyl: Factory Sealed
Cover: Factory Sealed, some shrink open at edge, mild shelf wear, edge bumps
Side A
Band 1: A Home View 12:27
Band 2: Making Happiness for Mamsie — Mamsie's Birthday 9:39
Band 3: A Threatened Blow 6:44
Side B
Band 1: Safe 3:56
Band 2: New Friends 11:24
Band 3: Phronsie Pays a Debt of Gratitude — A Letter to Jasper 3:19
Band 4: Jolly Days 10:48
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Even the briefest description of the characters will clue one in as to what to expect – Mrs. Pepper, who has “had to work to scrape together buy money enough to put bread into her children's mouths since the father died when Phronsie was a baby,” had “met life too bravely to be beaten down now.” Her brood consists of eleven-year-old Ben, ten-year-old Polly (supporters of women's liberation will be pleased with the naturalness and ingenuity of this 19th century girl heroine), eight-year old Joel, little Davie and blond four-year old Phronsie and her doll. The crises of family life permeate the story – the children plan a cake-baking for Mamsie's birthday, but the old wood-burning stove loses some crucial stuffing and won't work; a new-found friend wants to come visit but it's difficult to know whether his gentlemanly father will permit such an unusual visit – and loving support from each other does much to solve them. Exoticism appears in the guise of an organ player and his trick monkey, and a kidnapping provides tears, fears and suspense – and a new hero, Prince, the magnificent black Labrador.
As a series book The Five Little Peppers appeals to children in the same way as Nancy Drew, the Hardy boys, Cherry Ames and the Bobbsey Twins; the characters are children other children can identify with, yet they have exciting adventures and heroic roles the child reader longs for but can only enjoy altruistically. Too, the series books have a comfortable familiarity for inexperienced readers, in that once the first of a given series is read, the personalities and the relationships among characters are familiar, the landscape is familiar, even the language is familiar, so that fullest attention can be paid to the adventures themselves.
Margaret Sidney's Five Little Peppers series differs a bit from the later Nancy Drew et al, however, for the 1880's was a time in which the genteel tradition of courage, self-sufficiency and hard, painstaking work, good temper, loyalty and, above all, gracious manners, predominated. The breeziness and flip, if not bold, attitudes of the later series are not found here; rather, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women is the model. (The similar subject matter is even more intriguing when one learns that Mrs. Lothrup even lived in the same Concord, Mass. house that Louisa May Alcott was living in while she wrote Little Women.)
The trademark of children's literature of the 1970's is reality, or "new realism," as it is often called. For too many years the authors of children's literature ignored the changing patterns of the post-war period, so we readers of children's literature have turned with pleasure and relief to the new works for children that acknowledge more honestly contemporary life styles and serious problems.
It is because such books are now being written, books like Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy, Louise Meriwether's daddy was a number runner, Norma Klein's Mom, The Wolf Man and Me and Judy Bloom's Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret that we can frankly turn back with nostalgia to family stories where love, total devotion to each other and ingenuity in the face of hardship are the watchwords. The genteel tradition is gone from our modern landscape, but not from our history and not, from time to time, from our hearts. Children, less aware of the cold truths of contemporary life, will happily follow the adventures of the Five Little Peppers, seeing through their lives an older world where human relationships are happy and the antagonist is genteel poverty. After hearing this recording, they might want to find out more about the Peppers, like what happens when they all get the measles, how they get a new stove, who their benefactor is and how their life changes. -Linda A. Carroll
Linda A. Carroll, holder of an M.A.T. in English from the University of Washington and currently working on a Ph.D. at the Graduate School of the City University of New York, teaches and lectures on children's literature.
Julie Harris' virtuosity is exhibited in the great variety of roles she plays, all with great talent and élan. She has received four Tony Awards as best actress in The Last of Mrs. Lincoln (for which she also won a Drama Desk Award), Forty Carats, I Am A Camera and The Lark. It was as a lonely twelve-year-old in the wistful Member of the Wedding that Miss Harris first attained fame, winning both the New York Critics Circle and Donaldson Awards for her portrayal of Frankie. Her admirable performance, as the poet Emily Dickinson, is the one-woman play The Belle of Amherst was much-acclaimed. As star of motion pictures and television as well as the stage, audiences will remember her stunning performances in Harper, The Hiding Place, and East of Eden; and on television in Johnny Belinda, Little Moon of Alban, A Doll's House, The Power and the Glory, Victoria Regina, Pygmalion, and the NBC movie-for-television The Greatest Gift of All. Other Caedmon titles on which Miss Harris performs are MIRACLES: POEMS WRITTEN BY CHILDREN (TC 1227); A GATHERING OF GREAT POETRY FOR CHILDREN, V. 1, 2, 3, & 4 (TC 1235, 1236, 1237, 1238); WYNKEN, BLYNKEN, AND NOD AND OTHER POEMS BY EUGENE FIELD (TC 1298); THE PONY ENGINE AND OTHER STORIES (TC 1355); LITTLE WOMEN (TC 1470); TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE (TC 1469); and PETUNIA (TC 1489).
CREDITS: Cover: Ken Longtemps
Library of Congress # 76-741293
© Caedmon, 1977
Directed and abridged by Ward Botsford
Studio Recording and Mastering: Howard W. Harris
Tape Editing: Daniel A. Wolfert
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