Read in 2023 - 5: Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

by Kate Douglas Wiggin

My long-time readers will have no problem guessing that I found this as a free ebook at Amazon's Kindle shop - the picture here is from the wikipedia article about the book.

Clearly aimed at girls of school age and originally published in 1903, the book accompanies Rebecca from when she is about 10 years old until she is a young lady of 17.

Her family is poor - her father died a few years before the story sets in, and her mother struggles to run a small farm and look after her seven children, of which Rebecca is the second oldest.

The mother's unmarried sisters offer to help - they are not exactly rich, but much better off than their poor widowed younger sister - and so Rebecca is sent to live with her aunts, attend school, learn housekeeping and everything else a proper young lady should know.

But... Rebecca is so very much NOT a serious housekeeper or "proper" young lady! She is a free spirit, used to letting her imagination run wild to entertain herself as much as her younger siblings, and because of the situation at home, very few restrictions have ever been placed on her.

Now she has to learn to adapt to life in the brick house with her elderly aunts. One of them is very stern with her, and no matter how hard Rebecca tries, all her efforts seem to go wrong or are not good enough to satisfy aunt Miranda. Aunt Jane is kind and friendly, the opposite of Miranda, and along with the friends Rebecca finds in her new home, makes her young life bearable.

School is a revelation to Rebecca - so much to learn and to fire her imagination even more! She is soon very popular with both her teacher and her class mates. 

Much of the book describes her antics, which all seem very innocent and harmless to us now, but continue to make aunt Miranda unhappy.

Meanwhile, Rebecca works hard at school and manages to graduate early. Just as she is about to take a teaching job and start out life on her own, looking very much forward to that, her mother has an accident and Rebecca has to return to the farm to help with her younger siblings and household duties.

Will the impoverished family find the means to keep the farm? How is Rebecca going to fare back home, with her hopes and plans for the future dashed? And what role does "Mr. Aladdin" play in all this?

In order to enjoy this book, the reader has to be prepared to see it in the context of when it was written. Semi-rural America in 1903 was a different world, but some of the dreams and hopes and wishes of a girl growing up still ring true today.

From how Rebecca is described in the book, I kept seeing her in my mind's eye a bit like Wednesday in the eponymous Netflix series - only with a much sunnier disposition, and smiling most of the time.

I thought I'd not heard of the author before, but a quick check of my blog shows that I have actually read a short story by Kate Douglas Wiggin before. A few facts about her: She started the first free kindergarten in San Francisco in 1878 and established a training school for kindergarten teachers. Once widowed, she remarried but had no children. On a trip to England she became ill and died at the age of 66, leaving a legacy of a large number of children's books and songs. You can learn more about her and see photographs here on wikipedia.