Books with author Betty MacDonald

“The best thing about the Depression was the way it reunited our family and gave my sister Mary a real opportunity to prove that anybody can do anything, especially Betty.”After surviving both the failed chicken farm - and marriage - immortalized in The Egg and I, Betty MacDonald returns to live with her mother and desperately searches to find a job to support her two young daughters. With the help of her older sister Mary, Anybody Can Do Anything recounts her failed, and often hilarious, attempts to find work during the Great Depression.

For many decades, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle has been wildly popular with both children and adults. Her upside-down house is always filled with the smell of freshly baked cookies, and her backyard with buried treasure. She never scolds, but has positive cures for Answer-Backers and Never-Want-to-Go-to-Bedders. In fact, her trunk of potions contains a cure for nearly every affliction-like the powder that makes Phillip Carmody completely invisible when he shows off, or the anti-slowpoke spray she uses to treat Harbin's extra-acute daydreaming disease. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's magical common-sense solutions to children's problems have kept kids laughing for years.

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle has a trick up her sleeveMrs. Piggle-Wiggle loves everyone, and everyone loves her right back. The children love her because she is lots of fun. Their parents love her because she can cure children of absolutely any bad habit. The treatment are unusual, but they work! Who better than a pig, for instance, to teach a piggy little boy table manners? And what better way to cure the rainy-day "waddle-I-do's" than hunt for a pirate treasure in Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's upside-down house?

The Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series stars a small lady who lives in an "upside-down" house in a lively neighborhood inhabited mainly by children who have bad habits. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle has a chest full of magical cures left to her by her deceased husband, Mr. Piggle-Wiggle, who was a pirate. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle provides parents with cures for their children's bad habits. Cures range from the mundane, (the Won't-Pick-Up-Toys Cure involves allowing a small boy to continue leaving his toys scattered about his room until the room becomes so messy he's unable to escape from his room) to the fantastic (the Interrupting Cure is a special powder that is blown on the interrupter, with the effect that it causes the person to become temporarily mute every time he/she tries to interrupt someone). The Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle stories were based on bedtime stories Betty made up for her daughters, nephews, and nieces (and later grandchildren and grandnephews/-nieces).

I found this book when I was on holiday at my aunties in the fifties. It was a hot summer, and I would lay on the bed with the window open, lace curtains blowing, and read Onions In The Stew by Betty MacDonald, for hours at a time. I was only eleven years old, but loved the book. As the years progressed I read other Betty MacDonald novels and they are also full of humour, which reminds me of those far off summers when I was a young boy. Of all her books, Onions In The Stew is my favourite, because of the carefree simple life she describes, which is so alluring. She makes you want to go and live in a beach house by the sea, eating fish and searching for firewood on the shore. Her writing about her teenage girls is very apt in today's world when parents have to deal with this difficult stage. I can't recommend this book enough. once you own it you'll want to read it again and again. A big thank you to the publisher for re-issuing these books.

The bestselling author of the American humor classic The Egg and I continues the adventure with this collection of tales about life on the fringe of the Western wilderness. Writing in the 1950s, Betty MacDonald, sophisticated and urbane, captivated readers with her observations about raising a family on an island in Puget Sound. As usual, humorist MacDonald is her own favorite target. She manages to get herself into scrapes with washing machines set adrift in rowboats, used cars, and a $25 Turkey Squasher. And then there's the scariest aspect of island life -- teenaged children.

"Nancy and Plum" is a children's book written by the world famous author Betty McDonald, who wrote four popular "Mrs. Piggle Wiggle" children's books, and also the adult books, "The Egg & I", "Anybody Can Do Anything" and "Onion in the Stew". "Nancy and Plum" was first published in 1952. It is a story Betty told her daughters, Joan and Anne, each night at bedtime, making it up as she went along. It is a delightful old fashioned Christmas story about two sisters, Nancy, 10 and Plum, 8, whose parents died in an accident. Their surviving relative is Uncle John, a wealthy bachelor with little patience or time for children. He puts the girls in Mrs. Monday's Boarding School in Heavenly Valley, persuaded by Mrs. Monday's promises and unctuous manner. But Mrs. Monday is an ogre who pampers her niece, Maribelle, and persecutes the other girls in her custody. Of the two sisters, Plum is the spunky one, leading Nancy on forays for food and initiating their running away. Plum like that more famous orphan, ,Annie, is brave, innovative and energetic. There are lovely characters who are sympathetic and help the girls: Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, who find the girls on their farm and rescue them; Miss Waverly, the school teacher; Miss Appleby, the librarianl and Old Tom, the caretaker at the orphanage. For contrast their is Miss Gronk the Sunday school teacher, who shares the role of villianess with Mrs. Monday. "Nancy and Plum" and "Mrs. Piggle Wiggle" were made into plays by the Seattle Children's Theater which were done exactly the way Betty would have wanted. They appealed to adults as well as children and are now being performed by other children's theaters throughout the United States.