Books with author Cornelia Meigs

Young Nicholas Drury has his hands full between looking after his ailing uncle and tending to the family business, a Massachusetts shipyard. Since the recent end of the Revolutionary War, shipbuilding is in decline and everyone in the town of Brascombe is feeling the economic pinch. Just as Nicholas is on the verge of giving up and declaring bankruptcy, he notices footprints in his backyard that lead him to new friends, a dangerous secret, and a plan to restore the community's fortunes.This Newbery Honor–winning novel for young readers recaptures the nation's anxious mood in the years that followed its newly won independence. The tale of an entire town pulling together and pitching in to build a great trading ship echoes the spirit of the American Revolution, and its account of the vessel's two-year adventure to the Caribbean and China reflects the young country's growing engagement with the wider world. Numerous atmospheric black-and-white illustrations add to the story's historical flavor.

Young Nicholas Drury has his hands full between looking after his ailing uncle and tending to the family business, a Massachusetts shipyard. Since the recent end of the Revolutionary War, shipbuilding is in decline and everyone in the town of Brascombe is feeling the economic pinch. Just as Nicholas is on the verge of giving up and declaring bankruptcy, he notices footprints in his backyard that lead him to new friends, a dangerous secret, and a plan to restore the community's fortunes.This Newbery Honor–winning novel for young readers recaptures the nation's anxious mood in the years that followed its newly won independence. The tale of an entire town pulling together and pitching in to build a great trading ship echoes the spirit of the American Revolution, and its account of the vessel's two-year adventure to the Caribbean and China reflects the young country's growing engagement with the wider world. Numerous atmospheric black-and-white illustrations add to the story's historical flavor.

A pair of teens visiting their wealthy cousin in a sleepy seaside town stumble upon a family mystery in this suspenseful Newbery Honor Book. Oliver and Janet sense immediately that something's wrong with Cousin Jasper, who barely acknowledges their arrival and remains strangely nervous and preoccupied. The brother and sister soon realize that the trouble is not confined to their cousin's house; conflict is brewing all over the hills and farms of Medford Valley. Oliver and Janet form a friendship with a mysterious local beekeeper and his daughter. The beekeeper tells the children tales of the region's past as well as incidents from the lives of their ancestors — stories that help them piece together the scattered clues to the secret behind their cousin's depression and the discord that plagues the community. Armed with their new discoveries, Oliver and Janet attempt to overcome three generations of jealousy and greed with honor and integrity.

Most people know that Louisa May Alcott based the characters in Little Women on her own parents, her sisters, and herself.Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, the four famous March sisters in Little Women, were more than just storybook characters. The author, Louisa May Alcott, based that book on her own loving family — her parents and her sisters, Anna, Elizabeth, and May.Bronson Alcott’s mother taught him to write on their kitchen floor. Determined to make a life for himself, Bronson set out to find an educational institution where he could teach. Through his endeavours, Bronson met his future wife, Abba May. Once married, they moved to Germantown — the start of their many moves. His four daughters, Anna, Louisa, Elizabeth and May, were his pride and joy. Louisa was the most daring of all of them. From an early life, Louisa was always getting into trouble and loved the outdoors. This fierce determination of Louisa’s — to embark upon the unknown — was a trait she carried through to adulthood. Growing up in a household full of love and joy helped bridge the upheaval everytime they moved. They were poor, but happy. As Louisa grew, she started to understand the difficulties her parents had faced, and continued to face. Determined to help her parents, Louisa set out on a number of employment opportunities — teaching, sewing, nursing, writing — bringing in meagre wages, however hard she tried. Through a turn of fate, her short stories and letters brought her to the attention of publishers. A particularly cunning publisher, Mr Thomas Niles, urged Louisa to write a book for girls. Louisa wrote about her own mother and sisters. Little Women became a sensational hit around the world.From the proceeds, Louisa was able to provide her family with the desperately needed stable income — her one aim in life. She gave her family everything they ever wanted or needed. She finally had fame and affection — something that was seldom earned.In this book, Cornelia Meigs tells us the full story of the Alcott (March) family. An unbelievable story of a brave, loving family, even more wonderful than Little Women. Praise for Invincible Louisa "[A] graceful, well-written account" – Children’s Literature '[It tells of the] gallant girlhood of this favorite of American story tellers.’ - Kirkus Reviews Cornelia Lynde Meigs (1884–1973) was an American writer of fiction and biography for children, teacher of English and writing, historian and critic of children's literature. She won the Newbery Medal for Invincible Louisa and also wrote three Newbery Honor Books.

Barred from his family home- stead by his mean-spirited uncle, eighteen-year-old Chris weathers a Minnesota winter in a small cabin with his grandfather. Poverty and the tempting stories of a wandering Easterner convince Chris to harvest the trees on his grandfather's land and float the logs down the spring floodwaters of the Mississippi to the lumber mills in Saint Louis. Filled with stories of raft hands and river pilots, this fast-paced novel has all the momentum of the great Mississippi.

Elizabeth Houghton sat on a big stone beside the road, just where the highway forked, her school books still tucked under her arm. Her round blue eyes stared straight before her, as she tried, with one last effort, to make up her mind. For a whole week she had been attempting to reach a decision: that very morning she had told herself sternly that the matter must be settled to-day, yet still she had kept on debating inwardly, hour after hour, saying, one moment, “I will,” and the next, “I won’t.” In the late afternoon she had set out for Aunt Susan’s to announce her decision, but here she was pausing at the turn of the way, still irresolute. If she went onward by the broad highroad that stretched before her, she would come to the big country-house where her aunt lived and where, once inside the door, all her doubts and hesitations would be swept away by Aunt Susan’s forcible arguments. On the other hand, if she climbed the hill up the narrower branch of the way, Somerset Lane, she would come, she knew, to the white cottage beside the road where lived Miss Miranda Reynolds, a friend of her father’s whom she had been bidden to go to see. When she set forth after school she had purposed vaguely going to one place or the other. If to Miss Reynolds’, it would be putting off the moment of her decision a little longer, if to Aunt Susan’s, it would end in settling the matter once for all. She turned about on the stone and looked up the crooked path of Somerset Lane, winding steeply up the slope above her and ending before a great stone entrance-way with barred iron gates. Beyond the gates she could catch further glimpses of rising ground, groups of trees and, at the very summit of the hill, the broken walls of a ruined building. It must have been a fire, she concluded, after staring upward for some minutes, that had so blackened the stone walls and left them standing, empty and desolate, with here and there a blank window or the part of an arched doorway. For very weariness with pondering her own problem, she began to let her mind wander away in vague curiosity as to how such destruction had come about and how the fire had looked as it had swept blazing across the long roofs until they crashed and fell, had glowed behind the empty windows and had gone up in columns of sparks and flame above the dark trees. Her father had told her nothing of this big ruined house at the top of the hill, he had merely directed her to look for the Reynolds cottage half way up the slope among the maple trees. No doubt, Elizabeth thought, Miss Reynolds could give her an account of the fire. This idea gave some point to a visit in which she had felt very little interest until now. She had a twinge of conscience as she sat looking up the lane remembering how long it was since she had promised her father to go, and how she should have climbed that steep way many days before. Elizabeth had not lived very long in this neighborhood, for this was early spring and it had been only at Christmas time that she and her father and Irish Anna, who kept house for them, had come to Harwood to settle down in what had been Mr. Houghton’s old home. Even here, after many other moves, the question of uprooting soon came up again, for in March her father had been summoned to England to spend six months. “I wish it were not going to be so lonely for you, Betsey,” he had said as he made preparations to go, “but at least you will be busy. I am glad that we have found such a good school for you at last. A few more changes, and your education would have been wrecked entirely.” Betsey had always meant to go to college and was now in the last half-year of her preparation. Transfers from one school to another had indeed resulted in so much lost time that she was already a little behind her proper class and would, so she agreed with her father, lose all chances of fulfilling her plans should she change again.