Talk:Five Little Peppers and How They Grew

Excerpt from an article on Margaret Sidney
Constructively, Five Little Peppers is, in one respect and that a vital one, a remarkable story. There are not twenty lines of “description,” so-called, in the book. There are no pauses for analysis or explanation. In its art, the story is highly creative. The children are living—round, rosy, touchable, kissable. The action is as swift as that of a drama,—like the coming and going upon the stage, rather than a record to be read. To be sure, the setting for almost all the scenes is the kitchen of the little brown house, and the interest turns upon splitting wood, or baking a cake, or picking out basting threads, or having the measles, or making a doughnut man for a rich, cross old hypochondriac, but how intense the interest! how vital the outcomes involved! The story was as a sudden breath of fresh air. Childhood was back in its native realm of daisy and buttercup fields. It was a whole Restoration of the domestic virtues. Modern fairyland with its hot, dry climate, its artificial gardens, its plumcake diet, receded. The book had a great welcome. It was republished in England, editions are annually sold, and it has reached the dignity of “a children’s classic.”—excerpted from the article on “Margaret Sidney” in Good Housekeeping, 1815 Dec 12.