The Peterkin Papers

New York: Looking Glass Library. Very Good with no dust jacket. c.1959. Reprint. Hardcover. Illustrated paper covered boards have some shelf wear. ; A tight solid book. Undated but appears to be circa 1959 ; B&W Illustrations; 12mo 7" - 7½" tall; 248 pages; "Meet the Peterkins, a lovable crew with a notable lack of common sense. These comic tales chronicle their roundabout attempts to solve simple, everyday problems. Cheerful and energetic, the close-knit family of eight resides in a village near Boston. They play their piano from the front porch because the movers left it with the keyboard facing the parlor window, and they're ready to raise the ceiling to make way for a towering Christmas tree. Only the timely intervention of "the wise old lady from Philadelphia" keeps them from acting on their more elaborate madcap schemes.Author Lucretia Hale, sister to writer and cleric Edward Everett Hale, helped break new ground in children's literature by writing stories to amuse young people rather than instruct or uplift them. These tales first appeared in 1867 in a popular children's magazine of the era, and in the course of a decade, the Peterkins became a household word." .