Product Description

Rebecca Randall is one of seven fatherless children, but is full of fun and strange ideas. She leaves her family at Sunnybrook Farm and goes to live with her two aunts in Riverboro. There she goes to school for the first time, embarks on a madcap scheme to sell soap, nearly runs away, befriends the kindly stagecoach driver Jeremiah Cobb, and with 'Mr Aladdin' helps repair her family's fortunes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #47421 in Books
• Published on: 1994-05-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Author Jack London wrote Kate Douglas Wiggin a letter about her classic Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm from the headquarters of the First Japanese Army in Manchuria in 1904: "May I thank you for Rebecca?... I would have quested the wide world over to make her mine, only I was born too long ago and she was born but yesterday.... Why could she not have been my daughter? Why couldn't it have been I who bought the three hundred cakes of soap? Why, O, why?" Mark Twain called Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm "beautiful and warm and satisfying".

Who is this beguiling creature? The irrepressible 10-year-old Rebecca Rowena Randall burst into the world of children's book characters (and her new life in Maine) in 1903 when storybook girls were gentle and proper. A "bird of a very different feather", she had "a small, plain face illuminated by a pair of eyes carrying such messages, such suggestions, such hints of sleeping power and insight, that one never tired of looking into their shining depths." Soon enough, she wins over her prim Aunt Miranda, the whole town and thousands of readers everywhere with her energetic, indomitable spirit. This beautiful trade edition features the artwork of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm's original illustrator Helen Mason Grose, with 6 full-colour plates and 32 pen-and-ink drawings. (Ages 9 and older)

Customer Reviews

You really should try this book!
I was given this book free at a summer fair by a very kind lady, in perfect condition, and I found it wonderful! A girl of ten years, called Rebecca Rowena Randall leaves her family to live with her two aunts in Riverboro. Aunt Miranda is softened very slightly, though continues criticising her. Aunt Jane, kind by nature, unfortunatly doesn't understand her strange ways any more than her sister. Rebecca is always full of interesting, exciting ideas, with very amusing or unexpected results. Upon a mission to sell some cakes of soap, she gets aquainted with a certain Adam Ladd, although she christened him Mr. Aladdin before she knew his real name. 'A. Ladd' buys three hundred cakes of soap from her, and she promptly falls over from shock. Then her aunts lose nearly all their money, and with the help of 'Mr. Aladdin' 'repairs her family fortunes.' This is a great book, and anyone who reads it will not be bored or uninterested, although it can be the tiniest bit draggy sometimes, not often. I recommend it, definitely. If anybody reads this and decides to try it, please could they write a review with their opinions on it on this site. You honestly won't be disappointed! By Vicky Armstrong, 13 years old.

An inspiring enternaining book for all
This book is about a spirited girl enthusiastic about life. Standing out from others becase of her unique personality. Follow her through her trials and triumphs as she grows up and becomes a beautiful woman.

Deserves to be more well-known
After all, Louisa May Alcott wrote only one wonderful book, "Little Women", followed by a series of uninspired sequels, one worse than the other. And yet she is much more famous than the authoress of this book, which is equally deserving, and even more so, because she wisely refrained, to my knowledge, from attempting a sequel!
Rebecca is very endearing but not in a cutesy way like Pollyanna (another work plagued by its sequels). The grim aunt of Pollyanna becomes a sweetie, while Rebecca's aunts are more realistically drawn.
There is also less moralising here - a flaw in most children's books of that period (and many books for adults too), and a lot of detail in the psychology of characters, their thoughts and feelings, skillfully written.
Rebecca, like Jo March of "Little Women", has literary talents, which I'm afraid will, contrary to those of Jo, go unused, because - in this the author is less daring than Alcott - the heroine is destined to a rich marriage, deemed preferable to the career of a humble teacher. The fairy-tale marriage which solves all problems like a deus ex machina is a bit of a conventional ending not worthy of the rest of the book. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it a lot and recommend it wholeheartedly. Much better offer this to today's young people instead of all the crap they are reading.