Vintage Series: Four Little Blossoms
Today I’m featuring a fun vintage children’s series I recently discovered. Last week, I found a copy of Four Little Blossoms at Sunrise Beach at the thrift store. I hadn’t heard of the Four Little Blossoms before, so I was interested to learn that they were part of the Stratemeyer Syndicate (which famously published several well-known juvenile series such as Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and the Bobbsey Twins).
I love perusing old novels for a glimpse into the time they were written, and the language and lifestyle are often quite entertaining.
About the Series
There were seven titles in the Four Little Blossoms series written between 1920 and 1930. They were attributed to Mabel C. Hawley. Several of them are available in eBook format for free on Project Gutenberg (linked below).
About the Characters
The Four Little Blossoms series tells the happy adventures of the Blossom family, which, as you might guess, has four children: Bobby, Meg, twins Twaddles(!) and Dot.
Here’s the summary paragraph that brings us up to speed in the first chapter of Four Little Blossoms at Sunrise Beach:
It is quite possible that you have met the four little Blossoms before–Meg, whose real name was Margaret Alice Blossom; Bobby, who was Robert Hayward Blossom on the school rolls; and those smiling, busy twins, Twaddles and Dot, who were never called by their right names of Arthur Gifford and Dorothy Anna. In the first book about them, called “Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm,” they all went to see their Aunt Polly, and a merry life they led her. But in spite of the adventures and mischief and noise, Aunt Polly was sorry to see them go. Of course she knew they had to go back to Oak Hill, where they lived, to go to school. Meg and Bobby went to school and the twins envied them, but during the holidays, Twaddles and Dot found they could share the fun of coasting and building snow-men and skating. Later, the following summer, when the four little Blossoms went to Apple Tree Island, every one of them shared in a bit of mystery that came out right and please them mightily. From the Island they came home again, to go to school as all good children do; and in the book just before this one, which is called “Four Little Blossoms through the Holidays,” the busy days from Thanksgiving to New Year’s seemed to fly past. Bobby and his friends got into a peck of trouble about a shop that burned down after they had been seen in it, but the matter was straightened out finally, and Meg, who had a little trouble of her own, was made happy, too. Things always seemed to work out right for the four little Blossoms, and in the main they were as happy as the days were long.
Other characters:
- Father Blossom, whose first name is Ralph, is referred to as “Father Blossom” throughout, though the children call him “Daddy.”
- Mother Blossom, sometimes called “Muddie” by the children.
- Philip. The family dog. (A kid called Twaddles, with a dog named Philip!)
- Annabelle Lee. The family cat.
- Sam Layton. Live-in “man of all work” employed by Father Blossom.
- Norah. Live-in cook and housekeeper.
Four Little Blossoms at Sunrise Beach
Four Little Blossoms at Sunrise Beach is a summer story. Twaddles and Dot “had just started to kindergarten the last half of the term,” when school was out for the summer. I think it may have been customary — or at least not unusual — at that time for young children to start school at different times throughout the year, depending on when their birthday was. My granddaddy told me he started school in the spring of 1920. I can’t remember why, because his birthday was in September and he was five that year.
Father Blossom surprised the children with a new car on the last day of school, and then the family planned their vacation at Sunrise Beach for later in the summer. Before that, though, there is a rollicking chapter on a very full Fourth of July celebration right in their own hometown. All very fun and cozy and a little on the well-to-do side, with no concerns about how much things cost. Of course, this was still the 1920s before the Great Depression set in, so I guess that makes sense. The rest of the book, as the title suggests, is an account of the family’s adventures at the beach.
My Thoughts
I think this hundred-year-old series would make an entertaining read-aloud for children ages 4 to 8, even today. The adventures are exciting, but gentle and quickly resolved so as not to keep young kids in suspense too long. If you have children in that age range, nab the free eBooks and see what they think.
