The Family from One End Street

Eve Garnett's book, The Family from One End Street was first published in 1937, and was awarded the Carnegie Gold Medal that year. It's a sweet book about a family with seven children. The father is a dustman and the mother is a washerwoman and the children range in age from 12 down to a baby under 2. Each chapter contains an adventure of each family member, and a couple of chapters are about the entire family together.

I bought this book years ago because a paragraph on page 2 caught my eye:

"The neighbors pitied Jo and Rosie for having such a large family, and called it 'Victorian'; but the dustman and his wife were proud of their numerous girls and boys, all-growing-up-fine-and-strong-one-behind-the-other-like-steps-in-a-ladder and -able-to-wear-each-others-clothes-right-down-to-the-baby, so that really it was only two sets, girl and boy, summer and winter, Mrs. Ruggles had to buy, except Boots."

It's a good large-family book, with the children and the parents trying their best to do what's right, even when tempted to do otherwise.

Eve Garnett also illustrated the book.