Whimsical Wednesdays (Aug. 4)

Whimsical Wednesdays is my personal departure from my Current Reads list. For one evening each week, I go back to a book I enjoyed as a child, teen, or young adult, and spend some time revisiting favorite characters or authors. Sometimes they are classics, other times it's something quirky that just caught my fancy.

This week, I have two books: the second and third books in 'The Martha Years' series of Little House books. Both are fairly short, so it shouldn't take long to read them, and I've really been itching to get at them all week!

The first book, Little House in the Highlands, introduced Martha Morse and her family. The Far Side of the Loch picks up a few weeks or so later. Martha is the youngest of her family, and has to find ways to occupy herself while her brothers are at school and her sister is learning how to run a household. Introduce one pet hedgehog. Not something I'd consider, but I can see where it might provide some amusement.

The third book, Down to the Bonny Glen, is about a slightly more grown-up Martha. Like most girls at that time, she did not go to school, but she was expected to learn to read and do enough ciphering to keep the household accounts when she grew up. There was no need, according to her father, for her to learn much of history or any languages; it just wasn't necessary. Instead, she has a governess. But she'd rather be out playing on the moors than cooped up in the house.

As I said before, these are fairly simple books, written for a younger audience, but they are still fun, so I think I'll have an enjoyable couple of hours with them. Then the hunt will begin for the last book in this series.