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Title: Miss Happiness and Miss Flower by Rumer Godden ISBN: 0-06-440938-4 Publisher: HarperTrophy Pub. Date: 04 June, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (14 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Absolutely Enchanting!
Comment: This book is still one of my favorites. I read it when I was 10 years old and in 5th grade. I fell in love with the idea of creating a home for my dolls, so I begged my dad to build me the same dollhouse, which he did. I spent many weeks searching for items to put in it, but I had some trouble finding things that looked Japanese. This book inspired me to learn more about other cultures and languages. I still have the dollhouse, and am planning to refurbish it this summer. I bought a copy of the book about 18 years ago, but it was very hard to find. I'm glad that it is more easily avaiable today. This would be a fun book to read with a child, and the house would be a fun project to make together.
Rating: 5
Summary: Miss Happiness and Miss Flower
Comment: One of the most prized "childhood favourites" in my library along with Little Plum, the follow-up novel to Miss Happiness and Miss Flower. In fact, I'm a fan of all of Godden's works, from her children's books to her adult titles such as Black Narcissus.
I "discovered" Miss Happiness and Miss Flower a couple of years after my family relocated from tropical Queensland - with its memories of mangoes, mosquito nets and frangipani (plumaria) flowers - to Sydney, a temperate climate city with cold winters.
In those days (mid-1960s)when families and cultures migrated a lot less than they do now, migrants from even just another state - let alone another country! - felt homesick and alienated. But even today in the age of the internet, transplanted girls still miss their old home, its sights, sounds, tastes and friends...and would enjoy this gentle book.
Naturally, I related to the novel's heroine Nona, a book-loving young girl uprooted from her home in tropical India and sent to live in England. I also connected to the empathy she develops with Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, two Japanese dolls who are also feeling out of place and homesick for the familiar.
Fortunately I didn't have a selfish (and insecure) cousin Belinda - as Nona does - to make my life even more miserable. But like Nona, I did eventually make friends and begin to feel at home...
Rating: 5
Summary: A perfect book for can-do kind of little lonely girls
Comment:
As "Harry Potter" calls out to today's young bright outsiders looking for somewhere to truly belong, this book spoke to me. It mesmerised me as a little girl. As an USAF "brat" I very much understand Nona's ache and anger as the "weird" outsider. I fell in love with the dolls as well. Their "voices" sounded like two little doting "aunties" as they subtly manipulated Nona and Belinda into seeing past their differences and fears and into finding friendship. If only I had had such a wonderful pair of guardian angels of my own back then.
Rumer does a great job of painting two total opposites of little girls with warmth and sympathy while never truly turning either into either a villian or a bad joke (way too rare). She showed that even our flaws can become strengths when they are accepted and we are willing to be loved.
One thing that really grabbed me as a child was that the book included all the plans for the house and the furnishings the girls eventually build for their little foriegn guests. I spent hours pouring over the school library copy back then. I nearly wore it out. Now my girls will be able to indulge in the same pleasure without having to always be on the look out for the due date.
This time we'll be building the Japanese doll house together.
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Title: Doll's House by Rumer Godden, Tasha Tudor ISBN: 014030942X Publisher: Puffin Pub. Date: September, 1976 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Gypsy Girl by Rumer Godden ISBN: 0064409376 Publisher: HarperTrophy Pub. Date: 05 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: Little Plum by Rumer Godden ISBN: 0140307370 Publisher: Viking Childrens Books Pub. Date: August, 1987 List Price(USD): $32.00 |
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Title: The Best-Loved Doll by Rebecca Caudill, Elliot Gilbert ISBN: 0805054677 Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: 15 October, 1997 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: The Story of Holly and Ivy by Rumer Godden, Barbara Cooney ISBN: 0670806226 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: October, 1985 List Price(USD): $17.99 |
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