This sweetly sentimental tale about selfishness and selflessness in a small Illinois town in olden times was worth the read. ( )

What a delightful book. I am from southern Illinois and could so identify with the small town flavor of this book. It brought back expressions I had not heard in a long time and reminded me of life during my childhood. What a wonderful book. ( )

Eleven-year-old Helene, the daughter of the town doctor, and best friends with Gracie, the town pastor’s daughter, innocently relates the happenings in their small town of Tory, Illinois to her parents. Helene’s mother is famous for her lemon jelly cake, and in the family, is known for her theory that she is stuck in the Tory layer. This is a charming little story of small town life. ( )

Delightful story of life in early 1900's midwest. It is refreshing and humourous and touching.
The way American life used to be.The simple joys of life. I found this book at a used books sale and treasure it! ( )

This light and sweet book, published in 1952, takes place in a small Illinois town in the summer of 1900. Narrated by 11-year old Helene, daughter of the town's doctor, the book is a charming portrait of mid-western small-town life, with its rigid conventions, bitter feuds about cakes (Antha Jones's angel food cake always rose two inches higher than Minnie Overstreets's), iced tea cooled with pond ice, and Antihorse-Thief Picnics. I loved the glimpse of an older and simpler era. The book was sweet -- but perhaps too sweet. My least favorite part about the book was the narrator -- she was drawn to be such a relentless ingenue, and very nearly drove the plot all by herself by blithely blabbing all of her observations to townspeople, so that infidelities were exposed, town gossip and secrets revealed, and vulnerabilities laid bare, while Helene herself remained a naive busybody. It just seemed inartful to me -- my only quibble (but a big one) about what was otherwise a light and enjoyable summer read.