A million years ago, back in the early 1960s, my grandmother gave me some old books. One of them was “The Bobbsey Twins; or, Merry Days Indoors and Out.”
I was hooked.
The series, putatively written by “Laura Lee Hope” but actually written by many different people, goes on forever. The books are full of simple images and situations that are bound to appeal to impressionable children (they certainly appealed to me). The publishers update them from time to time, but they're really a lot more fun if you read the older versions; otherwise you miss details like the train ride to the seashore (on what is most definitely a 1910-era train), and Mrs. Bobbsey telling the children that “train ice cream may not be good to eat.”
So you have two sets of twins. First there are Nan and Bert, who are around nine or ten, sandy-haired, smart, diligent, alert, All-Around Good Citizens. Then there are little Freddie and Flossie, maybe five years old, with golden curls, lisping, adorable. There's a supporting cast: Freddie's cat Snoop, the black cook Dinah and her husband Sam (the family's “man-of-all-work”), and the school bully / all-purpose villain Danny Rugg.
The Bobbsey Twins solve mysteries! They get locked in department stores after hours! They get accused of things they didn't do! They march in the Fourth of July parade! They grow radishes! They go skating and ice-boating on Lake Metoka! They get captured by gypsies!
Flossie, in the old 1930s edition Grandma gave me, has a doll collection, which she tends carefully and keeps in a bureau drawer. Sam and Dinah give her a little black baby doll. She adds it to her collection, but puts a cardboard shoebox lid between the black doll and her other dolls, just to make sure there's no mixing of the races.
Even as a kid, I thought this was creepy.
But here's a high point, from (I think) “The Bobbsey Twins at Plymouth Rock”: Bert and bully Danny Rugg are on a train together. Danny pulls out a candy bar and starts to eat it. And I've never forgotten this line:
“He did not offer any of the candy to Bert.”
Oh, snap!
Danny Rugg is evil incarnate!
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