("The best thing about the Depression was the way it reuni...)
"The best thing about the Depression was the way it reunited our family and gave my sister Mary a real opportunity to prove that anybody can do anything, especially Betty."
After surviving both the failed chicken farm - and marriage - immortalized in The Egg and I, Betty MacDonald returns to live with her mother and desperately searches to find a job to support her two young daughters. With the help of her older sister Mary, Anybody Can Do Anything recounts her failed, and often hilarious, attempts to find work during the Great Depression.
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When Betty MacDonald married a marine and moved to a s...)
When Betty MacDonald married a marine and moved to a small chicken farm on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, she was largely unprepared for the rigors of life in the wild. With no running water, no electricity, a house in need of constant repair, and days that ran from four in the morning to nine at night, the MacDonalds had barely a moment to put their feet up and relax. And then came the children. Yet through every trial and pitfall—through chaos and catastrophe—this indomitable family somehow, mercifully, never lost its sense of humor.
A beloved literary treasure for more than half a century, Betty MacDonald's The Egg and I is a heartwarming and uproarious account of adventure and survival on an American frontier.
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A classic story from one of the most beloved children's...)
A classic story from one of the most beloved children's book authors!
Mary Poppins meets Nanny McPhee in Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Magic, a hilarious and charming picture book about a magical problem solver that has been delighting readers for generations.
Parents love Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle because she can cure children of any bad habit. Children love her because she’s tons of fun! When Mrs. Burbank is in despair because her children become Thought-You-Saiders, or Mrs. Rogers’ sanity and crockery are threatened as Sharon turns into a Heedless Breaker, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle produces a magical potion that takes care of the problem.
Read the other books in the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series: Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, Hello, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and Happy Birthday, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle!
("Getting tuberculosis in the middle of your life is like ...)
"Getting tuberculosis in the middle of your life is like starting downtown to do a lot of urgent errands and being hit by a bus. When you regain consciousness you remember nothing about the urgent errands. You can't even remember where you were going."
Thus begins Betty MacDonald's memoir of her year in a sanatorium just outside Seattle battling the "White Plague." MacDonald uses her offbeat humor to make the most of her time in the TB sanatorium―making all of us laugh in the process.
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Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is back with a brand-new bundle of w...)
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is back with a brand-new bundle of wonderfully magical cures for any bad habit—from watching too much TV, to picky eating, to fear of trying new things. And while Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is working her magic, the children are working some of their own, planning a boisterous birthday bash for everyone's favorite problem solver!
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A classic story from one of the most beloved children's...)
A classic story from one of the most beloved children's book authors!
Mary Poppins meets Nanny McPhee in Hello, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, a hilarious and charming picture book about a magical problem solver that has been delighting readers for generations.
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle loves children! Well-mannered and healthy children, that is. And she has an old sea chest full of magic cures for any bad habit—like the powder that makes Phillip Carmody completely invisible when he shows off, or the anti-slowpoke spray she uses to treat Harbin Quadrangle's extra-acute daydreaming disease.
Read the other books in the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series: Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Magic, and Happy Birthday, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle!
(It was Christmas Eve. Big snowflakes fluttered slowly thr...)
It was Christmas Eve. Big snowflakes fluttered slowly through the air like white feathers
and made all of Heavenly Valley smooth and white and quiet and beautiful.
So begins the story of two orphaned sisters at Mrs. Monday’s Boarding School. But nothing is heavenly for Nancy and Pamela (aka Plum): their parents died in a tragic accident years ago, they’re constantly punished by the cruel Mrs. Monday, and they’re all alone for the holidays.
Luckily, Nancy and Plum have each other, and though their prospects may be bleak, they’re determined to change their lot for the better. If their plan works, the spirited sisters will never spend Christmas at the cold, dark boarding school again. But what will they find on the other side of Mrs. Monday’s gate?
Adventure, warmth, unforgettable characters, and unexpected kindness abound in this classic story by Betty MacDonald, which was originally published in 1952. With illustrations by the acclaimed Mary GrandPré and an introduction by Jeanne Birdsall, National Book Award–winning author of The Penderwicks, this edition introduces the spunky, beloved heroines to a new generation of fans.
Betty MacDonald was an American author of humorous autobiographical tales.
Background
Betty MacDonald was born Anne Elizabeth Campbell Bard on March 26, 1908, in Boulder, Colorado. She was the daughter of Darsie Campbell Bard, a mining engineer, and Elsie Tholimar Sanderson.
Her family moved from one mining project to another in Colorado, Mexico, Montana, and Idaho; finally, when she was nine, they settled in Seattle, Wash.
Education
Betty was an honor student at Roosevelt High School in Seattle and attended the University of Washington for one year, planning to major in art. Her formal education was ended in 1927.
Career
Betty's husband Heskett wanted to be a chicken farmer, so the couple moved to an isolated farm near Chimacum, Washington, that they had bought for $450. Living conditions were primitive, and MacDonald could arouse no enthusiasm for raising chickens. "By the end of the second spring, " she wrote later, "I hated everything about the chicken but the egg. "
The farming experiences became, fifteen years later, the subject of her first and most widely read book, The Egg and I (1945). It was an exuberant account of an unconventional childhood and a crisp, light-hearted description of the endless work, odd characters, loneliness, and other rigors and infelicities of simple rural life.
MacDonald was encouraged to write the book by an older sister, Mary Bard, who wrote The Doctor Wears Three Faces (1949). The Egg and I, which was partially serialized in the Atlantic Monthly, climbed quickly to the top of the best-seller list and stayed there for months. By August 1946, less than a year after publication, sales reached a million copies; eventually the book sold more than two million copies in all editions.
MacDonald was paid $100, 000 by International Pictures for the rights to the motion picture, which starred Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray. A successful series of "Ma and Pa Kettle" films, based on characters in the book, came later. After separating from her first husband in 1931, MacDonald had returned to Seattle to begin a business career.
During the Great Depression, she held various jobs, including secretarial work for a mining engineer, managing a chain letter office, and selling advertising. She also worked for a number of government agencies, becoming the only woman labor adjuster in the National Recovery Administration.
Later, MacDonald was employed by the Treasury Department, and by the National Youth Administration as a director of publicity (1939 - 1942). This period of her life was chronicled in Anybody Can Do Anything (1950). In 1938, MacDonald contracted tuberculosis and was confined until mid-1939 in a Seattle sanatorium. Her experiences there, which ended with her cure, were narrated with her customary gusto and irreverence in The Plague and I (1948).
The book contained helpful and interesting information about tuberculosis and treatment of the disease at that time. After 1945, MacDonald wrote five books for children stories about Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, who specialized in concocting cures for bad habits.
Quotations:
“There’s nothing as cozy as a piece of candy and a book. ”
“The coffee was so strong it snarled as it lurched out of the pot. ”
“I'll do it because I want to but not because you tell me to!”
“In the country, weather is as important as food and sometimes means the difference between life and death. ”
“In the country Sunday is the day on which you do exactly as much work as you do on other days but feel guilty all the time you are doing it because Sunday is a day of rest. ”
“Our little room was morbidly quiet and sorrow was heaped in my corner like dirty snow. ”
“Gammy used to say, 'Too much scrubbing takes the life right out of things. '”
“I am neither Christian enough nor charitable enough to like anybody just because he is alive and breathing. I want people to interest or amuse me. I want them fascinating and witty or so dul as to be different. I want them either intellectually stimulating or wonderfully corny; perfectly charming or hundred percent stinker. I like my chosen companions to be distinguishable from the undulating masses and I don't care how. ”
“Her magic formula for dealing with children is ignoring all faults and accenting tiny virtues. She says, "Instead of telling Tommy day in and day out that he is the naughtiest boy in the United States of America, which could very well be true, take an aspirin and comment on his neatly tied shoes. Almost anybody would rather be known for expert shoe-tying than for kicking the cat. " She always tells whiners how charming they are bullies how brave bad sports how good sneaks how honest!”
“Dare we face the question of just how much of the darkness around us is of our own making?”
Personality
MacDonald lived with her family on Vashon Island, Wash. , in a rambling old house, with her two daughters. They were "at the mercy" of tides, ferry schedules, fog, weeds, and the strains of raising adolescent children. The period is described in her last autobiographical book, Onions in the Stew (1955). Like her earlier works, this is a projection of a remarkably spirited personality.
A suit seeking $900, 000 from MacDonald and her publisher was filed in a Seattle court in 1950 by nine members of a single family who contended they were humiliated by being identified as the real-life characters pictured as the Kettles in The Egg and I. A tenth person, seeking $75, 000, claimed to be humiliated because he was portrayed in the book as Indian Crowbar. The defendants were cleared on all counts after a jury trial. The MacDonalds bought a cattle ranch in Carmel Valley, Calif. , in 1953 and moved there in 1956. Two years later MacDonald returned to Seattle for medical treatment, and died there.
Connections
In 1927, Betty MacDonald married Robert Eugene Heskett, an insurance salesman; they had two children. The marriage ended in divorce in 1935.
On April 24, 1942, she married Donald Chauncey MacDonald, a real estate operator; they had no children.