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Thimble Summer
Thimble Summer
Thimble Summer
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Thimble Summer

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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A silver thimble and a new friend make a girl's summer magical in Elizabeth Enright's Thimble Summer.

A few hours after nine-year-old Garnet Linden finds a silver thimble in the dried-up riverbed, the rains come and end the long drought on the farm. The rains bring safety for the crops and the livestock, and money for Garnet's father. Garnet can't help feeling that the thimble is a magic talisman, for the summer proves to be interesting and exciting in so many different ways.

There is the arrival of Eric, an orphan who becomes a member of the Linden family; the building of a new barn; and the county fair at which Garnet's carefully tended pig, Timmy, wins a blue ribbon. Every day brings adventure of some kind to Garnet and her best friend, Citronella. As far as Garnet is concerned, the thimble is responsible for each good thing that happens during this magic summer—her thimble summer.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 10, 2015
ISBN9781250102874
Thimble Summer
Author

Elizabeth Enright

Elizabeth Enright (1907-1968) was born in Oak Park, Illinois, but spent most of her life in or near New York City. Her mother was a magazine illustrator, while her father was a political cartoonist. Illustration was Enright's original career choice and she studied art in Greenwich, Connecticut; Paris, France; and New York City. After creating her first book in 1935, she developed a taste, and quickly demonstrated a talent, for writing.  Throughout her life, she won many awards, including the 1939 John Newbery Medal for Thimble Summer and a 1958 Newbery Honor for Gone-Away Lake. Among her other beloved titles are her books about the Melendy family, including The Saturdays, published in 1941. Enright also wrote short stories for adults, and her work was published in The New Yorker, The Ladies Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, The Yale Review, Harper’s, and The Saturday Evening Post. She taught creative writing at Barnard College. Translated into many languages throughout the world, Elizabeth Enright's stories are for both the young and the young at heart.

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Rating: 3.88387095483871 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I feel pretty sure I read Thimble Summer when I was a little girl. I have a memory of disappointment; I was always hoping the thimble the main character, Garnet, finds would turn out to be magic. It wasn't. This book was one of my early attempts with and disappointments with realistic fiction (though I have learned to love it in recent years.)The story is of a girl who discovers a thimble, a thimble that leads to a whole summer of good things. An orphan boy comes to live with Garnet's family, to help out during a time of drought on their farm. Garnet raises a pig that goes on to win the blue ribbon at the fair. It's good times for all.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A Newberry Award winner from 1939 that well captures rural America of the '30s--both the hard times and the good times.The story covers the summer of a 9 year old girl, Garnet, who finds a silver thimble during a drought and then whose luck changes, with the drought breaking that night. Garnet has a series of amusing adventures while performing normal farm work: threshing, baking lime for construction, traveling to the country fair.I was struck by the great innocence of the time: Garnet hitchhikes 18 miles to a town and back with no danger and no worry. The books is well worth reading for kids of any age.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really enjoyed this book - I'm such a pushover for books about girls in the past - although this was contemporary fiction at the time it was written (the 1930's). Garnet is a likable girl and I love the adventures she gets up to. Some of the things the kids in this book do would be appalling today - like hitchhiking to a nearby town without telling anyone where she was going. The scenes from the county fair were some of my favorite. Charming tale of a farming family in Wisconsin.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Sweet story about a girl on a Depression-era midwestern farm and her summer of adventures. Thimble Summer has aged well because of its lack of emphasis on traditional gender roles, and because we have enshrined most of the activities referenced in the book in the cannon of children's literature: prize pigs, state fairs, carnivals, a lock-in, sibling friction.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Wonderful sweet story about a girl on a Wisconsin farm. I would highly recommend for grade school age readers.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    (#27 in the 2005 book challenge)I love Elizabeth Enright, she's the one who wrote Gone-Away Lake (one of my favorite book titles ever, fyi) and The Saturdays. Somehow I never read Thimble Summer before, which is probably her best known book. It's very sweet -- little girl living on a farm during the depression, farm type adventures, a hog, everyone is happy. I think this is what people mean when they complain that all the books that get the hype nowadays are chock full of issues and problems. However, I would point out that very few people can write like Enright, so it's not often an author comes along who can carry a whole book about cute things that happen on a farm entirely on the strength of the writing.It also reminded me of something that I think about a lot, which is farms. I'm intrigued, in a pleasant way, how preoccupied people are with farms, even though most Americans don't live on farms. It's like the first book everyone has is a book about farm animals. You'd think this was crucial knowledge, how to identify farm animals, and what animal goes Moo.Grade: ARecommended: Well, it is what it is, a book about a farm. Also, a Newbery winner.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This children's award winning book is special more for the beautiful writing than the story perhaps. Even so, I loved both. The reader is immersed in the life of 9 year old Garnet, as well as her family and friends. The adventures of the young girl and her friend Citronella remind me of a simple time when children could be children. I hope that today's young children will also enjoy the book, but many have never seen a hog face to face or run away to the small town eighteen miles away.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Sweet book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The best book ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    ??????????:) :) :) :) :) :)
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I don’t know what makes it a good book but it just is.??
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Winner of the 1939 Newbery Medal for Children’s Literature, this is a delightful & heart-warming story of nine-year-old Garnet Linden and one perfect summer on her family’s Wisconsin farm. It’s set in what was in some ways a much simpler time, in a self-sufficient rural environment (her father fired his own lime to make his own blocks for the foundation of his new barn).In one of many adventures that summer, Garnet makes a trip on the bus by herself to the next town (imagine that happening today!)I found the comparisons between town & farm life amusing because they remain similar to such observations today.Elizabeth Enright is also the author of my childhood favourites – the Melendy Family quartet, which begins with The Saturdays.Every child should be able to enjoy a Thimble Summer. Sadly, few ever do – or even did – and so this story provides a wonderful escape.Read this if: you love tales of the unspoiled rural America of 80 years ago; or you believe in happy childhood summers. 5 stars
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    When 9 year old Garnet Linden finds a real silver thimble when she and her brother Jay go swimming in a nearby river to escape what she feels is the hottest day of the year, magical events take place: the drought was broken thereby saving the farms crops, the Government granted Mr. Linden money to re-build his falling down barn, Eric, the Linden’s new found family member, saw the light of the kiln that brought him to them, Garnet and Citronella stayed too long in the library reading (a girl after my own heart) and were locked in, but were rescued by Garnet’s Dad and Mr. Freebody. In this day and age I kept waiting for something awful to happen, what with all that hitchhiking, but this enchanted story reminded me of the days of canning with my Grandmother and a slower more delicious pace that I long for frequently; glimmering, oxygenated, and effervescent, a piece of history one must never forget.If You Liked This, Try: Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorensen, Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski, Gone-Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright, The Wheel on the School by Meindert Dejong, Miss Hickory by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey.Awards: Newbery Medal, 1939
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Thimble Summer is written by Elizabeth Enright. This book is a story about a young girls adventures during one really hot summer and how her findings have been making magical events take place.I think this book is really cute. I love the adventures she has with her friends through the story. It reminded me of summer and being a kid and what fun you can have.I would like to read this book to my students and have them write me a paper about summer or maybe a story about their summer adventures.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This 1939 Newbery Award winner has aged quite well. Written as a contemporary tale of life on a Wisconsin small-town farm for a girl and her family, it now reads as a period piece about a bygone era. Garnet Linden has a variety of small adventures involving her slightly older brother, Jay, her best friend, Citronella, and few other family members and family friends. There is no one central plot, but rather an episodic narrative of life on the farm for an adventurous girl.The only episode that that makes the book stand out as having been written in 1938 is when Garnet hitch hikes to a town 18 miles away. Although she does so without her parents permission, she suffers no ill repercussions from doing so, either from the people who kindly give her rides, nor from her parents. A book written today, even if telling a tale of the 1930s, would never portray hitch hiking as something acceptable for a 12 year old girl to do!

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Thimble Summer - Elizabeth Enright

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To My Mother

I. The Silver Thimble

GARNET thought this must be the hottest day that had ever been in the world. Every day for weeks she had thought the same thing, but this was really the worst of all. This morning the thermometer outside the village drug store had pointed a thin red finger to one hundred and ten degrees Fahrenheit.

It was like being inside of a drum. The sky like a bright skin was stretched tight above the valley, and the earth too, was tight and hard with heat. Later, when it was dark, there would be a noise of thunder, as though a great hand beat upon the drum; there would be heavy clouds above the hills, and flashes of heat lightning, but no rain. It had been like that for a long time. After supper each night her father came out of the house and looked up at the sky, then down at his fields of corn and oats. No, he would say, shaking his head, No rain tonight.

The oats were turning yellow before their time, and the corn leaves were torn and brittle, rustling like newspaper when the dry wind blew upon them. If the rain didn’t come soon there would be no corn to harvest, and they would have to cut the oats for hay.

Garnet looked up at the smooth sky angrily, and shook her fist. You! she cried, Why in time can’t you let down a little rain!

At each step her bare feet kicked up a small cloud of dust. There was dust in her hair, and up her nose, making it tickle.

Garnet was halfway between nine and ten. She had long legs and long arms, two taffy-colored pigtails, a freckled nose that turned up, and eyes that were almost green and almost brown. She wore a pair of blue overalls, cut off above the knee. She could whistle between her teeth like a boy and was doing it now, very softly, without thinking. She had forgotten all about her anger at the sky.

Under its big, black fir trees the Hausers’ farm lay solid and sleepy-looking at the bend in the road. There was a bed of burning red salvia flowers on the lawn, and the tractor and threshing machine stood side by side in the shade, like friendly monsters. Across the road the Hauser pigs lay slumbering and wheezing under their shelter. Lazy fat things, said Garnet, and threw a pebble at the biggest hog, who snorted horribly and lumbered to his feet. But Garnet just laughed at him; the fence was between them.

Behind her a screen door twanged shut, and Citronella Hauser came down the steps of her house flapping a dish towel like a fan. She was a fat little girl, with red cheeks and thick yellow bangs.

Land! she called to Garnet. Isn’t it hot! Where you going?

For the mail, said Garnet. We might go swimming, she added thoughtfully.

But no. Citronella had to help her mother with the ironing. A fine thing to have to do on a day like this, she said rather crossly. I bet you I’ll melt all over the kitchen floor like a pound and a half of butter.

Garnet giggled at this picture and started on her way.

Wait a minute, said Citronella, I might as well see if there’s any mail for us too.

As she walked she did different things with the dish towel. First she draped it over her head like a shawl, then she tied it around her waist but it was too tight, and it ended up tucked in the back of her belt, hanging down behind like a train.

Days like this, remarked Citronella, make me wish I could find a waterfall somewhere. One that poured lemonade instead of water. I’d sit under it all day with my mouth open.

I’d rather be up on an Alp, said Garnet. You know, one of those mountains they have in Europe. There’s snow on top of them even on the hottest days of summer. I’d like to be sitting in the snow looking miles and miles down into a valley.

Too much trouble climbing up, sighed Citronella.

They turned the corner and kept along the highway till they came to the mailboxes. There were four of them set up on narrow posts. They were big tin boxes with curved tops, and some of them tilted crazily upon their pedestals. Always they made Garnet think of thin old women in crooked sunbonnets, gossiping beside the road.

Each box was named in black, stenciled letters. Hauser, Schoenbecker, Freebody and Linden.

The Hausers usually had the most mail because they were the largest family, and Citronella and her brothers were always sending for free samples of things advertised in papers. Today there was a small bottle of hair dye and a sample of hog mash for Citronella, as well as three different kinds of tooth paste for her brother Hugo.

They peeked into old Mr. Schoenbecker’s box to see if the wren’s nest was still there. It was, and had been for a year. There were never any letters.

Garnet opened the box marked Linden, which was her last name, and pulled out a bulky package.

Look, Citronella, she cried, here’s the Merchant-Farmer’s Catalogue.

Citronella grabbed it and tore off the paper wrapper. She and Garnet both loved to look at the catalogues from the big department store. In it there were pictures of everything in the world that you might wish to buy, beside a lot of other things that you mightn’t, like tractor parts and various kinds of hot-water bottles and pages and pages of union suits.

Garnet took the rest of the mail from her box. These weren’t real letters, she could tell at a glance. The envelopes were thin and businesslike with small printed names of companies in upper left-hand corners, and two of them had long transparent windows in them. No, these weren’t real letters. Bills, that’s what they were.

Citronella was gazing at the picture of a beautiful young woman in an evening gown. Underneath the picture it said: ‘You’re the top; a perfect dance frock. Sizes 14 to 40. $11.98’

When I am sixteen, said Citronella dreamily, "all my dresses are going to be like that."

But Garnet wasn’t listening. Bills. She knew what that meant. Tonight her father would sit late in the kitchen, worried and silent, doing sums on a piece of paper. Long after everyone else had gone to bed, the lamp would burn and he would be there by himself. If it would only rain! Then there would be good crops and more money. She looked up at the sky. It was as smooth, as empty, as it had been for weeks.

I’ve got to get back to my precious ironing board, said Citronella grimly, slapping the catalogue shut and handing it to Garnet.

They parted at the Hauser farm and Garnet couldn’t help laughing at Citronella’s fat back, with the dishtowel train switching after her.

As she walked up the long hill to her house she could see the glassy river between trees. It was getting lower and lower. Pretty soon it would be too low for anything but wading.

Drops of perspiration rolled down her forehead and into her eyes like big tears. Her back felt wet. She wished that she didn’t have to give those bills to her father.

The shadows were getting longer when she turned in at the gate. Her brother Jay was bringing buckets of milk from the barn to the cold room under the house. He was eleven years old, tall for his age, and very dark.

Any mail for me? he called.

Garnet shook her head, and Jay went into the cold room.

The barn was huge and old; it lurched to one side like a bus going round a corner. Some day, when he had enough money, her father was going to build a new one. There was a big silo beside the barn and Garnet thought again, as she often had, how nice it would be to have a room there; little and round, with a window opening outward on a hinge. It would be like a room in the tower of a castle.

She stopped for a moment beside the pigpen to look at Madam Queen, the big sow, and her litter of little ones. They were still quite new, with large silky ears and tiny hoofs that made them look as if they were wearing high-heeled slippers. Madam Queen rolled over like a tidal wave, scattering her squealing babies right and left. She was an impatient mother, grunting crossly, and kicking them off when they bothered her.

Garnet hadn’t named the little pigs yet. She leaned against the rail and thought of names. The largest of the litter was unusually greedy and selfish even for a pig. He stepped on his brothers and nipped their ears and pushed them out of his way. Undoubtedly he would grow up to be a prize hog like his father. Rex might be a good name for him, or Emperor, or Tyrant; something with a large, bold sound to it. Garnet’s favorite was the runt, a tiny, satiny pig with a sad face and no fighting spirit. He never got enough to eat. For some reason Timmy seemed the very name for him.

Slowly Garnet walked to the yellow house under tall maple trees and opened the kitchen door.

Her mother was cooking supper on the big black coal stove, and her little brother Donald sat on the floor making a noise like a train.

Her mother looked up. Her cheeks were red from the hot stove. Any mail, darling? she asked. Bills, replied Garnet.

Oh, said her mother and turned back to her cooking.

And the catalogue from Merchant-Farmers, Garnet said quickly. "There’s a dress in it that would

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