Showing posts with label Sally Benson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sally Benson. Show all posts

Junior Miss by Sally Benson (1939)

Reflection in a Million Mirrors

She's tall for her twelve years, and heavily built. From her shoulders to her knees she is entirely shapeless, and below her skirt, which is too short for her, her legs are hard and covered with scratches. She wears a sloppy sweater, two charm bracelets of a brassy color, and a locket and chain that fastens so tightly around her neck it seems it might throttle her. In the locket is a rather dim snapshot of a kitten and a clear picture of Tyrone Power, clipped from a movie magazine. She's outgrown her devotion to Tyrone Power, but she still gets a lump in her throat when she remembers the kitten, whose name was Bilgy. She has also outgrown toys at Christmas, but there's something empty about Christmas Day in spite of the jade green lounging pajamas and the silk stockings. She's the girl you loved in the stage and screen plays based on this book, and she personifies all the naive realities and sophisticated fantasies of the in-between years. (from the back cover)

Editorial Comment: Could this be a LESS enticing description? Also, I love the note on the back of the Pocket edition: Share this book with someone in uniform. I'm sure they'll love it!




Meet Me in St. Louis by Sally Benson (1941)

"Meet me in St. Louis, Louis, meet me at the fair ..."

St. Louis--at the turn of the century, back in the age of innocence, when a date was called an engagement, a wolf was a lady-fusser, a long-distance phone call set the whole town talking, and the St. Louis World's Fair was the most glorious, exciting, glamorous thing that ever happened in the whole, wild world!

Here is the delightful, funny and wonderfully real story of the two pretty Smith girls, Rose and Esther, their beaux and romances, their troublesome small sisters, their young brother, Lon, a "Princeton man," and their nice parents, just as bewildered and bewildering as parents today. (from the back cover)