Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24006 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-22
• Released on: 2008-01-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780312375980
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Welcome Back! Old favorites are being reissued in force this fall. Elizabeth Enright's Melendy Quartet follows siblings Mona, Rush, Miranda (Randy, for short) and Oliver. First published in 1941, The Saturdays kicks off the series and centers on the foursome's Independent Saturday Afternoon Adventure Club (I.S.A.A.C.), an allowance-endowed venture formed so one lucky Melendy can enjoy a solo sojourn each week. In The Four-Story Mistake (1942) the family moves from their city brownstone to the country; Then There Were Five (1944) describes what happens when the siblings befriend an orphan; and in Spiderweb forTwo: A Melendy Maze (1951), when everyone else leaves for school, Randy and Oliver are left to solve a mystery. The author's charming pen-and-inks punctuate all four volumes. (Sept.)
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
...comes the reappearance of the series about the Melendy family. ... form a club to keep busy on Saturday afternoons. -- Ingram Book Comapny

Enright has a quick eye for the unexpected, the amusing and the beautiful in what might be just ordinary experiences. -- The New York Times

Review

Customer Reviews

A Classic!
"The Saturdays" has been among my favorite juveniles since I discovered it in the library 40 years ago. I'm now in my 50's and can't count how many times I've gone back and reread it. What a treat to see that, at last, some astute editor has had the savvy to bring it back into print so modern audiences can enjoy it--and in a durable hardcover at that. This is a perfect read-aloud for families, in part perhaps because of the age-spread of the four children: preschoolers will envy six-year-old Oliver his lone excursion to the circus, young teens will identify with 13-year-old Mona's stirrings of adolescent rebellion as exemplified by her decision to have her "long butter-colored braids" cut off, and middlers will like 10-year-old Randy's creation of the Independent Saturday Afternoon Adventure Club and the unique situations that befall her (like befriending the formidable and exotic Mrs. Oliphant or tumbling out of a rowboat on Central Park Lake). Each child is a real human being and an individual character whom Enright draws to perfection. And the setting (New York in, probably, early 1940 or '41) will intrigue the younger generations and bring a glow of nostalgia to the older ones. This book should be in every household library in the land!

Explaining Dumb Crambo
My original review was written 14 July 1998. This is an addition for readers (and potential readers) who are (or would be) as puzzled as I once was when the book said the Melendy children played a noisy game of "Dumb Crambo". Over 20 years after I first read THE SATURDAYS, I was lucky enough to get a copy of VICTORIAN PARLOUR GAMES by Patrick Beaver that includes it.

To paraphrase, in Dumb Crambo, the players are split evenly into two teams. One team leaves the room while the remaining team chooses a verb. When the first team comes back in, the second team tells them another verb that rhymes with the first verb. The first team must guess the secret verb by acting it out. For example [not the one given], if the secret verb is "fly", the first team might be told "try". If they guess it's "spy", they act out someone spying on someone else. If they're wrong, the second team hisses them. The first team keeps trying until they act out the right verb.

It's called "dumb crambo" because it's a variation of a game called "crambo." In the original, only one person leaves the room and any kind of word may be chosen. The guesser is still told a word that rhymes with the secret word. The trick is that you have to ask questions that might get you the secret word WITHOUT naming the word you're guessing. For instance, if you think the secret word is "bus", you might ask "Is it a big ground vehicle that carries a lot of passengers?"

I think it shows something of the personalities and intelligence of the Melendy children that they would enjoy Dumb Crambo.

Thoroughly enjoyable family fun
My daughter, age 9 and I both read The Saturdays over the past few months along with Four-Story Mistake. We loved this family and found each character fun. I loved their adventures and wish I had read these books as a child. I recommend this book to anyone who values their child's mind and wants to protect them from the abundance of nonsense in some children's literature.