Holiday at the Dew Drop Inn

Description

Holiday escapades with the Ruggles family at the Dew Drop Inn Kate loves the country so much that kind Mr and Mrs Wildgoose invite her to spend the whole of the summer holidays with them at The Dew Drop Inn, so she says good-bye to her mother and father and her six brothers and sisters, and sets off by train with a shiny black mackintosh and some brand-new gum-boots. Kate is soon swept up in preparing for the annual Flower Show and the Concert, despite competition from nasty Angela Smallpiece and boastful Johnny Sears. But the most difficult thing is deciding which of her poems to read at the Concert. All three One End Street novels are now available in A Puffin Book.

Eve Garnett was born in 1900 in Worcestershire, and studied art at Chelsea Polytechnic and the Royal Academy School of Art. Whilst a student, she sketched the people of the East End slums and was haunted by the poverty she had witnessed, resolving to do something to bring the plight of the working-class family to people's attention. The Family from One End Street was originally published by Frederick Muller in 1937, followed by The Further Adventures of the Family from One End Street in 1956, and Holiday at Dew Drop Inn in 1962. She died in 1991.

It was as if, with the story of Kate Ruggles' summer-long stay at the eponymous hostelry and enthusiastic embrace of village life, Eve Garnett had peered into my mind and written down exactly what she knew would delight me most. That seemed to me magic of the highest order -- Lucy Mangan * The Guardian *