Mandy

 

by Julie Edwards

Published 1971

Alrighty, so, continuing my walk down memory lane, I’m reading all the books I own.  Many of them, like this one, I have owned for so long that my name in the front just says “Sarah W” in scraggly print, since I’ve owned them since before I could write in cursive!

This book is about a young girl who lives in an orphanage (Mandy, of course) and her desire to have something of her own.  She discovers an abandoned cottage and adopts it, planting flowers in the garden and cleaning the little house.

I think that what I really enjoy about this story is how Mandy has to learn about balance in her life–that having a special secret isn’t worth sacrificing honesty and friendship.

By the by, as I read these books I haven’t read since childhood, I like to look up and see if favorite authors ever wrote anything else.  And, call me super ignorant, but all these years, I had no idea that Julie Andrews was an author at all, much less that she wrote Mandy.  So that was a pleasant surprise!

This is definitely a happy little read, and a nice read-aloud for younger(ish) readers, because don’t all children dream of having a little house of their very own?