SuitabookNancy and Plum
Betty MacDonald
- Reading
- Try reading together and pausing after difficult scenes to check how the girls’ treatment is affecting the story for your child; the humorous episodes can offer natural breathing space.
- Themes
- Care and fairness: Mrs Monday’s treatment of the sisters includes cruelty, poor food and demanding chores. The book treats this strongly critically.
- Hope and helping others: The sisters use humour and imagination to endure hardship; later, they seek to help children left at the boarding house. The book presents this favourably.
- Worth knowing
- The sisters face harsh care, verbal abuse, inadequate food and menial chores; an account also says their parents were killed in a train wreck. These experiences may be worth discussing together.