Looking For Betty Macdonald

Betty Bard MacDonald (1907–1958), the best-selling author of The Egg and I and the classic Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle children’s books, burst onto the literary scene shortly after the end of World War II. Readers embraced her memoir of her years as a young bride operating a chicken ranch on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, and The Egg and I sold its first million copies in less than a year. The public was drawn to MacDonald’s vivacity, her offbeat humor, and her irreverent take on life. In 1947, the book was made into a movie starring Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert, and spawned a series of films featuring MacDonald's Ma and Pa Kettle characters. MacDonald followed up the success of The Egg and I with the creation of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, a magical woman who cures children of their bad habits, and with three additional memoirs: The Plague and I (chronicling her time in a tuberculosis sanitarium just outside Seattle), Anybody Can Do Anything (recounting her madcap attempts to find work during the Great Depression), and Onions in the Stew (about her life raising two teenage daughters on Vashon Island). Author Paula Becker was granted full access to Betty MacDonald’s archives, including materials never before seen by any researcher. Looking for Betty MacDonald, a biography of this endearing Northwest storyteller, reveals the story behind the memoirs and the difference between the real Betty MacDonald and her literary persona. Watch the book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Lr6iVK4zWk

“Getting tuberculosis in the middle of your life is like starting downtown to do a lot of urgent errands and being hit by a bus. When you regain consciousness you remember nothing about the urgent errands. You can’t even remember where you were going.” Thus begins Betty MacDonald’s memoir of her year in a sanatorium just outside Seattle battling the “White Plague.” MacDonald uses her offbeat humor to make the most of her time in the TB sanatorium—making all of us laugh in the process.

One would suppose that during the Depression there wasn't much to laugh about in America. But one would be wrong. This book takes up Betty's story before she'd had any success as a writer - when she went back to live with her mother. With a failed chicken farm and marriage behind her, Betty was desperate to make a living in a country without any jobs. Luckily she had her sister Mary batting for her, and catapulting Betty into one hilarious situation after another, while she watched safely from the sidelines.

The bestselling author of the American humor classic The Egg and I continues the adventure with this collection of tales about life on the fringe of the Western wilderness. Writing in the 1950s, Betty MacDonald, sophisticated and urbane, captivated readers with her observations about raising a family on an island in Puget Sound. As usual, humorist MacDonald is her own favorite target. She manages to get herself into scrapes with washing machines set adrift in rowboats, used cars, and a $25 Turkey Squasher. And then there's the scariest aspect of island life -- teenaged children.

“A work of real comic genius. . . . A wonderful, funny, warm, honest book, and, to use a much overused word, a classic.” –Michael Korda, author of Country Matters When Betty MacDonald married a marine and moved to a small chicken farm on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, she was largely unprepared for the rigors of life in the wild. With no running water, no electricity, a house in need of constant repair, and days that ran from four in the morning to nine at night, the MacDonalds had barely a moment to put their feet up and relax. And then came the children. Yet through every trial and pitfall—through chaos and catastrophe—this indomitable family somehow, mercifully, never lost its sense of humor. A beloved literary treasure for more than half a century, Betty MacDonald's The Egg and I is a heartwarming and uproarious account of adventure and survival on an American frontier.

In 1945 Betty MacDonald published The Egg and I, a lightly fictionalized account of her life as the wife of a chicken farmer in the remote American Northwest in the 1920s. The book was an immediate success, selling a million copies in less than a year, and was eventually translated into over thirty languages. It has never been out of print. This is Betty's story.

'Big snowflakes fluttered slowly through the air like white feathers and made all of Heavenly Valley smooth and white and quiet and beautiful' So here we are on Christmas Eve, locked up in rotten Mrs Monday's boarding house with no presents and no Christmas dinner, while all the other children have gone home for the holidays. I'm Nancy, by the way, and this is my sister Plum. Luckily, we're both pretty good at making up stories about the adventures and pretty dresses that we'd like to have, and that helps us put up with Mrs Monday and her awful niece Marybelle. But one day, we're going to escape, and maybe we'll find a nice home and a family all of our own. Wouldn't that be just wonderful? Includes exclusive material: In ‘The Backstory’ you can take the quiz and find out why Nancy and Plum is Jacqueline Wilson's favourite children's book! Vintage Children’s Classics is a twenty-first century classics list aimed at 8-12 year olds and the adults in their lives. Discover timeless favourites from The Jungle Book and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to modern classics such as The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is back with special cures for the not truthful, the pet forgetter, the fraidy-cat, the destructive child, and the child who continually says, "I can't find it".