People are often introduced to Eleanor Estes through her 1945 Newbery Honor book, “The Hundred Dresses.” Perhaps in large part because of its modest length, it’s a frequent first chapter book. The book is a fine story, but it is far from Estes’ best.
Her series of chapter books about the Moffat Family has much more warmth and depth of character. The books recount the adventures of a widowed mother and her four children, Sylvie, Joey, Janey, and Rufus. Working as a seamstress, Mrs. Moffat, “Mama,” supports the family, and the children help in various ways to manage their modest means and keep the household running.
Beyond “The Moffats,” there is also “The Middle Moffat,” “Rufus M.” and “The Moffat Museum.” The stories focus mainly on Janey and Rufus, aged 10 and five when the narrative begins. Particularly beloved by people who had the books read to them as children is “Rufus M.,” and you can easily see why. In this book, especially, Estes captures the excitement and enthusiasm of a little boy quite believably and follows him through his enthusiasms and disappointments, hardships and triumphs.
The stories are accompanied by Louis Slobodkin’s illustrations.
Estes based the fictional town of Cranbury, Connecticut, on West Haven, where she lived. Much of the stories take place during World War I. The stories would then be roughly concurrent or perhaps a few years after Maud Hart Lovelace’s “Betsy-Tacy” books. There is a similar charm of horse-drawn carriages and small-town life in the early part of the century.
It’s fascinating to learn how differently people lived in another time. One memorable example comes with Rufus’s collection of human teeth. He has his own, yes, but he has also amassed a stockpile of strange human teeth. Evidently, when the dentist who is renting out his house lived there he practiced his profession in the front room and would pitch extractions out the front window, leaving a treasure trove for a curious little boy. What a change the times have made!
The Moffats are not the Boxcar Children, who enjoy nothing other than toiling away, but there is a puritanical streak. When Janey buys herself ice cream and decides to eat the whole thing, violating the Moffat family’s principle of “share and share alike,” she only enjoys the first bite and spends the rest of the time feeling too guilty to enjoy it. For anyone with family who grew up in a previous generation in New England, this oppressive experience of guilt will resonate!
The Moffats are undeniably constrained by their precarious financial situation. When all the fathers come up the street on a cold evening on their way home from work, the Moffats are noticeably bereft of a breadwinner since their father’s death. Mama takes commissions for wedding dresses and boy scout uniforms, toiling away in a too cold rental on the verge of being evicted because the owner wants to sell.
Like Sydney Taylor’s “All-of-a-Kind Family,” the children carefully plan the expense of every penny. They are cold and they are hungry. There is a certain realism in their suffering; neither story is romanticizing poverty. Both authors, however, succeed in adopting a believable childlike perspective. Their characters do not know any other life than the one they have, and so they do not seem to miss the nice things that would come with more heating coal, meet to eat, and new clothes.
What makes the books so charming is the invention and energy that the children continually find. There is splendid good fun. From stilt-walking and errand-running to holidays and road construction, there is a lot of excitement packed into what could seem rather dull and ordinary days.
The Moffats are a family worth getting to know.
