The Worry Week by Anne Lindbergh
Grade: B+
The Worry Week is a fun story about three sisters who are supposed to stay with an aunt for a week while their parents deal with some business, but instead they sneak off to their island vacation home in Maine. Their plan goes off without a hitch until they get to the cottage and find that most of the food has been removed by the cleaning lady, and they don’t have enough money to buy more. Rather than give up their week of freedom, they decide to try living off the land.
I enjoyed this story, but it’s one of those that I might have loved had I read it when I was younger. The combination of sneaking away from the parents, foraging for food, living on an island, and treasure hunting (a minor subplot) would have appealed very much to me then. So though I gave it only a B+, I’m going to keep it in my library for the kids. And who knows? Maybe I’ll read it again someday and enjoy it more.
A note on the author: Anne Lindbergh was the daughter of Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. It is somewhat difficult to find information about her, because her web presence is overwhelmed by that of her very famous parents. However, I did find this 1993 obituary from The New York Times.