It's always enjoyable to find a book you weren't aware of by a familiar or favorite author. Although I had never heard of the children's book Racketty-Packetty House, first published in 1906, I was very familiar with its author Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Burnett (1849-1924) was an English-American author perhaps best known for her classic children's books The Secret Garden and A Little Princess. Her old-fashioned tales continue to inspire imagination and warm feelings in readers today. In fact, both of those stories have been made into feature films in recent years.

What I didn't realize was just how prolific Burnett was. Not a one or even two hit wonder: apparently she wrote (and had published) over 40 books and many short stories during her life. Racketty-Packetty House is one of them. I don't know how well-known it is overall, but I think it's gone through a bit of a renaissance recently, having been reissued in a 100th anniversary edition. I read an older, 1975 edition with illustrations by Holly Johnson.

Racketty-Packetty House is a sweet and funny story that falls into that interesting sub-genre of "doll house tale." You know the kind I mean...a story where miniature dolls living in a doll's house come to life when their young human owners aren't looking. It's related to the "animals coming to life in the nursery" strain of children's literature (a la A.A. Milne or Jane Hissey) but part of the fascination comes from the specificity of the doll's house setting where everything is in miniature.

Having recently read another "doll house book" by an English author: Rumer Godden's The Dolls' House (published in 1947) I wondered if the stories would be similar. They share the miniature setting and magical premise, but that's just about it. Godden's work has far more dark and sobering elements. I wouldn't read that book to very young children, but Racketty-Packetty House could easily work as a read-aloud for children beginning at the ages of 5 or 6. There are one or two nerve-wracking moments (a couple of times the nurse in the nursery is told to get rid of the broken down old doll house by burning it) but the moments feel more suspenseful than scary, especially since the book is narrated by a fairy, Queen Crosspatch, who clearly isn't going to let anything happen to the doll family she loves.

That's because they're such a nice doll family, the dolls who live in the Racketty-Packetty House. They don't mind that they're old and worn and used, and that their tumble-down house has broken windows and furniture. They even find it fun that they've been relegated to the lower-end "neighborhood" behind the nursery door, as it means they have more freedom. Their little girl Cynthia doesn't care to play with them anymore, since she's gotten a brand new doll house -- a doll castle, really, filled with beautiful new and aristocratic dolls. Since Cynthia pays them no mind, the Racketty-Packetty dolls are pretty much on their own, and they use the time to enjoy spying on their new snobbish neighbors, whose uppity ways charm them as well as make them giggle.

The head of the Racketty-Packetty doll family is a doll called Peter Piper, who is so jolly and full of joy that it's almost impossible to be sad around him. He leads the other dolls -- Meg, Peg, Ridiklis, Kilmanseg and Gustibus -- in merry dances, and he loves to imitate the high-class ways of the new dolls in the higher class neighborhood in the nursery. The only thing that sobers Peter even briefly is when he discovers that one of the new dolls in Tidy Castle is spending as much time looking at them as they are at her. Unlike the other Castle dolls, Lady Patsy is good-hearted and not prone to looking down her nose at dolls who are less well-dressed and living in poorer circumstances. In fact, she's quite entranced by Peter Piper and his merry band, and wishes she could visit them.

The connection between the two houses is finally made, of course, leading to a sweet and very traditionally happy fairy-tale ending. Some lessons about how to treat others are also learned along the way. In some ways, I felt the story wrapped up a bit too neatly, but then I'm not the intended audience. And I did enjoy the infectious sense of joy, the old-fashioned language, and the well-described setting and characters. I'm pretty sure I'm adding this to my list of longer "read-alouds" to read with my daughter in the coming months. I'm planning to find a copy of the 100th anniversary edition, released in 2006, as it has illustrations by one of my favorite children's book illustrators, Wendy Anderson Halperin.

By "longer," I mean longer than a standard picture book. If you're familiar with Burnett's better-known work, you should be aware that Racketty-Packetty House is not novel-length or divided into chapters. Counting illustrations, the printing I read has about 60 pages. There are some natural breaking places in the story; ideally it could be read in 3 or 4 sittings with a young child. Independent young readers who enjoy old-fashioned fairy-tales will also enjoy it. The vocabulary is sufficiently complex so I'm guessing it would work best for independent readers 8 and up.

If you're a fan of doll house tales or of Frances Hodgson Burnett, you will enjoy this lovely happily-ever-after tale.

~befus, 2008

The 100th Anniversary edition of Racketty-Packetty House is the most readily available edition. It's published by Simon and Schuster; ISBN 0689869746, illustrations by Wendy Anderson Halperin. That's the edition imaged above.

The edition I read, illustrated by Holly Johnson, was printed in 1975 by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; ISBN 0397316429. I found the illustrations a little too splashy and pastel for my taste (and for the tone of the book) but it's still a nice edition and inexpensive copies can be found used from online sellers, including those on Amazon.

The story is also included in a number of story collections of Burnett's work.





Recommended: Yes