Three children's stories

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 I have quite a pile of random children's books on my TBR shelf, and I've been going through them, so here are three at once!

The Children of Noisy Village, by Astrid Lindgren: This qualifies as a minor classic, not as popular as the Pippi Longstocking stories, but a lovely book describing a Swedish country childhood in about the 1950s.  Lisa lives in the middle farmhouse of three, and since there are six lively children in those three farmhouses, it's known as Noisy Village.  Lisa and her two brothers, the two sisters on one side, and a boy (plus infant sister) on the other -- they all get up to mischief and fun every day.  Lindgren takes her children through most of a year, describing summer, Christmas, birthdays, and spring.  This would be a great read-aloud for a child 5 and up.

Nicobobinus, by Terry Jones: It was the Terry Jones on the spine that caught my eye.  What kind of children's book would he write? It would be guaranteed to be silly and all over the place!  Nicobobinus and his best friend Rosie live in Venice (it's clearly supposed to be vaguely 1500s) and get into a scrape, which spirals out into a wild adventure, involving a sentient sailing ship, monks with a taste for piracy, the Ocean of Mountains, and eventually the Land of Dragons.  The problems of greed are a major theme.  It was pretty fun and I'd give it to an avid reader, but not a must-read.

Spiderweb for Two, by Elizabeth Enright:  I've never read much Elizabeth Enright, despite being pretty well-read in children's literature.  And so, when I picked up a random old paperback, I did not realize that I'd grabbed the last book in a quartet -- the Melendy books feature a large family in a 1940s New York brownstone and their adventures.  They move out to the country, and by the time of the last book, only two children are left -- Randy and Oliver.  They're so dejected without the rest of the family (even their father has gone off on an extended lecturing tour, leaving them with the housekeeper, Cuffy) that someone devises a complex scavenger hunt for them.  The clues take a long time to solve, and by the end it's summer and the family is home again.  This is a fun story, but I'd probably appreciate it more if I hadn't come in for the last chapter.


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