The Little Colonel’s House Party

Lloyd Sherman, the small girl everyone calls the Little Colonel for her temper, invites three friends to spend a summer at her grandfather is Kentucky house. What follows is mostly picnics, a treasure hunt, a good deal of squabbling and one genuine falling out that takes the rest of the season to mend.

Annie Fellows Johnston wrote thirteen of these books and they were enormously popular in their day, largely because she let her children be difficult. Lloyd sulks, holds grudges and apologises badly, which is a good deal closer to life than most turn of the century childrens fiction managed.