House in the Mail

The baby brother of Emily & Homer was born in 1927, in a hospital instead of at home. He didn't know about living with an icebox, nor wood for heat & cooking, and carrying buckets of water to do the washing. That's because the family built their own modern home just before he was born. And more surprising: they chose their house from a Sears & Roebucks catalog, ordered it by mail (GUESS HOW MUCH IT COST !!!), and it came by train! That would cause some celebrating, to meet your house at the train station instead of grandparents or cousins. Emily made a scrapbook to tell about all the important happenings in her life. She pasted in part of the floor plan and even a sketch of the secret hiding place her dad built into her closet floor just for her. Emily says the baby won't know how it was "in the old days" - - but the scrapbook 'compiled' by authors Rosemary and Tom Wells will help many of us learn more about those times in rural America. Life changes so rapidly that mail-order houses, and even Sears catalogs, too, will soon be known only to historians! People will read about them on a search engine and I'll bet that even "Google" hasn't heard of an "A.S.P." ~ ~ "approved sanitary privies" constructed for rural homeowners in the 1930's by W.P.A workers. Those were men who were employed by the government's "Works Progress Administration" during the Great Depression. Reviewer mcHAIKU hopes this picture book will inspire some old-fashioned scrap-booking and also unlock memories, turning young readers of this book into oral historians! Help your 'grands' experience the fun of learning about the many uses of the Sears catalog, too.

I love this book!! It is a cute and adorable children's book, which I think should be carried in every library across the United States. Many children will be able to relate to this book and perhaps get a view of how the house that they may live in could have possibly got there. I disagree with two other reviews posted about this book and think that since it is a children's book it needs to be written in a child's perspective which means that it does not need to be "entirely accurate." The family wrote a check for $2500 - their whole life savings, but they dug their own foundation area and used boulders that they had dug up from the site to make their foundation walls, and they made their own mortar and finished their foundation walls. Suppose they bought the house for $1900.00 and then added $200.00 for wiring and another $200.00 for plumbing and then another $200.00 for furnace and hot water heating. They would have still written Sears a check for $2500, which was probably their whole life savings, because Sears supplied all of that. I would have said Pa wrote Sears a check for $2500 just like Emily did in the book. The Lincoln Model is a fictitious Sears Home and therefore, it can be any way they want on the outside and on the inside. If they want it to have 22 doors then so be it. If they wanted it to have a second floor - great. Dr. Seuss wanted his cat to live in a hat and he was one of the greatest chldren's writers of all time. The three little pigs each had houses made of straw, sticks and brick and as for Alice she lived in Wonderland - the point is, who cares, it's a children's book. Mork lived on the planet Ork and came to earth in an Egg - I don't even want to discuss him - but every kid I went to school with used "nanno nanno" many times to get on the teachers' nerves. And then there are the facts: According to pages 26 and 27 of the 1927 Building Materials and Millwork Catalogue by Sears, Roebuck & Co., the hardware for the doors and windows was identical to that which is shown in The House In The Mail and they were then changed to be steel and electroplated with either a Lemon Brass Finish or an Old Copper Finish. 750 pounds of nails in varying sizes were each sent in their own individual containers. I talked to one house builder (Sears House) who said that all of these were in their own individual containers, combined and sent in one large barrel - so it is possible. Homer used left over scraps to build his tree house - it could have happened. Homer was eight years old at the time - I would like to see a tree house built by an eight year old. My brother and his friends built one when he was about that age and they paid me $3.00 - a lot of money back then - we won't say when - to be the first one to climb up in it and sit for five minutes. I learned later that they wanted to make sure it didn't fall down so they used me as a guinea pig. The whole point is, I love this book and it is great that it is ge

"Hello, whoever you are out there in the world of the future! I wonder how many years will pass before someone reads this. I'm only twelve years old now, but I might be a very old lady by the time you read these pages." Narrated by Emily Cartwright of Enfield, Kentucky, and presented as a family scrapbook, Tom and Rosemary Wells describe how one family picked out and built a mail order house from Sears, Roebuck & Company. The house will arrive by freight train, ready to be assembled, and there will be six rooms, modern appliances like a gas stove, electric ice-box, and washing machine, and best of all indoor plumbing...no more chopping wood, emptying drip pans, and hauling and heating water from the well. The Wells' easy to read and engaging text takes the reader on an exciting adventure as the house comes to life on the page, and is full of charming period details, interesting facts and trivia, and intriguing anecdotes about the early 1900s. Dan Andreasen's beautiful and evocative artwork combines drawings, blueprints, old photographs, advertisements, and mementos, that give the "scrapbook" an old and genuine feeling, and children will enjoy poring over the pictures and exploring all the special details in each illustration. Perfect for youngsters 6-10, or as a read- aloud story the entire family can share together, The House In The Mail is a captivating and entertaining slice of Americana that should open the door to interesting discussions, and a wonderful experience that shouldn't be missed.