Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
Author: Kate Douglas Wiggin
Desc: Shirley Temple did a lot to make Rebecca famous when she won the world's heart in the movie we all remember. But the story is more than Temple the film or our memory of it: this is the tale of the little showgirl who sent to the country to live with prim and proper relatives is forbidden to do anything well showy. But Rebecca has other ideas of course and you know she'll win over the hearts and minds of everyone who'll see her show. . . . Certainly she won over Jack London. In 1904 he wrote to Wiggin herself: "May I thank you for Rebecca. . . ? I would have quested the wide world over to make her mine only I was born too long ago and she was born but yesterday.... Why could she not have been my daughter? Why couldn't it have been I who bought the three hundred cakes of soap? Why O why?" And Mark Twain too: he described Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm as "beautiful and warm and satisfying."