num_pages: 387
description: Today Miss Chandler gave me this beautiful book. I vow that I will never forget her kindness to me and I will use this book as she told me tothat I will write in it with truth and refinementBut who could be refined living at Steeple Farm?Fourteen-year-old Joan Skraggs just like the heroines in her beloved novels yearns for real life and true love. But what hope is there for adventure beauty or art on a hardscrabble farm in Pennsylvania where the work never ends? Over the summer of 1911 Joan pours her heart out into her diary as she seeks a new better life for herselfbecause maybe just maybe a hired girl cleaning and cooking for six dollars a week can become what a farm girl could only dream ofa woman with a future. Inspired by her grandmothers journal Newbery Medalist Laura Amy Schlitz brings her sharp wit and keen eye to early twentieth-century America in a comedic tour de force destined to become a modern classic. Joans journey from the muck of the chicken coop to the comforts of a society household in Baltimore (Electricity! Carpet sweepers! Sending out the laundry!) takes its reader on an exploration of feminism and housework religion and literature love and loyalty cats hats bunions and burns.
language: English
title: The Hired Girl
publisher: Candlewick Press