The Family from One End Street (A Puffin Book)

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This is the story of the Ruggles siblings Kate, Peg and Jo — three of the seven children of Mr Ruggles the dustman and Mrs Ruggles the washerwoman — who go on holiday to the Dew Drop Inn, in the fictional country village of Upper Cassington, while Peg and Jo convalesce from the measles and Kate takes the opportunity to learn about agriculture, her planned future career. It's only as I'm writing this it dawns on me that the boys are more strongly portrayed than the girls, although I didn't realise that while reading. Not just because the boys roam further unsupervised but because the author gets deeper into the thoughts of the boys. Eve Garnett herself wrote that The Family From One End Street was rejected as unsuitable by at least eight other publishers before being taken by Muller.

Josiah Ruggles works for Otwell council as a dustman and his wife Rosie takes in washing. They have seven children, so life is hard, but they are a happy family. But better even than the book was this: it had a sequel. Two, in fact: The Further Adventures of the Family from One End Street, and Holiday at the Dew Drop Inn, which were, if you can believe it, even better. This gave me a wholly misguided sense of life as a process of cumulative improvement, which would take several painful years of experience to dispel, but on the plus side, Holiday at the Dew Drop Inn gave me my first understanding of just how deep the pleasures of reading could run.

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facing mum’s wrath when you came home with scabby knees, unravelling pigtails and a huge grin on your face.

It is regarded as a classic, and remains in print, most recently reissued as a Puffin Classic in 2014. The Ruggles family lives at No. 1 One End Street in the heart of Otwell, located on the Ouse river. Otwell-on-the-Ouse is a fictional town resembling Lewes, Sussex, where the author lived. Cleanliness: The words "gosh" "golly" "thank goodness" and the like are used. The men smoke a pipe in this book and there is a section where it talks about them drinking alcohol. The children don't always behave right the first time but repent/learn from it.

Not everyone agreed with the praise heaped on this book; some found it patronising and unacceptable – the book continues to be read and the arguments about it go on. Meet The Ruggles family that lives at No.1 One End Street in the fictional town of Otwell. Jo Ruggles is the local dustman and his wife Rosie is the local washerwoman. Jo and Rosie’s singular source of pride is their large brood of seven children. Yep, you read it right. Seven children. And each of these seven children has a distinctive personality and the promising ability to get into all kinds of mischief and mayhem. The Ruggles family is always low on funds but never on dignity. The Senior Ruggles rule their little clan with a blend of old-fashioned discipline, gentle cajolement and a gruff optimism. CILIP, successor to the Library Association, assigns the subject tags "family large roisterous" and "family working class" in its online presentation of the Carnegie Medal winning books. [2] Plot [ edit ] Every family member is given one chapter, including the baby William, and then the last chapters are about the family and their bank holidays, particularly their bank holiday to London for one day. Oh, when you read a description of how the family walks to catch the train for London, with their hodgepodge bags and clothing and so proud. Rose tells Old Jo not to wave with his left arm because he has a slit under the sleeve! Now tie all that up and what you have is a childhood that didn’t have much technology but what it did have was a tremendous capacity to create happy memories.

I loved learning, as an adult, that this beloved book was ground-breaking for being the first British children's book to depict the everyday lives of normal working-class kids, instead of the polished "desirable" lives of upper-class children.Wow! This is how we should all live our life. Talk about being like children to become holy. The mother, Rose, is a laundress, and the father, Old Jo, is a dustman (garbage man), and they love their life and their seven children (although the wife does comment that that is plenty). Rose says early on in the book that where would the world be without a laundress and a dustman?