and forks.
• a dark green wine bottle with a cork and a label you could really read. It came with a set of matching real glass wine glasses.
• a silver tray (real silver) with two real glasses.
• a silver-colored toaster with two pieces of toast: you could take the toast in and out, and there was a black rubber knob on the side that you pulled up and down to make the toast go in and pop out.
• a china tea set with tiny dark pink flowers on everything: a round tray, teapot, creamer, sugar bowl, and two cups and saucers. The flowers have faded away, so now it’s plain white.
There was also a crotchety old grandfather, who had black-and-white-checked trousers and a black tailcoat, a white beard, curly white hair, and glasses. He was very excitable (sometimes he got drunk and waved the green wine bottle around). There was also a doll with gray hair and a gray nurse’s uniform and a crabby face and wire glasses; she looked after the children when their parents were out, which was most of the time.
The parents and nurse all spoke in English accents (though since the fathers hardly ever talked, they didn’t really count). The grandfather’s accent was sort of English and sort of Scottish; the children all had American accents.
The dolls wrote letters to each other on tiny pieces of paper with tiny printing — we made envelopes by folding paper and then gluing the flaps. Usually the mothers wrote the letters.
A letter from one of the mother dolls to the other mother doll:
Darling: SUCH a bother! We’re going to a ball and I don’t have a THING to wear — I must go to London and get some new gowns. Would you like to come? Nursey can look after the children, of course. Ring me as soon as you get this: I hope the Post Office delivers it promptly. They’re getting so slow and lazy, like servants!
Your friend,
Sally Koponen.
I read their letters to each other out loud in the proper accent for the person. Then, after I’d read the letter out loud, the dolls would do something.
To make a doll envelope, cut a small square of paper, then fold in three of the corners and tape it, like this.
Our favorite was to have the two mothers go shopping or to the theater in London. Then the children could go into the forest, where they would always end up at the witch’s house. It was sort of like “Hansel and Gretel” (only the dolls were never tricked by the witch!). We knew that we were copying the story, but we still liked to do it. And we didn’t JUST copy, we made it funny. I think in the real story it’s funny when Hansel and Gretel eat the gingerbread house — that their first reaction when they see a house is to start eating it, especially when the bird has just told them not to! Our children did even funnier things.
“Hansel and Gretel,” from an old book.
Emmy was fun to play dolls with — we hardly ever played alone with each other in America, but she was different in London. She acted different — she never talked in baby talk or fake-cried, and she did funny things when we were working the dolls. (“Working” is what we called moving them and making them talk; of course, she worked her dolls and I worked mine.)
We wished and wished that the dolls were alive, and sometimes we pretended that they were alive and that they just ACTED like dolls. One day when I came home from school Emmy told me that she had sneaked back into our room very quietly and …
“I saw all the dolls running back to their places,” she said.
I wanted to believe her, and I almost did. I could picture Libby and Emmy running really fast and then lying down exactly where we had left them — but I knew it couldn’t be true. I wondered a lot if Emmy really thought it was, but I couldn’t ASK. It would be like asking someone if they still believed in Santa Claus. What if they did? So I didn’t say anything. And when, sometimes, she said, “That wasn’t where we left her!” I didn’t argue, either.
Anyway,
• a dark green wine bottle with a cork and a label you could really read. It came with a set of matching real glass wine glasses.
• a silver tray (real silver) with two real glasses.
• a silver-colored toaster with two pieces of toast: you could take the toast in and out, and there was a black rubber knob on the side that you pulled up and down to make the toast go in and pop out.
• a china tea set with tiny dark pink flowers on everything: a round tray, teapot, creamer, sugar bowl, and two cups and saucers. The flowers have faded away, so now it’s plain white.
There was also a crotchety old grandfather, who had black-and-white-checked trousers and a black tailcoat, a white beard, curly white hair, and glasses. He was very excitable (sometimes he got drunk and waved the green wine bottle around). There was also a doll with gray hair and a gray nurse’s uniform and a crabby face and wire glasses; she looked after the children when their parents were out, which was most of the time.
The parents and nurse all spoke in English accents (though since the fathers hardly ever talked, they didn’t really count). The grandfather’s accent was sort of English and sort of Scottish; the children all had American accents.
The dolls wrote letters to each other on tiny pieces of paper with tiny printing — we made envelopes by folding paper and then gluing the flaps. Usually the mothers wrote the letters.
A letter from one of the mother dolls to the other mother doll:
Darling: SUCH a bother! We’re going to a ball and I don’t have a THING to wear — I must go to London and get some new gowns. Would you like to come? Nursey can look after the children, of course. Ring me as soon as you get this: I hope the Post Office delivers it promptly. They’re getting so slow and lazy, like servants!
Your friend,
Sally Koponen.
I read their letters to each other out loud in the proper accent for the person. Then, after I’d read the letter out loud, the dolls would do something.
To make a doll envelope, cut a small square of paper, then fold in three of the corners and tape it, like this.
Our favorite was to have the two mothers go shopping or to the theater in London. Then the children could go into the forest, where they would always end up at the witch’s house. It was sort of like “Hansel and Gretel” (only the dolls were never tricked by the witch!). We knew that we were copying the story, but we still liked to do it. And we didn’t JUST copy, we made it funny. I think in the real story it’s funny when Hansel and Gretel eat the gingerbread house — that their first reaction when they see a house is to start eating it, especially when the bird has just told them not to! Our children did even funnier things.
“Hansel and Gretel,” from an old book.
Emmy was fun to play dolls with — we hardly ever played alone with each other in America, but she was different in London. She acted different — she never talked in baby talk or fake-cried, and she did funny things when we were working the dolls. (“Working” is what we called moving them and making them talk; of course, she worked her dolls and I worked mine.)
We wished and wished that the dolls were alive, and sometimes we pretended that they were alive and that they just ACTED like dolls. One day when I came home from school Emmy told me that she had sneaked back into our room very quietly and …
“I saw all the dolls running back to their places,” she said.
I wanted to believe her, and I almost did. I could picture Libby and Emmy running really fast and then lying down exactly where we had left them — but I knew it couldn’t be true. I wondered a lot if Emmy really thought it was, but I couldn’t ASK. It would be like asking someone if they still believed in Santa Claus. What if they did? So I didn’t say anything. And when, sometimes, she said, “That wasn’t where we left her!” I didn’t argue, either.
Anyway,
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