children during one of the great World Wars (probably ww2) spend a summer playing together. They put on a play, make the costumes out of cheesecloth. They also gather scrap metal for recycling and buy war stamps. They are living in a very old and large rambling house. One day they discover that the peeling wallpaper in a little used empty room is covering old newspaper clippings so they decide to peel more off to investigate. It turns out the entire room was once papered with newspapers. I have no memory of the title, just these random slice of life events. I don’t think there is much of a plot beyond these.
Stump the Bookseller
New format, same book stumper solving.
The Four-Story Mistake, by Elizabeth Enright.
The Melendy series by Elizabeth Enright. Titles are: The Saturdays, Four Story Mistake, And Then There Were Five, and Spiderweb for Two. Mona, Rush, Randy, and Oliver are four siblings who move to an old house in the country in the “Four Story Mistake” where their playroom is covered in old newspapers and they put on a play to raise money to buy a war bond. In “And Then There Were Five”, Randy and Rush take their horse drawn carriage out to collect scrap metal for the war effort.
‘The Four-Storey Mistake’ by Elizabeth Enright. It’s the first book of her Melendy series.
This is Elizabeth Enright’s Four-Story Mistake, the second book about the Melendy family.
Sounds like Elizabeth Enright’s “The Four-Story Mistake”, part of the Melendy Family Quartet series. Siblings Mona, Rush, Miranda and Oliver Melendy move from Manhattan to a town in the country, where they live in a three-story house with a cupola. They do put on plays and carry out scrap drives, and discover a secret about the house. The newspapers on the wall conceal a hidden door, which reveals a secret about one of the original inhabitants. It’s all good family-style adventure, with them adopting Mark, a local boy, in one of the later books. Hope this helps.
Elizabeth Enright: The Four Storey Mistake
Thank you! The Four Story Mistake and the rest of the series is it!