340X: Fun With A Doctor’s Mother And A Quaker Mother

This book was written for young women, maybe 10 years old, and written in the late 50’s or maybe early 60’s.  For whatever reason, the words How Many Miles to Babylon has always been in my mind, but I know that book and this isn’t it.  The young girl has a doctor who is a hard-working doctor in a hospital, the mother is a “doctor’s wife” — very lively and fun and I think there is a sibling, maybe a little boy.  There is also the woman’s grandfather who I remember as a little stuffy and patrician.  The girl has a friend who is Quaker and has a mother who is a widow, I’m assuming.  They live alone together.  I remember wonderful details.  The Quaker mother makes lunch and asks the girls to set the table and they pick the blue dishes because they look so pretty against the raspberries.  The doctor’s wife mother picks her daughter up and says they are going on a road trip and I think that the sibling will stay with Granny.  Then they drive to the hospital and grab the husband because he needs a road trip!  The mother drives and the father and daughter laugh because she says rude things to the rest of the drivers.  She’s pretty hip.  I remember they stop at a roadside motel with cottages and the mother tells her to wear her bathing slippers in the shower because who knows!  The last thing I remember is lobster.  They have some kind of wonderful lobster.

I think they are in Philadelphia, or maybe Main Line suburban Philadelphia, but the only reason I think that is that the friend is Quaker.  That’s it!  The book I remember as illustrated but maybe it was just my imagination.  Thanks for anything you can find.

1 thought on “340X: Fun With A Doctor’s Mother And A Quaker Mother

  1. MamaSquirrel

    How Many Miles to Babylon, by Edna Adelaide Brown. You had the title right, it’s just not the common one by that title.

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