WELCOME TO CAMDEN FALLS
By Ann M. Martin

Flora and Ruby were not pale waifs shivering under threadbare blankets. Nor were they off on a glorious, romantic adventure. They were just Flora and Ruby Northrop, whose parents had died in a car accident and who were now going to live with their grandmother, Min, in Camden Falls, Massachusetts.

Ann M. Martin, author of The Baby-sitters Club series, brings the town of Camden Falls to life through the eyes of sisters Flora and Ruby from the moment they arrive. It’s strange to be in a new place. But luckily, it’s a very welcoming place—where new friendships and new adventures are found around every corner.

Excerpt:
When the Row Houses were built, which was more than fifty years before Min was born, they were some of the grandest homes in Camden Falls. Each was three stories high, topped off by an attic accessible by a ladder that dropped down into a hallway below. On the first floor were a large kitchen, a butler’s pantry, a dining room, and a liv­ing room. On the second floor were four bedrooms. And on the third floor were several smaller rooms, the sleeping quarters for maids. In 1882, the wealthy people who lived in the Row Houses all had maids who slept in the maids’ quarters, and butlers who used the butlers’ pantries. But now, 125 years later, while the Row Houses were still grand, the people who lived in them did not have maids and but­lers, or chauffeurs and gardeners, for that matter. Many of the butlers’ pantries had been turned into breakfast nooks or mudrooms, and the rooms in the maids’ quarters were nurseries or playrooms or offices or dens or guest rooms. The backyards, which once boasted formal gardens, were now cluttered with basketball hoops and vegetable plots, jungle gyms and storage sheds and swing sets. Even Min’s yard, with her carefully tended flower beds, was home to a tire swing and a tree fort that Flora and Ruby’s mother had played with when she was their age. The twelve children who lived in the Row Houses these days (twelve if you counted Lydia, Margaret, and Robby, who were teenagers and did not consider themselves children) ran freely through the eight yards and in and out of the houses, com­fortable with each of their neighbors, old and young.

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