Louly

Chrys’ friend Louly of Two Are Better Than One (1968) is almost fifteen in 1908 Warsaw, Idaho, keeping house for the summer while her parents go Back East (Michigan) to visit a sick grandmother. Promising Mother that she will be responsible and ten-year-old Pooh-Bah that they will have fun, Louly fulfills both commitments while managing to further her own romantic and other interests as well. After an obligatory biscuit disaster on the first night, there’s an extended campout in a back yard tent with neighbors Chrys and Cordy included, and before the senior Tuckers return the girls have all enjoyed an overnight (chaperoned) trip to Springdale where Louly wins an elocution contest and goes dancing with handsome, admiring Eddie Wendell from Warsaw. Chrys’ agonizing debut as a poet on the Elktown Bugle’s children’s page, the children’s newspaper letter to their parents in Michigan, Louly’s forged one to the Springfield speech teacher sponsoring herself as a contestant in the name of Miss Permelia Silverbottom, and the girls’ impromptu dramatic productions throughout the summer bring back a time when girls were indeed younger than they are now; yet Louly would be engaging company at any time and her summer of freedom can still seem idyllic. (Kirkus)