Bobbsey Twins re-visited

The book’s scuffed green cover and brown pages reflected more than its age. Originally written in 1904, first in a 72 book series about the Bobbsey Twins, the reprint at one time belonged to the El Dorado Boys Club Library. It was last checked out in 1958 – a couple years before I read it as a child.
The Bobbsey Twins are eight-year old, Nan and Bert, both tall, thin, brown-eyed with brown hair, in contrast to chubby four-year-old, Flossie and Freddie, with blonde hair and blue eyes.
As a child I was enthralled with their jolly, good times. As an adult I am intrigued with the passages I never noticed as a child that are not found in the series most recent reprints. A few excerpts:
On page 8 the children are asked what they are going to be when they grow up.
“Oh, I’m going to be a soldier,” said Bert.
“I want to be a soldier, too,” put in Freddie. “A soldier and a fireman.”
“Oh dear, I wouldn’t want to be a soldier and kill folks,” said Nan.
“Girls can’t be soldiers,” answered Freddie. “They have to get married, or be dressmakers, or sten’graphers, or something like that.”
“You mean stenographers, Freddie. I’m going to be a stenographer when I get big.”
Last month one of the grandchildren’s mothers instilled a different mindset during a similar discussion when they underscored today’s social litany, “You can be anything you want to be.”
On page 17, Nan and her friends are having a jump rope contest. One girl’s mother warns her against overdoing it. The child defiantly continues to jump and count. At her 97th jump she faints. Mr. Bobbsey happens on the scene. “Mr. Bobbsey was startled and with good reason, for he had heard of more than one little girl dying from too much jumping.” He summoned the doctor to come (another scene not typical to today’s life style.) A curious crowd gathered.
“You girls are crazy to jump rope so much,” put in a big boy.
“It’s no worse than playing football,” said a big girl.
“Yes, it is, much worse … Rope jumping brings on heart disease. I heard father tell about it.”
Health news reports of 2002 highlight not girls who faint from too much rope jumping, but on the near epidemic number of overweight, inactive children. Little girls who can coordinate their feet and jump two swinging ropes may not make headlines for their agility, but neither are they admonished to stop.
A passage beginning on page 67 reflects the severe segregation typical of the early 1900’s. Passages such as the following brought enough protests that the 72 book series was revised in the mid-1900’s.
“Flossie’s dolls were five in number. Dorothy was her pride and had light hair and blue eyes and three dresses, one of real lace. The next was Gertrude, a short doll with black eyes and hair and a traveling dress that was cute. Then came Lucy, who had lost one arm and Polly who had lost both an arm and a leg. The fifth doll was Jujube, a colored boy, dressed in a fiery sit of red, with a blue ca and real rubber boots. This doll had come from Sam and Diana and had been much admired at first, but now taken out only when all the others went too.
“He doesn’t really belong to the family, you know,” Flossie would explain to her friends. “But I have to keep him, for mamma says there is no colored orphan asylum for dolls. Besides I don’t think Sam and Dinah would like to see their doll child in an asylum.” The dolls were all kept in a row in a big bureau drawer at the top of the house, but Flossie always took pains to separate Jujube from the rest by placing a cover of a pasteboard box between them.”
The last I noticed the grandchildren’s dolls were all jumbled together in the overflowing toybox. No one took time to carefully segregate and separate them or to train the children to do so … and neither do the books they read.