Nell and her grandpa are on the run once again, meeting a kindly curate who gives them shelter. Spurious carnival workers doing a Punch & Judy show persuade Nell and her grandpa to join them, but the shady characters do not have their new friends’ best interests at heart. From there, they run all over London, narrowly missing a frightful capture along the way. Grandfather and Nell craft a plan and escape while Quilp is sleeping, leaving a note with Nell’s friend Kit. His lender, Quilp, is angrily awaiting money back and threatens to take the grandfather to an insane asylum if he doesn’t pay. Young Nell (a pre-teen) lives with her grandfather, a sweet man who owns a curio shop and has a gambling addiction. Once I got into the Dickens adaptation, I found it suspenseful and moving. The Old Curiosity Shop is the three-hour movie I admittedly feared on my March roster. They were both directed by Kevin Connor and debuted in the final couple of years of Disney Channel Premiere Films. The Edmisten girls give The Little Riders a big thumbs-up.I have two stories of grandparents and grandchildren that I thought would make sense in one post. Braun, in this deceptively small and simple book, is touching and nicely done. What happens next, between Johanna and Capt. Johanna is part of the plan, but her role in saving the Little Riders becomes vital when Grandfather and Grandmother are taken away for questioning at a crucial moment. Grandfather thinks that the Germans plan to dismantle and take the Little Riders (and melt them down to make ammunition), so he hatches a plot to protect them. And, there was the fact that he seemed to be especially noisy when he was approaching a room during the day (giving Grandfather time to hide his radio.) Braun was perhaps a reluctant soldier and a kind man, such as the way he was considerately quiet when he arrived home late at night.

My girls picked up on a few clues that Capt. Soon, the German army requisitions that attic room in Johanna's grandparents' home, and Captain Braun, a German officer, moves in. She watches them from her attic room window every day, and is entranced by their majesty and loveliness. The Little Riders have ridden over the town for hundreds of years, and become as dear to Johanna as they were to her father and her grandfather.

Before he left, Johanna's father exhorted her to 'take care of the Little Riders,' the beautiful figures that ride out of the clock in the town square every hour.

It tells the story of eleven-year-old Johanna, who is visiting her grandparents in Holland when the German occupation occurs. This book was an unexpected and delightful little surprise.Įrin, on the 4Real Learning boards, recommended The Little Riders, by Margaretha Shemin.

The little riders by margaretha shemin