The Elite Eight

Josie Brewster's Year by Joanne Capen Hamlin The reader will judge whether Josie or Eloise is the more precocious little girl. Joanne Hamlin has given us an engaging six-year-old heroine in this memoir of childhood set in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey in 1927. The simple pleasures and escapades are as fresh today as they were then, which just proves that children, and especially little girls, have not changed. "After the incident with Dandy, Josie tried very hard to be obedient and not do anything that would make her mother unhappy. She usuually got into trouble when she did things impetuously, without really thinking them through. She liked the sound of that word impetuous, but when she tried to say it, it came out 'impetchus.' Anyway, she knew it was not usually a good thing to be. However, despite her good intentions, a couple of weeks after the incident on Boonton Hill, she got impetuous again and ruined Mr. Brewster's tulips."