2 Books to Keep You Pleasantly Diverted

Dear readers,

There’s a movie house here in New York that, on Sundays, shows a series of revivals appropriate for kids, complete with booster seats. My 5-year-old and I go often, and, a few months ago, went to see the 1944 musical “Meet Me in St. Louis.” We were having a lovely time watching the Technicolor evocation of 1903 St. Louis, and Judy Garland asking us to meet her at the fair and pining for the boy next door, when an old man in the row behind us hissed, loudly, “JUMP HIS BONES!” He continued to repeat this exhortation whenever the teenage characters of Esther and John Truett had a scene together. The kids in attendance seemed confused, but mercifully uncomprehending.

I came home bursting with our adventures, but also eager to reread the Sally Benson book on which the musical was based. And, accordingly, next time I had access to my boxes at my parents’ house, I dug out my paperback.

—Sadie

“Meet Me in St. Louis,” by Sally Benson

Fiction, 1942

Benson was known as a short story writer; both this book and her collection “Junior Miss” were composed mostly of stories she’d published in The New Yorker. Originally, the semi-autobiographical sketches gathered here — about growing up in a large St. Louis family — appeared between 1941 and 1942, as a series she called “5135 Kensington.” But by the time the book was published, the MGM adaptation was already underway, and Benson changed her title to match theirs. She also added four new vignettes, and structured the book as a year in the life of the Smith family.