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Author:  Edith Unnerstad Copyright Date:  1951 Publisher:  Macmillan Pagination:  180 p.

This is a story about a family that outgrew its apartment and took to the road and about an invention that was really very remarkable, even if people didn't quite appreciate it at first. The family is very much alive still and consists of: 1. A handy and inventive papa, at the time of the story a traveling salesman in sewing materials. His wife and children are very proud of him and call him an inventor, because he always has ideas and is always inventing things. 2. A mama who has been in the theatre and has acted in Shakespeare’s plays and who is sure she can therefore fix most, if not all, of her family’s troubles. 3. A whole string of children: one eats paper, one is artistic, and another—in the middle of the string—is the author of this book. There are four others, also more or less remarkable.      The story has, besides the family, a pair of Percheron horses, named Laban and Lotta, who are the strongest horses in the world; a cat named Persson; a junk dealer; and a red-faced manufacturer; a large aunt, who wears her hair in buns on her head; a stone-deaf old-maid, who collects pots and pans; and some other people.      It all began three years ago, in that apartment which was too crowded. But most of it happened during a long trip the family took in the summertime, and part of it—maybe the most important part—happened in the mangling room of a hand laundry.      If you are thinking that nothing worth writing about can happen in a laundry, you’d better close the book at once, because in that case it isn’t for you. And you may not believe that a boy named Lars Larsson, the son of a traveling salesman, and who was only eleven years old at the time, can have anything exciting to tell. And when you learn that the wonderful invention was simply a saucepan, you may turn up you nose, of course, and say, “Rubbish!” But you don’t have to read the book. There’s going to be a lot in it about the saucepan and the laundry—that’s all I have to say. And it is Lars Larsson who is telling the story—that can’t be changed, because it was his adventure. And Lars—well, that’s me. . . . . . . . . . . . .

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