The Moffats

Summary

The Moffats follows a year in the life of a family with little money and a great deal of fun in the small Connecticut town of Cranbury, around the time of the First World War. Mama, a widow, earns their living as a dressmaker in the rented yellow house on New Dollar Street, where she lives with her four children: Sylvie, the eldest, gentle and grown-up; Joey, the steady older brother who does the heavy chores; Jane, the imaginative middle girl through whose eyes much of the book is seen; and Rufus, five and a half and always in the middle of something. Catherine-the-Cat lives with them too. In the first chapter a For Sale sign goes up on the yellow house, and the worry that they will have to move runs under the whole book. Each of the twelve chapters is a nearly complete adventure. Jane copies the walk of a stately gentleman in the street, then spends a day hiding from the new Chief of Police, sure he means to arrest her, until he finds her in the baker's bread box and laughs. On his first day of kindergarten Rufus follows the runaway Hughie Pudge onto a freight train, which carries the two little boys off down the line. The children drive a horse and wagon for a Salvation Army man resting in the back, lose him off the tail on a detour, and end with him as their guest at Sunday dinner. On Halloween they rig a ghost from Mama's dressmaking form to frighten the bully Peter Frost. Joey's sailor's hornpipe at the dancing-school recital is going badly until a dog that once belonged to a sailor jumps on stage and dances with him. When Rufus catches scarlet fever, a quarantine sign goes up beside the For Sale sign; the older children keep house while Mama nurses him and tells stories of her own childhood. Joe and Jane lose the family's last five-dollar bill on the way to buy coal from the coal barge. Jane spends a five-cent tip on ice cream and then feels sorry that she did not share. In a temper she pelts the For Sale sign with mud, has to scrub it clean, and so draws the attention of the Murdocks, who keep coming to look at the house. Jane, Joe and Rufus ride the new Second Avenue trolley line to the shore and watch two motormen quarrel. At last the house is sold, and in the final chapter the Moffats pack up and leave the yellow house for another home in Cranbury. Published by Harcourt, Brace in 1941 with drawings by Louis Slobodkin, it was Estes's first book and began a series continued in The Middle Moffat (1942), Rufus M. (1943) and The Moffat Museum (1983).

Top Lessons

• Rich in each other

  The Moffats have no father, little money and a house that is being sold out from under them, yet the book is full of laughter. Mama's hard work and good humor, and the children's loyalty to one another, make the yellow house a happy home. Estes shows that a family's happiness does not depend on how much it owns.

• Fears that look different in daylight

  Jane spends a whole day sure that the Chief of Police means to arrest her, and hides in a bread box to escape him. When he finds her, he only laughs. The chapter shows how a child's imagination can make a fear grow, and how facing the grown-up often makes it vanish.

• Share and share alike

  When a customer gives Jane a five-cent tip, she spends it on ice cream for herself and then feels the pinch of having forgotten her family. In a household where every coin matters, the lost five-dollar bill and the nickel spent alone teach the children that money is held in common and that sharing is part of love.

• Caring for one another in sickness

  When Rufus has scarlet fever and the house is shut in by quarantine, everyone has a part. Sylvie, Joe and Jane keep the household going while Mama nurses Rufus and keeps up their spirits with stories. Hard days become a time when the family works together.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

One chapter gives a plain child's-eye picture of scarlet fever in a household of the 1910s: the sick child kept apart, the mother nursing at home, and the public quarantine placard on the house, which here has the added effect of keeping buyers away. It shows the period's public-health practice of isolating a contagious household rather than any medical treatment in detail.

• Chapter 7, Another Sign on the Yellow House

  Rufus has scarlet fever, the house is quarantined, and Mama nurses him while the older children keep house.