How many donna parker books are there

Donna has just a few more teenaged crises to navigate, as the spring dance approaches: first she discovers that the cleaner has shrunk her dress, but Marjorie allows her to dip into her own wardrobe, making Donna the belle of the ball. Cunningham comes through beautifully, supplying more than enough flowers and shrubs to transform the gymnasium into an enchanted garden.

Afterward at the Sweet Shoppe the gang is scolded by the manager for their loud and unruly behavior, but the real trouble turns up the next morning when a police officer knocks on the door asking to speak with Donna. Does the town of Summerfield really take such a dim view of throwing napkins? Actually it is about Mrs. Cunningham is very understanding about the whole thing, via cablegram from Bermuda, and allows the class to help replant her flower beds as penance. Finally Mr. Parker return home and Marjorie takes Donna and Jimmy to the pier to meet their ship.

Parker said. Birds — truly the worst. Idaville is hub of drunken pigeon syndicate-related crime. AAA advises travelers to not linger after sundown. How have I never read one of these? So much going on AND milk shakes all over the place.

Of course, most remaining copies are probably piles of yellowing, silently shredding paper. I just stumbled across this blog and am greatly enjoying it!

I read another couple that I found in a church library. My cousin had the Camp Cherrydale book so I read it at her house. Somehow over the years I managed to read them all, but out of order. It was sometime in adulthood that I finally read the Hollywood one where she visits Uncle Roger. Finally ebay enabled me to have a complete cherished set :. And I still browse through them every few years. I love this series and the original wrap-around cover artwork on the first 4 covers is absolutely gorgeous!

I have the whole series as well, but mine all have the second edition artwork, which is much simpler. I too was kind of surprised at how bratty Donna was at the beginning. Ewww, gross! But sure enough, such things existed, although apparently they were more commonly made with ham or chicken salad or even shrimp salad. You are commenting using your WordPress.

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This is living! Also, boys: Maybe even some of them would have older brothers who would be very anxious to meet her! Share this: Twitter Facebook. Like this: Like Loading Bookmark the permalink. October 23, at pm. October 24, at am.

Thanks for reading! Susan says:. August 8, at am. August 12, at pm. August 17, at am. March 20, at am. In the first book of the series, Ricky refers to herself as being "the youngest," which implies she has brothers and sisters, but we never meet them and they are never referred to as being away at college or living elsewhere. Donna's Friends - Until going to high school, Donna runs around pretty much with the same group of friends; she makes several new ones after joining the newspaper club in Special Agent.

One friend mentioned from the first is Anne Franklin, a tall blond girl who loves to play jokes. Donna converses often with Karen, Mary, and Anne in one book they have a slumber party , and in Special Agent does homework with Tommy, but they are basically just supporting players, and although we know Anne likes animals, that's about as deep as we get into any of them.

Where's Summerfield? Donna and her friends and family live in the small town of Summerfield. In these series, usually the location seemed to be a nondescript midwestern town; however, Summerfield is definitely located in the northeast somewhere, given its description of being "two hours from New York City.

The first four books, published in the s, had colorful wraparound covers. When the fifth was published, with a simplified cover, all the previous four covers were revised to go along with the new look. Donna Parker at Cherrydale Synopsis: As summer begins, Donna Parker and Ricky West are looking forward to two different summers: Donna will be working as a junior counselor at a camp run by a famous pediatrician and his wife, Dr.

Duval want anyone to explore the nearby woods and the old house on that property Comments: This first book of the series also marks the first appearance of Richard White, who reappears several times albeit with a later name change. There's a one-time appearance by a classmate of Jimmy's, Nancy Bond, a spoiled child who terrorizes her campmates and who is later taken home.

Also appearing in the first of his two appearances is Paul, "the Count" really the Comte de la Tour-Pointue. Even back when I first read the books, I noticed Donna and Ricky seem older than thirteen in the first two volumes they're even drawn older in the illustrations. If Donna had not talked about starting ninth grade in the next year, I would have guessed they were both sixteen by their manner of speech.

Although research tells me all the Parker books were written by Marcia Martin a pseudonym for Marcia Levin , the first two books seem different in tone. While Ricky is determined to be in the drama club, Donna prefers to join the journalism club, which puts out the school newspaper, The Summerfield Sum-It-Up. She makes many new friends there, including the club advisor, Miss Fischer, but worries that she and Ricky are not as close as they used to be.

She also runs afoul of several different people: Mr. Brown, the surly new janitor; Joyce Davenport, who is elected editor of the Sum-It-Up, and who thinks she "knows it all" because her father is the editor of the town newspaper, the Summerfield Daily Bulletin; and Miss Merwood, the extremely eccentric cooking teacher.

It is an exciting year as she helps the club compete in a journalism contest and becomes involved with encouraging people to vote in local elections. To compound her problems, her mother's youngest brother, Roger Norcross, who left home when he was in high school, suddenly returns. Donna doesn't know what to make of this man, and even has suspicions that he might not be her uncle. Comments: We meet more of Donna's friends in this book, and get a look at her school life.

It's also the first time Donna and Ricky have a serious disagreement. Paul, the Count Donna and Ricky meet at Camp Cherrydale, returns for this entry's cloak-and-daggerish ending. Joyce Davenport, the supercilous newspaper editor's daughter, seems to be tempered by her experience in this novel. She goes on to become a close friend of Donna's and even of her friends, although modern girls would wince at Joyce's later contention that she doesn't want to be known as a "brain" anymore because it would cost her her new friends.

By the end of this story, Uncle Roger has fallen in love with Miss Fischer and she with him. They will be married and move to California. Uncle Roger's secret is that he works with sound systems in the movies and he excites Donna with an offer that she someday come and visit him and her new aunt out in Hollywood.

Donna Parker on Her Own Synopsis: When Donna's mother is given the opportunity to go to India with her husband on a business trip, Donna and Jimmy are left in the care of Miss Marjorie Dengrove, a teacher at Jimmy's school who is tired of living in a boardinghouse.

Life with Miss Dengrove, who comes from a wealthy family, is a treat to both Jimmy and Donna, as she is not as strict with meals or about housecleaning as their mother. Comments: Two supposedly "regular" characters appear in this book that are never seen again: Donna's pet dove that her dad brought home over her mother's protests in Takes a Giant Step the narrative explains that Donna owned a pet dove "once"; it's not explained what happened to it , and Gladell, the Parkers' once-a-week "heavy cleaning" lady.

By this book Donna and her friends seem to have changed. It may have been that the publisher thought the characters acted too mature for their ages, for the tone of Donna's relationship with her parents is definitely different.

She calls her mother "Mommy" a lot more than she did in the first two books and complains a lot more about being treated as a child. Also, a "had I but known" element creeps into the narration from this story onward: Donna will reflect on missing a clue or a hint that something was going wrong, or that a decision she made led to problems, etc. The underlying theme of this novel seems to be that children are better off with rules and discipline. Many disasters happen because Marjorie doesn't keep Mrs.

Parker's rigorous schedules and we are exposed to two families with undisciplined children: Timmy and Ronnie, the two little boys Donna previously babysat in Special Agent during the election, and the bratty children of a child psychologist.

Marjorie's own undisciplined behavior and that of her "Mumsy's" friend Stacey Cunningham also cause problems. By the conclusion of the book Donna is convinced that some rules are better than none at all. However Donna has no way of knowing that a crisis in Ricky's life will threaten to change their friendship forever. Comments: While Paul's fears for his family are very real to him, modern readers will probably laugh at his attitude toward the crisis in his family.

Paul's father has lost his job and is taking his time looking for a good, new one, so to earn money, Paul's mother goes to work as an interior designer, and Paul becomes very upset that his father is not "doing his part" as the family breadwinner, thus "forcing" his mother to "have" to go to work. Paul eventually finds out that his mother wanted to go to work, although he is positively gobsmacked to find out she would prefer being a designer over cleaning house!

The majority of the story has to do with the sickness and then death of Ricky's mother and how this affects her friendship with Donna, who is aghast when Ricky suddenly starts acting wildly different: going on spending sprees and buying clothing much too mature for her, asking her father for expensive items, and actually competing against Donna for a school award.

Parker sees Ricky's actions for what they are, compensation for the loss of her mother, but Donna cannot see her friend's actions as anything but unfriendly. However, a death in the story was quite startling for those days. While deaths happened frequently in Victorian novels, forties and fifties girls' novels usually spared the reader these real-life cruelties if a character was motherless or fatherless, it had usually happened before the series began, like in the Beany Malone or Katie Rose books by Lenora Mattingly Weber , so the fact that Ricky's mother sickens and passes away during the course of the story was very unsettling.

We also see Bunny Knight, Donna's senior counselor at Cherrydale, again in this novel when Donna is a bridesmaid at her wedding. Donna graduates ninth grade here, and is valedictorian of her class. Even though she does not get straight A's she had a B in algebra , Uncle Roger, who promised her a plane ticket to California if she got a perfect report card, trades her valedictorian honor for the B. Comments: Most of the characters introduced in this book will never appear again; we do see a familiar face not only in Uncle Roger and Aunt Adele, but in Ellie Townsend, who Donna meets for the day when her uncle and aunt take her on a trip up the coast.

Of interest in this story are some of the tours Donna takes and which of the California landmarks are still there. In a nice follow-up from On Her Own, Donna is bringing her uncle and aunt a Ganesha, a statuette of an Indian god that her parents brought home from their Indian trip. On a personal note, this was the first Donna Parker book I owned. I was about nine at the time, and I remember asking my mother if the actors that Donna mentions meeting in the story are real.