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The Melendy Family #4
Spiderweb for Two: A Melendy Maze
Four reasons to cheer!
Meet the Melendys! Mona, the eldest, is thirteen. She has decided to become an actress and can recite poetry at the drop of a hat. Rush is twelve and a bit mischievous. Miranda is ten and a half. She loves dancing and painting pictures. Oliver is the youngest. At six, he is a calm and thoughful person. They all live with their father, who is a writer, and Cuffy, their beloved housekeeper, who takes on the many roles of nurse, cook, substitute mother, grandmother, and aunt.
Elizabeth Enright’s Melendy Quartet, which captures the lively adventures of a family as they move from the city to the country, are being published in new editions. Each of the books features a foreward and signature black-and-white interior illustrations by the author. Popular artist Tricia Tusa provides irresistible new cover art that will appeal to today’s readers.
Meet the Melendys! Mona, the eldest, is thirteen. She has decided to become an actress and can recite poetry at the drop of a hat. Rush is twelve and a bit mischievous. Miranda is ten and a half. She loves dancing and painting pictures. Oliver is the youngest. At six, he is a calm and thoughful person. They all live with their father, who is a writer, and Cuffy, their beloved housekeeper, who takes on the many roles of nurse, cook, substitute mother, grandmother, and aunt.
Elizabeth Enright’s Melendy Quartet, which captures the lively adventures of a family as they move from the city to the country, are being published in new editions. Each of the books features a foreward and signature black-and-white interior illustrations by the author. Popular artist Tricia Tusa provides irresistible new cover art that will appeal to today’s readers.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1951
41 people are currently reading
1258 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Enright
48books266followersElizabeth Wright Enright Gillham was an American writer of children's books, an illustrator, writer of short stories for adults, literary critic and teacher of creative writing. Perhaps best known as the Newbery Medal-winning author of Thimble Summer (1938) and the Newbery runner-up Gone-Away Lake (1957), she also wrote the popular Melendy quartet (1941 to 1951). A Newbery Medal laureate and a multiple winner of the O. Henry Award, her short stories and articles for adults appeared in many popular magazines and have been reprinted in anthologies and textbooks.
In 2012 Gone-Away Lake was ranked number 42 among all-time children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal, a monthly with primarily U.S. audience. The first two Melendy books also made the Top 100, The Saturdays and The Four-Story Mistake.
In 2012 Gone-Away Lake was ranked number 42 among all-time children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal, a monthly with primarily U.S. audience. The first two Melendy books also made the Top 100, The Saturdays and The Four-Story Mistake.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 198 reviews
August 6, 2016
I've loved this author's book for many years; it's a charming, old-fashioned tale of four siblings who live in a country home, during WWII. One of my GR friends alerted me to this 1951 sequel, which I had never heard of before, but luckily for me my local library had a copy.
In this book the three older children have left for boarding school, leaving the two younger siblings, Miranda (Randy) and Oliver, morose. But they soon receive a letter with the first clue in a treasure hunt, and life immediately looks brighter. The hunt will end up taking them the entire school year and the whole length of the book.
This is a sweet and somewhat humorous story, but it didn't have quite the impact of Then There Were Five. The treasure hunt and its many mysterious clues that Randy and Oliver have to solve got a little tiresome, though the middle grade set may find it more interesting than I did. What I loved the most were the charming descriptions of small town life in a simpler time. This series is a great nostalgia trip.
3 1/2 stars.
In this book the three older children have left for boarding school, leaving the two younger siblings, Miranda (Randy) and Oliver, morose. But they soon receive a letter with the first clue in a treasure hunt, and life immediately looks brighter. The hunt will end up taking them the entire school year and the whole length of the book.
This is a sweet and somewhat humorous story, but it didn't have quite the impact of Then There Were Five. The treasure hunt and its many mysterious clues that Randy and Oliver have to solve got a little tiresome, though the middle grade set may find it more interesting than I did. What I loved the most were the charming descriptions of small town life in a simpler time. This series is a great nostalgia trip.
3 1/2 stars.
December 6, 2022
And now there were two. . . Just Randy and Oliver are left at home now that school has started again. All the older Melendy siblings (including newly adopted Mark) are out in the world pursuing their gifts. With such a long time before Thanksgiving holidays, the two left behind are thrilled to find a poem with a riddle in the mailbox. Once they sold for the location in the poem, they find a new clue. Each chapter shows the two working together and combing the house and surrounding area to find that next little piece of blue paper. When they get to the end, a celebration is in store. Loved this fitting end to the Melendy Quartet.
November 4, 2017
I thought Elizabeth Enright could not keep up such good writing and storytelling over four books but I was wrong. This book was really engaging with a mystery to solve with clues and all the usual poetic details of seasonal nature, family dynamics, memories and humour we have grown to love in the Melendy series. Mona, Rush and Mark have gone away to boarding school leaving Randy and oliver behind. Life looks as though it will be dull until clues arrive for a hunt. These clues lead Randy and Oliver around their friends houses, cemeteries and surrounding countryside whilst they try to work out where the next clue is hidden and who is sending them.
We love doing hunts with clues and regularly have them in the garden or with clues in books but felt inspired by this story to have some hidden in places that we know.
Elizabeth Enright's illustrations are wonderful, if you're buying a Melendy book make sure you're not buying one without. Several reprint editions have them removed.
A really enjoyable read and a fitting end to a great series.
We love doing hunts with clues and regularly have them in the garden or with clues in books but felt inspired by this story to have some hidden in places that we know.
Elizabeth Enright's illustrations are wonderful, if you're buying a Melendy book make sure you're not buying one without. Several reprint editions have them removed.
A really enjoyable read and a fitting end to a great series.
July 15, 2011
Unlike the rest of the Melendy Quartet, this one's not really about the whole family: summer has ended, the older boys (Rush and Mark, who's an adopted Melendy now) are away at boarding school, and Mona is living in the city, where she's staying with Mrs. Oliphant, a family friend, and going to school and acting in the radio show she's been doing for a few years now. This leaves the youngest kids, Randy and Oliver, at home in the country, and they're a bit apprehensive about how quiet and lonesome their fall and winter and spring are going to be. But then, on a glum and quiet September day, a mysterious envelope arrives for them: it's addressed in unfamiliar handwriting and has a New York City postmark; inside, there's the start of a treasure hunt: a rhyming poem/clue that promises to lead them to the next poem/clue.
The hunt means that this book is, as a whole, fairly different in tone and feel from the other books: the central mystery means that it feels much more action-driven, episodic in a different way from the unpredictable or meandering episodes of the earlier books. The chapters can be formulaic: there's a whole lot of them that follow the pattern of Randy and Oliver thinking early on that they've figured out what a clue means/where the next clue is, setting out in search of the next clue, and realizing they were mistaken—often with humorous consequences. But it's still fun to read, and charming, and often really hilariously funny: there's an episode near the end of the book involving Oliver and a chimney flue that had me laughing riotously/feeling glad I was reading this particular chapter at home instead of on the subway or something, and another episode involving "taking the waterfall off" that was similarly excellent.
There are still bits of lyrical loveliness, too: I particularly liked the chapter in which Oliver finds his way through a forest of pokeweed and meets a new friend, an old woman named Louisianna Bishop. Miss Bishop, with her little house and her cats and the winter moss-gardens she cultivates indoors and her knowledge of weeds and their uses, culinary and otherwise (purslane in salad, sorrel in soup) is pretty excellent. I also enjoyed the Christmas chapter, which features a beautiful snowy December, plus caroling in a sleigh on Christmas Eve.
And oh, Oliver! Oliver, who is now nine years old, continues to be sweet and determined and wonderful. The below, from the ride home after Chrismas caroling, made me grin:
The hunt means that this book is, as a whole, fairly different in tone and feel from the other books: the central mystery means that it feels much more action-driven, episodic in a different way from the unpredictable or meandering episodes of the earlier books. The chapters can be formulaic: there's a whole lot of them that follow the pattern of Randy and Oliver thinking early on that they've figured out what a clue means/where the next clue is, setting out in search of the next clue, and realizing they were mistaken—often with humorous consequences. But it's still fun to read, and charming, and often really hilariously funny: there's an episode near the end of the book involving Oliver and a chimney flue that had me laughing riotously/feeling glad I was reading this particular chapter at home instead of on the subway or something, and another episode involving "taking the waterfall off" that was similarly excellent.
There are still bits of lyrical loveliness, too: I particularly liked the chapter in which Oliver finds his way through a forest of pokeweed and meets a new friend, an old woman named Louisianna Bishop. Miss Bishop, with her little house and her cats and the winter moss-gardens she cultivates indoors and her knowledge of weeds and their uses, culinary and otherwise (purslane in salad, sorrel in soup) is pretty excellent. I also enjoyed the Christmas chapter, which features a beautiful snowy December, plus caroling in a sleigh on Christmas Eve.
And oh, Oliver! Oliver, who is now nine years old, continues to be sweet and determined and wonderful. The below, from the ride home after Chrismas caroling, made me grin:
As they drove home, shortly before midnight, they were soon half-asleep in the cozy straw. All but Oliver, that is. Oliver had drunk a cup of coffee at each place (without drawing attention to it, naturally) and was as brightly wide-awake as any owl. He asked Father so many questions about the stars that Father begged for mercy. "I never knew I didn't know so much," he said ungrammatically, for he was very sleepy.
"Never mind," said Oliver. "I've just about decided that astronomy is going to be my next phase, anyway. (130)
March 25, 2013
I've been listening to this gem while working in the garden, and I must say that Enright and gardens are a simply brilliant pairing. Nothing like being eyeball deep in daffodils and hearing Randy explain that flowers in the woods are white, while flowers in the fields are generally yellow.
This is perhaps my fourth visit to this book, and I'm still bemused that I dismissed it so thoroughly as a kid, when all the other Enrights were read to tatters. I think it's because of the clue/mystery format (see also my failure to like ). Once I was through all the Nancy Drew books, I figured I knew all there was to know about mysteries which was that they were mostly annoying, sometimes boring and every now and then way too suspenseful to read in order. So I cheated myself of this book, probably flouncing a little in a superior manner as I left it on the library shelf. It's a mercy and a gift that I got over that attitude, and now I can't read the Melendy books without including this one.
This is perhaps my fourth visit to this book, and I'm still bemused that I dismissed it so thoroughly as a kid, when all the other Enrights were read to tatters. I think it's because of the clue/mystery format (see also my failure to like ). Once I was through all the Nancy Drew books, I figured I knew all there was to know about mysteries which was that they were mostly annoying, sometimes boring and every now and then way too suspenseful to read in order. So I cheated myself of this book, probably flouncing a little in a superior manner as I left it on the library shelf. It's a mercy and a gift that I got over that attitude, and now I can't read the Melendy books without including this one.
May 19, 2024
I didn’t love this one as much as the others in the series, however I *did* love the ending and it was a sweet ending as a whole to the series. We’re going to miss the Melendy family as we grew quite fond of them. 🥰
January 19, 2015
Finishing this book made us a little melancholy. We've come to consider the Melendy family old and dear friends. I think each of my kids saw themselves in the four Melendy children, Mona, Rush, Randy and Oliver. Elizabeth Enright really knew how to tell a story. She had such a delightful way of putting things and was so clever and witty, you couldn't help but smile with delight! We enjoyed the whole series immensely, but this book was a great way to end. As the older Melendy children have moved away for school, Randy and Oliver find themselves a little lonely. But fun is in store for them as they find a clue to a complex treasure hunt, created just for them, that takes them months to complete, right up to the time the older children come home for summer vacation. The reader is in on all the fun of figuring out the riddles and rhymes along the way. The whole series is really a gem, and I think we will look back on it with fondness for years.
December 10, 2023
I am saddened to see this series on the Melendez family come to an end!!! Book 2 and Book 4 were definitely my favorites!!! This one that I just finished was super creative and fun!!! I figured out a few of the clues/ answers, but not all of them!!! The two youngest kids are sent on an almost year long scavenger hunt by an unknown person to help them fill the time and have great fun as their older siblings are away at school�.
September 23, 2020
Although I read the Melendy books only a few years ago I had almost completely forgotten this one, so I read it again and found it lovely, charming and comforting, if not particularly believable. It makes me want to set up such a treasure hunt myself, but unfortunately I do not have any young friends to set it up for.
November 19, 2021
I didn't grow up with this books, but they are delightful! They've joined our shelf of family favorites along with Narnia, The Mitchells, All of A Kind Family, Betsy-Tacy, and Laura Ingalls.
July 5, 2011
07/11 I am growing to love this one as much as I love the rest of the Melendy series. Why, I wonder, did I snub it so firmly in my youth? Here's a quote that I adore from this one:
"The truth was that the young Melendys were acquiring a taste for old cemeteries. There was something very peaceful, they thought, about the quiet places; the tilted stones patched with lichens, standing in a bee-humming tangle of myrtle and wild asters. It was pleasant to walk between the stones, tracing the half-eroded names, the epitaphs, some beautiful, some sadly funny, some grotesque."
I love that we get to spend more time with Father in this book. His goofy humor really shines. And I love the story from Cuffy's youth! Enright's characters are so very real.
01/10 I remember only bits and pieces of this, I must have read it only once or twice. It's certainly not part of what I think of as the canon.
First off, boarding school? Boarding school? The sheer dissonance is overwhelming from the first. But once one gets past that, it's a delight. Any Melendy book is better than no Melendy book, even if Rush and Mark and Mona are reduced to walk-on characters.
"The truth was that the young Melendys were acquiring a taste for old cemeteries. There was something very peaceful, they thought, about the quiet places; the tilted stones patched with lichens, standing in a bee-humming tangle of myrtle and wild asters. It was pleasant to walk between the stones, tracing the half-eroded names, the epitaphs, some beautiful, some sadly funny, some grotesque."
I love that we get to spend more time with Father in this book. His goofy humor really shines. And I love the story from Cuffy's youth! Enright's characters are so very real.
01/10 I remember only bits and pieces of this, I must have read it only once or twice. It's certainly not part of what I think of as the canon.
First off, boarding school? Boarding school? The sheer dissonance is overwhelming from the first. But once one gets past that, it's a delight. Any Melendy book is better than no Melendy book, even if Rush and Mark and Mona are reduced to walk-on characters.
March 3, 2010
Though this one isn't quite up to the standards of the previous Melendy books, my lukewarm initial reaction quickly warmed up.
I adore Oliver and in this book, his personality became even stronger. Though the clues almost got old, the moments of discovery were well worth it.
And then the delightful ending made the whole book even better.
One of the things I really love about these books is the friendships that develop between the kids and adults they encounter. I adore Oliver's relationship with Mr. Titus, the new relationship with Miss Bishop, and the fact that Mrs. Oliphant just keeps coming back in all of her glory.
Another reason to love Elizabeth Enright. . .
I adore Oliver and in this book, his personality became even stronger. Though the clues almost got old, the moments of discovery were well worth it.
And then the delightful ending made the whole book even better.
One of the things I really love about these books is the friendships that develop between the kids and adults they encounter. I adore Oliver's relationship with Mr. Titus, the new relationship with Miss Bishop, and the fact that Mrs. Oliphant just keeps coming back in all of her glory.
Another reason to love Elizabeth Enright. . .
December 21, 2015
My 7yo and I LOVED this series as a read aloud. Enright speaks right to the 12 yo that's still inside me. I hope my daughter rereads these herself when she is a bit older. She'll find she identifies with the kids even more. Highly recommend the whole series.
March 25, 2016
This was the paciest and the best of the Melendy quartet. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
August 13, 2020
Skipped #3 in series (for which I have an active request) to get to this final book in the Melendy Family stories. They do not have to be read in order to greatly enjoy whatever is currently happening in the family. With only two children left at home after their two older siblings leave for school in the city, it seems rather boring to Oliver and Miranda to not have them around to help keep things interesting, until they discover clues which keep them motivated and puzzled and insure further fun adventures. Though I read this series as a child, appreciate them even more now. Wish my mother (a children's librarian) was still around so I could discuss the series with her.
April 11, 2023
I loved all of these books. At first I wasn't sure of the story structure of this one, but it's quite clever.
As with the others, I love the descriptions of nature throughout all of the books and the way the Children love the outdoors and music. Something I forgot to mention in my reviews of the others, was how much I love the way the children sing throughout their days and nights and with gusto. Music was huge in my childhood and I sing to my kids and Grands a lot, much to their dismay sometimes. However, one Grand said they should call me Nana Jukebox because they tell me what to sing and I sing it. Ha ha. I would recommend this series to anyone.
As with the others, I love the descriptions of nature throughout all of the books and the way the Children love the outdoors and music. Something I forgot to mention in my reviews of the others, was how much I love the way the children sing throughout their days and nights and with gusto. Music was huge in my childhood and I sing to my kids and Grands a lot, much to their dismay sometimes. However, one Grand said they should call me Nana Jukebox because they tell me what to sing and I sing it. Ha ha. I would recommend this series to anyone.
January 19, 2021
Usually when a book in a series drops some of the main characters, my interest drops as well. I can't say that for this book. Despite the decreased exposure to 3 of the main characters, I stayed intrigued until the very end. This was a great series for all ages and I'm glad to have experienced it with my kids.
April 23, 2023
This book was so cute and fun. It was odd with Rush, Moana, and Mark gone, but still enjoyable! Usually, the last book in series always disappoints me but not this one; it was a fun read and I LOVED the scavenger hunt and mystery hints inside of it. (Also, figuring out clues because you've read the other books before the characters do was great haha.)
May 7, 2018
We keenly feel the absence of the three older siblings in this book, yet it is still one of my favorites of the series. The two youngest have a mysterious scavenger hunt set up for them. It could have easily become a lame plot device but it is cleverly and charmingly executed
June 9, 2019
This was a nice book to end the four book series. We enjoyed the first book, the Saturdays, so much we decided to go on with the series. And once I start a series, I have to finish it.....but my girls, ages 10 and 7....did lose interest about half way through the series.
June 28, 2024
A delightful farewell to the Melendy family. We missed having all the siblings together for most of the book with the oldest three away at school, but the intrigue of solving each clue in a hunt that occupied three whole seasons made up for it.
May 20, 2021
Sad that it’s over but happy because it’s such a happy feelings delightful series :�)
September 6, 2024
an absolutely delightful, autumnal book that smacks of growing up but still having a lot of fun while you do so
February 6, 2025
5 February 2025
4 stars
I love this one! But it doesn’t pack the same punch as the others in the series. I just miss the sibling dynamics and shenanigans too much!
4 stars
I love this one! But it doesn’t pack the same punch as the others in the series. I just miss the sibling dynamics and shenanigans too much!
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April 13, 2025kids read in 2025
May 1, 2023
Unfortunately, I didn't really enjoy this conclusion to the series. I was sad that three of the main characters weren't there for most of the book and instead of adding new characters to bring new life into the story we had to spend a whole book searching for boring clues.
December 13, 2023
Enjoyable, but not the best of the series.
March 16, 2024
This story didn’t hold the same charm as the others because many of the older siblings are barely in the story. It felt long and tedious and not as cute as the other stories!
August 11, 2024
A fun chapter book filled with riddle poems. The whole family enjoyed it.
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