I have been unable to find much biographical information about Decie Merwin. I believe she was American and worked as an illustrator of children’s books. She worked on some of the Fairchild Family series, written by Rebecca Caudill. She also wrote children’s books of her own on non-
Many thanks to Susan Bourgeau for her help with the pictures and blurbs.
Finding the books:
Holiday Summer is very easy indeed to find, and cheap in the UK. Under its original name, Somerhaze Farm, the book can be found reasonably easily in the US, though most copies are ex library. Robin and Mr Jones is not easy to find. Dulcie and Her Donkey is rare, and often expensive.
Holiday Summer
First printed as Somerhaze Farm
Lippincott, Philadephia, 1958
Coliins Seagull, London, 1960
Children’s Press, 1966, 1968
Reprinted 1968
Mary Lee Wade, from Virginia, wasn’t keen on the idea of an English holiday
on a farm,
but the Randall family soon change her mind.
Dulcie and Her Donkey
(Jack Bechdolt & Decie Merwin)
EP Dutton, New York, 1944
Robin and Mr Jones
Oxford University Press, New York, 1953, hb, illus the author
(NB this is listed as being printed in New York -
“Here is a horse story in which everyone has a horse. But mostly it is about eleven-
whom the prospect of spending the summer with her maiden aunt seemed
very dull indeed. That is, until one
day when she fell out of the apple tree just
in front of a pony and his startled rider. The pony was introduced as
Mr. Jones, and
when Robin was asked if she would like to ride him, it seemed as though greater happiness
were not possible – until she discovered that riding real horses is not the same
as riding the merry-
ones! Robin’s friendship with the Talbut family who
“hand down horses as some families hand down clothes,”
her growing understanding
of the problems and joys of horsemanship, and best of all her acquaintance with
Mr.
Jones and her dismay at learning that he is to be sold make a story which will delight
horse-
and might even convert the uninitiated! “
Bibliography -