Miss Happiness and Miss Flower

As "Harry Potter" calls out to today's young bright outsiders looking for somewhere to truly belong, this book spoke to me. It mesmerised me as a little girl. As an USAF "brat" I very much understand Nona's ache and anger as the "weird" outsider. I fell in love with the dolls as well. Their "voices" sounded like two little doting "aunties" as they subtly manipulated Nona and Belinda into seeing past their differences and fears and into finding friendship. If only I had had such a wonderful pair of guardian angels of my own back then. Rumer does a great job of painting two total opposites of little girls with warmth and sympathy while never truly turning either into either a villian or a bad joke (way too rare). She showed that even our flaws can become strengths when they are accepted and we are willing to be loved. One thing that really grabbed me as a child was that the book included all the plans for the house and the furnishings the girls eventually build for their little foriegn guests. I spent hours pouring over the school library copy back then. I nearly wore it out. Now my girls will be able to indulge in the same pleasure without having to always be on the look out for the due date. This time we'll be building the Japanese doll house together.

I read Miss Happiness and Miss Flower more than 25 years ago, when I was in high school. That summer, the little girls I was babysitting were enchanted by the idea of building a doll house of their own. Every night for several weeks, they asked me to read and re-read their favorite parts of the book. Like the main character, Nona, they wanted to learn more about Japan, its customs, and traditions. The three of us spent hours in the public library doing research and building a house out of shoe boxes. We also talked about the bad behavior of the character Belinda, and discussed why she acted so mean. I never forgot the book and was delighted to find it again. I highly recommend this book.

Any childhood book written by Rumer Godden is sheer gold - Miss Happiness and Miss Flower and The Doll's House were both favorites of mine in elementary school.

I so loved this book when I was a little girl. When a random mention of the book brought me to Amazon with a rush of nostalgia, I was delighted to find it available for Kindle - there's nothing like instant gratification! ;-) So with one quick impulse buy, I found myself reliving a small piece of my childhood - and the story was just as lovely as I remembered it. Thanks Amazon!

Miss Happiness and Miss Flower was one of my very favorite books as a child, and the original edition rates five stars plus. I spent hours imagining building a Japanese dollshouse, and actually making some of the things Nona makes for her dolls. The paperback edition pictured, alas, deserves only four stars, because it leaves out a crucially important and wonderful part of the original book: the plans and instructions to build a Japanese dollshouse like the one built in the story. It is a perfectly delightful story, but part of what made the book so wonderful was the inclusion of the plans. I bought the paperback to give to my great-nieces, but I will now try to find them an edition that includes the house plans.

Such a sweet story that introduces Japanese culture to young children, and vividly captures that quaint, familiar imagination of playing with dolls. Simply lovely.

I remember reading this book at least three times as a child. Finding it one day in my grade school library in Boise, Idaho and thumbing through it and seeing the directions for building the house in the back. I have loved dolls, especially Barbie Dolls, since I was very young. So when I saw the directions to build a house that made the book even better. I have enjoyed rediscovering this book as an adult. Now I can build that little doll house myself! A great read at any age from 5 to 105!

Sweet story about a little girl adjusting to new surroundings and how helping others helped her too. Great for any child who is going thru the same thing. Also good for doll lovers of all ages, I am 62 years old and loved it.