Miss Minerva's Baby by Emma Speed Samon

Very few people have heard of Miss Minerva. From 1909 to 1939, 12 Miss Minerva books were written, the last 11 by Emma Speed Sampson. This is one of the best.

Miss Minerva and William Green Hill was the only book written by Frances Boyd Calhoun. She died a few months after the publication of the book. The sequel was written by Emma Speed Sampson.

Miss Minerva books are about life in small-town Tennessee from 1909 to 1939. It is mostly about children. Both Black and white people are featured. There is quite a bit of racism in the books, so they would not be appropriate for young readers today. Almost all the Black people, and all the children, speak in Tennessee dialect, which can be hard to understand at first. But if you are older and can handle the casual racism, the books are interesting and funny.

The main theme in all the books is that Miss Minerva is unbending old maid who will never change. However, she gets married, has a daughter, gets a live-in housekeeper, and gets a dog - all things she said she would never do. One sentence in one of the books is, "Miss Minerva spent the first part of her life saying what she would never do. She spent the next part of her life doing them.

The funniest scene in all the books is in this one, when Josephine rides on an elephant.