Try to imagine what it would have been like living here when Booky did. Booky’s mum couldn’t get so much as new wallpaper for the house, and although they had a radio for a while, eventually they couldn’t make the payments, and people came to take it away. No-one could afford to do much of that during the Depression. Are they attached to each other? Are they tall? Skinny? Or is Veeny Street a lot different now then it was then? Sometimes it can be hard to tell although most of the houses you see were here during the Depression, many of them have been renovated and improved since that time. While you’re walking, see if any of the houses remind you of Booky’s description. Narrow slat stairs, like a homemade ladder, led down into its earthy depths.” The cellar was just a hole dug in the soft sand underneath the kitchen. Inside, narrow rooms were piled, like shoeboxes, one on top of the other. White scrolly woodwork decorated the four peaked roofs. It was one of four tall skinny stuck-together houses on dead-end Veeny Street. “Billy and Maude’s house wasn’t much to write home about. Listen to Booky describing her home, and when you get to the intersection at the bottom of the street, stop. Turn right, and start walking down the street. Booky’s mother grew up in Swansea, and her grandfather lived just a laneway away. This is where Booky and her family move after they lose the new house in That Scatterbrain Booky. Does the name sound a bit familiar? That’s because it appears in the Booky stories as “un-paved dead-end Veeny Street” in Swansea. Bernice Thurman Hunter, who wrote the Booky novels, lived on this street for most of her childhood and her teenage years. Walk up the stairs from the library courtyard, and stop when you get to the top. To listen to a recorded version of this stop (or to save it to your mp3 player), please click here. This ‘stop’ begins in the courtyard of the Swansea Library, and follows the introductory material presented in the first ‘stop’ of the tour.

Booky bernice thurman hunter