The Bobbsey Twins at Cedar Camp — Background and Themes

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In Category - Childrens Adventures

Authors: Hope, Laura Lee Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2011 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Twins -- Juvenile fiction; Siblings -- Juvenile fiction; Tree farms -- Juvenile fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 48,455

Reading time 211 min

Text sections 6

The catalog record for The Bobbsey Twins at Cedar Camp — Background and Themes provides practical reading context through 48,455 words, 3 hr 31 min estimated reading time, and 6 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 13.6 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Twins -- Juvenile fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #37554

In this entry of the Bobbsey Twins series, the four siblings—Bert, Nan, Flossie, and Freddie—travel to a northern lumber camp for Christmas trees. The excerpts show a pattern of hushed secrecy, a sudden storm, and a search for missing children, with the narrative voice shifting between playful suspense and genuine peril.

Editorial Edition Score 4.7/5

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg37554

Read the Text

They were two of the twins.

Again came the shuffling noise made by tiptoeing feet on the front stairs.

"Quiet now, Flossie and Freddie!" whispered Bert. "Go easy, and don't make a racket!"

He turned toward Nan, who was carrying something in a paper that rattled because of its stiffness.

"Can't you be quieter?" asked Bert.

"It isn't me--it's this paper," Nan answered. "I should have taken some of the tissue kind."

"I wish you had," Bert went on. "But it's too late now. We're almost there. As soon as we get everything hidden it will be all right."

Suddenly there was a sound behind Bert and Nan as though someone were choking. It was followed by a smothered laugh.

"What's that?" asked Bert in a sharp whisper. "Do you want to have everybody in the house down here seeing what we're doing? Who did that?"

He spoke a bit sharply, in a tense whisper, but his voice was not really cross. It was as though Bert were the leader of some secret band of soldiers or of Indians, and wanted the men to do just as he had told them.

"Who did that?" he asked again.

"I--I guess I did," answered the voice of his little sister Flossie.

"What did you do?" asked Nan. "You must try to be quiet, dear, else our fun will be spoiled. Better take sister's hand."

"Holdin' your hand won't do any good," answered Flossie, and though she tried to talk in a whisper it was rather a loud one. "Your hand can't stop makin' me sneeze," Flossie went on. "Can it?"

"Oh, did you sneeze, dear?" asked Nan, who, since she and Bert were "growing up," felt that she must take a little more motherly care of Flossie.

"Yes, I did sneeze," Flossie answered. "An' maybe I'll sneeze more again. I feel so, anyhow."

"Don't you dare!" exclaimed Bert.

"She didn't sneeze! Not a reg'lar sneeze!" declared Freddie, who was carrying a cigar box. Did I mention that Freddie and Flossie were the other pair of Bobbsey twins? I meant to, anyhow.

"If she didn't sneeze, what did she do?" asked Nan.

"I did sneeze!" insisted Flossie.

"You did not!" asserted Freddie. "You----"

"Hush! Hush!" cautioned Bert. "You'll spoil everything!"

But Freddie was not to be shut off in that way. He came to a stop in the hall, along which the two pairs of twins were tiptoeing their way through the house, and in the half-darkness, for the light was turned low, he pointed his fat, chubby forefinger at Flossie, holding, the while, his cigar box under his other arm.

"She did not sneeze--not a reg'lar, full, fair sneeze!" he declared. "She put her hand over her mouth an' she choked, an' she made more noise 'n if she had sneezed. Guess I know what she done!"

"_Did_, dear! _Did!_" corrected Nan. "You must use right words now that you are in regular classes at school and are out of the kindergarten. _Did_--not _done_."

"Well, Flossie _did_ snort and she _did not_ done sneeze," went on the fat little "fireman," as his father sometimes called him.

"I--I could 'a' sneezed if I'd wanted to," said Flossie. "Only I've an awful loud sneeze, I have. It's louder'n yours, Freddie Bobbsey."

"'Tis not!" declared Freddie. "You wait till I tickle my nose, an' I'll sneeze an' I'll show you! I'll show you who can sneeze loudest!"

"No, you will not!" said big brother Bert kindly, but firmly. "You two youngsters must keep quieter, or we can't do what we're going to do. Nan and I will take you back upstairs and mother will make you go to bed! There!"

This was such a dreadful threat, especially as Flossie and Freddie had been allowed to stay up past their regular bedtime hour on their promise to be good, that they at once quieted down.

With Bert and Nan in the lead, the smaller Bobbsey twins followed their older brother and sister. Bert reached a door opening into a large closet near the kitchen. It was in this closet that the children were to hide the things they were carrying, and why they were going to do this you will soon learn.

But just as Bert was about to open the closet door, Flossie gave a little wriggle, and, pulling her hand away from Nan--the hand that did not hold a package--the little Bobbsey girl whispered:

"It--it's goin' to be some more, Nan!"

"My--my ker--snee----!"

The rest was a sort of gurgle, choke, and cough mingled with a sneeze. Flossie had covered her mouth and nose with one hand, and thus tried not to make as much noise as she otherwise would.

Continue Reading →

The Bobbsey Twins at Cedar Camp opens with a scene of exaggerated secrecy: four figures tiptoe through the house, whispering and shushing one another. The narrator dwells on the rustle of stiff paper and the shuffling of feet on stairs, building a mock-serious tension that is undercut by the mundane cause—a surprise for Thanksgiving. This contrast between high drama and domestic routine recurs throughout the excerpts, as when a sudden snowstorm transforms a nutting party into a survival ordeal. The story’s setting shifts from the Bobbseys’ quiet home to a sawmill in the North Woods, where the family’s Christmas tree business brings them into contact with loggers, a half-frozen old man, and the threat of a bare cupboard.

Whispers and Warnings

The opening chapter establishes a pattern of hushed voices and urgent warnings. Bert and Nan repeatedly command “Hush!” and “Quiet now!” to Flossie and Freddie, yet the narrator undercuts the tension by noting that the noise is merely from tiptoeing feet and a rattling paper. This playful exaggeration sets a tone of domestic adventure. Later, when the children are lost in the storm, the same vocabulary of hushing and anxious questions reappears, but now with real stakes. Mr. Bobbsey’s repeated query—“Did you see anything of two small children?”—echoes the earlier whispers, transforming a game into a genuine search. The text thus uses a single verbal pattern to bridge comedy and crisis.

The Storm as a Dividing Line

The excerpts pivot sharply around the snowstorm in Chapter XIV. Before it, the narrative focuses on Thanksgiving preparations, a nutting party, and sawmill fun—activities typical of the series’ cheerful tone. After the storm hits, the language becomes stark: “the cupboard is almost bare,” “half frozen,” “lost the trail.” The storm separates the Bobbsey parents from their older twins, Nan and Bert, and forces the adults to confront the possibility that the children may not have found shelter. The search party carries hot tea in a thermos, a detail that underscores the shift from leisure to emergency. Even the rescued logger, Old Jim Bimby, is introduced as a figure of exhaustion and need, his own bare cupboard mirroring the family’s sudden vulnerability.

Patterns of Repetition and Variation

The text relies on repeated phrases and situations that gain new weight as the story progresses. The word “twins” appears in nearly every paragraph of the search scene, hammering home the identity of the missing children. The question “Did you see them?” is asked three times in quick succession, each time met with a negative answer. Similarly, the reassurance that Bert and Nan are “smart” and will find shelter is repeated by different characters, but the repetition itself hints at uncertainty. The old logger’s story—starting out for food, losing his way, nearly freezing—parallels the children’s probable experience, creating a subtle echo that links the two plotlines. These structural repetitions give the excerpts a rhythmic, almost incantatory quality.

Readers familiar with the Bobbsey Twins series will recognize the formula of a family outing that turns into an adventure, but Cedar Camp distinguishes itself by the way it layers suspense over domesticity. The excerpts suggest that the story’s tension arises not from exotic dangers but from the failure of ordinary comforts—a warm cabin, a full cupboard, a clear trail. Pay attention to how the narrative uses small, repeated details (the thermos of tea, the question about the children) to build a sense of unease that persists even after the immediate crisis is resolved.

Reading about the Bobbsey twins’ hushed search through that storm reminded me of afternoons when I was small, listening for my brother’s call in the woods behind our house—the air tight with quiet worry. Later, Phil Bradley's Snow-shoe Trail; Or, The Mountain Boys in the Canada Wilds — Edition Insights carried that same strange hush, that shift from play to something real, and I felt the cold snow and the waiting all over again.