The Eskimo Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins This is the true story of Menie and Monnie and their two little dogs, Nip and Tup. Menie and Monnie are twins, and they live far away in the North, near the very edge. They are five years old. Menie is the boy, and Monnie is the girl. But you cannot tell which is Menie and which is Monnie,—not even if you look ever so hard at their pictures! That is because they dress alike. When they are a little way off even their own mother can't always tell. And if she can't, who can? Sometimes the twins almost get mixed up about it themselves. And then it is very hard to know which is Nip and which is Tup, because the little dogs are twins too. Nobody was surprised that the little dogs were twins, because dogs often are. But everybody in the whole village where Menie and Monnie live was simply astonished to see twin babies! They had never known of any before in their whole lives. Old Akla, the Angakok, or Medicine Man of the village, shook his head when he heard about them. He said, "Such a thing never happened here before. Seals and human beings never have twins! There's magic in this." The name of the twins' father was Kesshoo. If you say it fast it sounds just like a sneeze. Their mother's name was Koolee. Kesshoo and Koolee, and Menie and Monnie, and Nip and Tup, all live together in the cold Arctic winter in a little stone hut, called an "igloo."

Eskimo Twins

Lucy Perkins

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Near the banks of the river Arno, in an upper room of the beautiful old palace of the Grifoni family, Beppina, the twelve-year-old daughter of the Marchese, lay peacefully sleeping. In his own room across the hall from hers, Beppo, her twin brother, slept also, though it was already early dawn of Easter Saturday in the city of Florence, and both children had meant to be up before the sun, that no hour of the precious holiday should be lost in sleep. It was the jingle of donkey bells and the sound of laughing voices in the street below her windows that at last roused Beppina. Though it was not yet light, the peasants were already pouring into the city from outlying villages and farms, bringing their families in donkey-carts or wagons drawn by sleek oxen, to enjoy the wonderful events which were to take place in the city on that holy day. Beppina opened her great dark eyes and sat up in bed to listen. “I’m awake before Beppo,” she whispered joyfully to herself. “I told him I should be first. I wonder what time it is!”

Italian Twins

In 1906, Perkins published her first work, The Goose Girl, a collection of children's rhymes. A year later, she followed with A Book of Joys: A Story of a New England Summer, but both works had limited popular appeal. In 1911, she published The Dutch Twins, her first major work. The book was inspired by friend Edwin Osgood Grover, who saw a picture Perkins drew of a pair of Dutch children. Grover suggested to Perkins that she design a series centered around the twins. Perkins took the advice, and the Twins series were a popular success. She published twenty-six books in the Twins series for the Houghton Mifflin Company. For each book, Perkins would try to interview an individual who grew up in the given country to gain an understanding of the particular customs. Later books in the series, such as The American Twins of the Revolution, supplanted history for geography as the basis of the twins' backgrounds.

French Twins

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Books by Lucy Perkins

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lucy Perkins. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Eskimo Twins

Italian Twins

French Twins