French 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.