The Moffats
Cover of The Moffats by Eleanor Estes, illustrated by Louis Slobodkin
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| Author | Eleanor Estes |
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| Illustrator | Louis Slobodkin |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Children's novel |
| Publisher | Harcourt Brace & World |
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Publication date
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1941 |
| Media type | Print (hardback and paperback) |
| Pages | 290 pp |
| Followed by | The Middle Moffat |
The Moffats is a children's novel by the American author Eleanor Estes, the first in a series of four books about the Moffat family. The Moffats tells about four young children and their mother who live in a small town in Connecticut. Their adventures are based on Estes' memories of her childhood and focus on a working-class, single-parent American family during World War I.
The Moffats are a fatherless family in Cranbury, Connecticut, which Estes modeled after her hometown of West Haven. Mama is a dressmaker with four children: Sylvie, Joey, Janey and Rufus. The two youngest, ten-year-old Janey and five-year-old Rufus, are the focus of these stories. When the book opens Janey watches as a strange man nails a For Sale sign on their house. They have lived there since shortly after her father died, and Janey cannot imagine living anywhere else. Mama tells the children not to worry about it until it sells.
Each chapter in the book tells of one simple adventure the children had. For instance, when the first day of school arrives and Rufus goes to kindergarten, he takes very seriously the instruction to watch over his young friend Hughie. When Hughie runs away from school and hides on a train, Rufus follows him, and a helpful engineer gets them back just in time for lunch. Another time the children decide to rig up a ghost in their attic to scare the neighborhood bully Peter Frost. They use their Mama's dressmaker's form (called Madame-the-Bust), a pumpkin with real teeth and a scooter. When they take Peter Frost up to see it, they get a big scare themselves, and only later realize their cat Catherine had made the 'ghost' move.
When Rufus gets scarlet fever, the doctor puts a quarantine sign on their house. Mama, who can always find the good side of any situation, reminds the children that no one will try to buy it while someone inside has scarlet fever. In the meantime she entertains them all with stories of when she lived in New York City as a young girl. Eventually Rufus recovers and the scarlet fever quarantine sign comes down from the Moffats' house. Soon one family, the Murdocks, becomes interested in the yellow house, but they cannot make up their minds to buy it or not. The Moffats get very tired of having one or more of the Murdocks always coming by to pester the family with questions and inspections about their home. Finally the house does sell, and the Moffats move to a little house with a long front yard and a tiny back yard. The Moffats' new house turns out to have a girl Janey's age right next door. The girl, Nancy Stokes, is friendly and tells Jane Moffat that they might turn out to best friends one day. In the end, "Estes celebrates variety as the source of pleasure and growth."
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