The Four-Story Mistake (The Melendy
Quartet) by Elizabeth Enright
I Loved This Book.
Into the Four-Story Mistake, an odd-looking house with a confused
architectural history, move the Melendy family -- Mona, Rush, Randy,
Oliver, Father, and Cuffy, the housekeeper. Though disappointed about
leaving their old brownstone in New York City, and apprehensive about
living the country life, the four Melendy kids soon settle into this unusual
new home. Here, they become absorbed in the adventures of the country,
adjusting themselves with all their accustomed resourcefulness and
discovering the many hidden attractions that the Four-Story Mistake has to
offer. The Four-Story Mistake is the second installment of Enrights
Melendy Quartet, an engaging and warm series about the close-knit
Melendy family and their surprising adventures.
Personal Review: The Four-Story Mistake (The Melendy Quartet)
by Elizabeth Enright

"The Four-Story Mistake" is the second book in the Melendy quartet, and
it's my favorite of the four. In a complete change of scene, Elizabeth
Enright moves the Melendys out of their New York City brownstone and
transports them to a marvelous old house in the country that has so much
character, it seems like a personality in its own right.
Picking up from the early autumn after the summer that ends "The
Saturdays", when the story opens, the three oldest Melendy children are
desolated because their father has bought a house in the country without
so much as a hint to any of them. After a rainy, boring train ride to the
country, they take a taxi from the station to their new home, and what they
find wins them over almost immediately. Enright describes a house any
child would love to live in, big and white and square with a mansard roof,
fireplaces and window seats, deep dormer windows and a cupola on top, a
little square glass tower with four floor-to-ceiling windows, one facing in
each direction. The house is called the Four-Story Mistake because the
builder inadvertently left off a story while constructing it, and stuck the
cupola up on top to compensate.
Once they're settled in their new home, adventures abound: Rush
discovers they have a brook with a waterfall running through their property.
Mrs. Oliphant, their devoted family friend, donates her ancient automobile
called "the Motor" for transportation to school, and surprises them with four
bicycles in the back seat. Randy manages to ride her new bike into the
back of a bus, is taken to the traffic cop's home to recuperate, and finds
the policeman and his wife have a pet alligator in their bathtub. Rush builds
a treehouse and gets trapped in it in the middle of a howling thunderstorm.
The children discover a secret room nailed up on the top floor of their
home, furnished only with a life-size portrait of a mysterious young girl
named Clarinda. They give a Christmas show for their friends and
neighbors, to which Mrs. Oliphant brings five guests, one of them a radio
producer; he's so impressed with Mona's acting talent that she's offered a
part in a radio serial. Randy improbably discovers a diamond stuck to a
caddis house in the brook. And Mona attends her first dance at school.
Who wouldn't want to be part of this family?
The children are engaging characters, totally alive and doing every waking
minute. When they're not physically active, they're reading, studying,
drawing, painting, writing poems and plays, playing the piano, composing
music and just thinking. Like all children, they get into trouble from time to
time, but they care deeply for each other and their caretakers. In a preface
to her book, Enright says somewhat wistfully that the Melendys are the
family she would have like to have had. Perhaps that's what makes them
seem so completely believable. We almost wish they were ours as well.
Enright is a born storyteller; her writing style is refreshingly free of
preaching and moralizing. She respects her readers and never talks down
to them. She tells her story mostly through Randy's eyes, but all of the
children get equal play in the book. The adults in the family, Father, Cuffy

and the handyman Willie Sloper, are benevolent authority figures who
encourage the children to learn and explore, while imposing reasonable
limits when necessary. Enright was a talented illustrator, and her pen-and-
ink drawings, usually one full page drawing for most chapters, bring out
each child's characteristics. We see Mona dressing up for her part in the
show, Rush climbing down a tree, Randy in the cupola, her favorite room
in the house, and placid Oliver, lost in a pile of old books he's just
discovered in the cellar.
"The Four-Story Mistake" is highly recommended for youngsters between
9 and 12, as much for its fun and adventures as for its simple and timeless
values of close-knit family life.
Judy Lind
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