Its interesting to re-read books when you are an adult that you remember being important when you were young. Difficult to identify exactly WHAT made it so important because, of course, you were young and now you have all this "perspective" on things.I suspect what touched me about this book then - and probably about her others - was the longing for "home", a special, stable and safe place. Its not as if I didn't have a home, but I never had a particular connection to a place. I believed I was P...

The Velvet Room is one of my favorite childhood books which I'm glad to say, 40+ years later, is still a favorite. It's maybe a different story when reading it through adult eyes but the basic reasons I loved it at 10 are still there~ a good story about a family going through a rough time, a young girl about the age I was when I first read it who loves books and reading as I did then and now, who is trying to adjust to a new life with her family and the Velvet Room itself~ a turret window that c...

This is the only book that I have kept with me since I was a kid—it went to college with me, my first apartment, made the trip out west and is still on my shelf as I write this. I read it until it started to fall apart, and I had to repair the binding (with elmer's glue, don't tell Elizabeth). I haven't read it in years, but I like knowing I have the option. It has always been one of my favorites and led me to my favorite (as a child) author, Zilpha Keatley Snyder.

Robin and her four siblings and parents are moving on again. With everything they own packed into their car they break down and end up being given some nearby seasonal work and a two room cabin to live in. Life is miserable for Robin and the start reminded me of The Glass Castle. The rest of the story progresses and doesn't lose pace. Although some parts you may predict, the plot takes plenty of twists and turns and has an exciting culmination and a very satisfying conclusion. There are many ele...

“There was that special smell made up of paper, ink, and dust; the busy hush; the endless luxury of thousands of unread books. Best of all was the eager itch of anticipation as you went out the door with your arms loaded down with books.” ― Zilpha Keatley Snyder, The Velvet RoomI am so glad to see this book rated so highly on good reads. I never forgot The Velvet room. I read it in my early years and it was, along with a precious few others, a favorite from childhood. I understood Robin with her...

I first read this book in grade 5 for a class project. I remember it being one of the last books left on the shelf to choose from, and it was one of the biggest ones, and it didn't have the most appealing cover, but I figured the description made it seem better than anything else left on the shelf (I was one of the last students to choose a book). This novel ended up being burned into my memory, as one of the best I had read as a child. The story is about a little girl living on a plantation tha...

Twelve-year-old Robin is always getting in trouble for "wandering off," but can you blame her for trying to escape reality? A few years earlier, Robin's family lost nearly everything thanks to the Depression and, since, have become traveling workers, moving from seasonal job to seasonal job and never establishing the roots Robin so desperately needs. This is why Robin never allowed herself to feel "at home" anywhere. At first the latest stop at Las Palmeras Ranch seems no different, but that soo...

This was my absolute favorite book when I was a kid. I picked it up at some yard sale and it became a treasured book. Sadly, I've lost it over the years but am going to try to find it again.The characters are fully fleshed and very human. Robin, who lived with pride and shame at the same time because of her family's nomad lifestyle; her father who does his best to support his family and give them what he thinks they need, not what they want; Gwen, a rich girl we expect to be cruel and snobbish,

It was twenty years ago, that I read the book.And even though I can't remember all the details, this one stuck with me for a long time.I remember that it was my favorite. the cover of the used paperback was old and weathered, but it all the more added to the mysterious allure of the book.Everytime I read it, it almost had a therapeutic effect on me.I probably didn't even understand all the story considering I was eight when I first read it.But that feeling..almost as if I were also inside that r...

I purchased this book as part of one of those book clubs at school. Others in the class sneered that it was a 'girl's book' but I didn't care. Once I saw that evocative cover and read the story summary I knew I would love it. And I did.I still have that same paperback edition, I could never part with it. It's very worn, not just from my reading but from the years my schoolteacher sister borrowed it so she could pass it around her students.The story is quite small, girl sneaks off to a secret roo...

Oh my, I would have so much loved Zilpha Keatley Snyder's 1965 Great Depression themed novel The Velvet Room as a child (or even as a young teenager). For indeed, Robin really speaks to me, with her feelings of not really fitting in with her family, with her needing to get away to think, to read, to recharge (and while I certainly very quickly figured out Bridget's secret, again, if I had read The Velvet Room at a young age, I would most likely not so rapidly have guessed that Bridget was in fac...

Where has this book been all my life?

I remember running my hands across a shelf of books in the library, it was away from the area that i normally looked. I wanted to find something different and i had pulled out a bright yellow book, but then beside it was a faded copy of The Velvet Room and i took that instead. I'm glad i did, its a wonderful book. It's the type of book that even if you can't remember it exactly you'll never forget the feeling it gave you. I don't own it but i can go back to that musty magical room anytime i want...

Like much of her work, this second book by Zilpha Keatley Snyder is set in the author's native California. It takes place during the Great Depression and follows the story of a sensitive young girl named Robin, a book-lover who longs for beauty, and for a quiet and peaceful refuge. But with her father forced into migrant work by the difficult times, and her family constantly on the move, Robin's longing seems destined to remain unfulfilled. But then her father finds work at the McCurdy ranch, an...

Very enjoyable Depression era story of a non-Okie family who nevertheless are forced to take to the road and live as migrant workers in their Model T after the father becomes ill and they lose everything. As the book opens, they are settling in a two room shack along the coast of California. Although far from ideal, it offers the opportunity to unpack and maybe even go to school, a prospect which appeals to middle daughter, Robin Williams, the protagonist.Robin is the classic curious child, pron...

The edition I received through the interlibrary loan system of our library was printed in 1988, in the bound to stay bound edition. The pages were brittle as it didn't appear to have been read often.Set during the Depression, in California, 12 year old Robin Williams is the oldest of the children, and is put upon to help with the younger ones. Traveling in an old Model T Ford for three years is a hardship no child should have to endure, let alone 5 children and 2 adults - living out of the car i...

I really appreciate Snyder's ability to choose just the right words so that it is very easy for me to visualize everything in this book. The two things that most appeal to me in the story are the setting of the old empty mansion and the sympathy with Robin's urge to 'get away' and find places of beauty and peace. The Velvet Room itself is lovely, of course-how I wish I had one like it!. However, I think there could be more of it in the story, showing Robin inside it reading or dreaming. It's cle...

On the way to a new job, during the Great Depression, the family’s Model T-Ford just breaks down, it cannot take any more...But as luck would have it Robin’s Father, Paul is offered a job at the McCurdy ranch, the work hours are long, the work back breaking totally unsuited for Paul with his propensity for pneumonia, but there is absolutely no way out. The author now takes us away from the squalor of the Great Depression; Robin finds her haven of peace, of quiet, of beauty, in the shape of the V...

A book from a bygone era, written in 1965, this a classic piece of tween literature set in the aftermath of the Great Depression, during the Dust Bowl era in California. The itinerant Williams family is jammed in their Model T trying to find work when they crash. Luckily, they find the chance to work on the local fruit orchard, picking/pitting apricots. The main character is the 12-year old daughter, Robin, who tends to wander off, discovering an abandoned mansion on the property. Robin is a lik...

This was one of the favorite books I ever read as a child. I just wanted to see what it was that fascinated me so much about it. And I think I am seeing it. I love the girl in the middle of the family, trying to get through hard circumstances, and she keeps running away to a magical place. I'm only about half way through it so far, but I remember how wonderful it is.Yes, now I'm finished and I loved this book--still. It was amazing how some of the points made by the characters in the book are ju...