Looking for Betty Macdonald: The Bog, the Plague, Mrs Piggle Wiggle and I
Written by Paula Becker
Narrated by Paula Becker
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About this audiobook
Betty MacDonald (1907–1958), The Egg and I and the classic Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle children’s books, exploded onto the literary scene just as after WWII ended. Her first memoir, The Egg and I, was a much needed tonic to a war weary public and readers flocked to the hilarious memoir of her years on a chicken ranch on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. It sold one million copies in less than a year. “The Egg and I” was adapted to screen starring Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert, and that film spawned a series of films featuring MacDonald’s love-able Ma and Pa Kettle characters.
Betty MacDonald followed the success of The Egg with the creation of the now classic children’s character, the magical Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle who rids children of their bad habits. Three more memoirs followed: “The Plague and I” (a rare, and funny, account of life in a tuberculosis sanitarium), “Anybody Can Do Anything” (trust Betty to find humour in the Great Depression and the trials and tribulations of finding work), and “Onions in the Stew” (a funny look at raising two teenage daughters that still rings true today).
Granted full access to the archives of Betty MacDonald’s, Paula Becker’s biography includes materials never before seen by any researcher. In this first official biography of this beloved Northwest storyteller, Becker tells us the story behind the memoirs and the reveals difference between the real Betty MacDonald and her literary persona.
Paula Becker
Paula Becker is a writer and historian living in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of the memoir A House on Stilts: Mothering in the Age of Opioid Addiction (University of Iowa Press), a finalist for the 2020 Washington State Book Award, and of the book Looking For Betty MacDonald: The Egg, The Plague, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and I (University of Washington Press). Paula is also coauthor (with Alan J. Stein) of the books The Future Remembered: The 1962 Seattle World’s Fair and Its Legacy (Seattle Center Foundation) and Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition: Washington’s First World’s Fair (History Ink/HistoryLink in association with University of Washington Press). More than three hundred of Paula’s essays documenting all aspects of Washington’s history appear on HistoryLink.org, the online encyclopedia of Washington State history, where she is a historian.
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