A Bargain for Frances, Russel Hoban

Cover of A Bargain for Frances

I have been an ESL teacher for around five years. I've gone through quite a number of books in that period of time. One of the best books I've found to date is this slim volume which is rated for children who can read at level two.

Most writers who do children's literature write stories with trivial plots and empty characters. Whatever happens in those stories is too often limited to talk about much in the classroom beyond the superficial plot and a general skin deep analysis of character. This book, A Bargain for Frances, is quite the opposite.

The story starts with a young raccoon who is off to a tea party with her friend, Thelma. Her mother warns her that Thelma is not a good friend, but Frances dismisses her mother's warnings, and goes anyway.

The invitation to the tea party, however, was something of planned swindle. That is to say, Thelma most likely knew that Frances wanted a new tea set, and had planned on selling her the old plastic tea set that she already had so that she could buy a better china tea set. By convincing Frances that the plastic tea set was good and that there were no more china tea sets, she swindles Frances out of her savings.

Gloria, Frances' younger sister, knows everything. She knows about the tea sets on sale at the candy store. She knows that Thelma knew about the tea set sale as a friend of hers had shown Thelma the new tea set. Thus, it becomes apparent that Thelma knew all along what she was doing when she invited Frances to her house.

Frances is not without wit, however. She manages to make Thelma want to exchange the plastic tea set for the new china tea set by suggesting that Thelma had accidentally stored a valuable item or even money in the sugar bowl. Curiosity killed the cat and brought Thelma the tea set that she wanted.

What makes this book particularly good is the ability to delve into the characters. We are able to see that Thelma is a bad friend, and what makes a friend a bad one. But we are also able to peer into Frances' faults. That is to say, she is too quick to believe everything she hears. She is naive. However, as she says toward the end, it is better to have friends that you can trust than friends that try to trick each other.

For those with children at the reading level of this book, I highly recommend it.

One critic of the book at Amazon.com wrote, "the story keeps pounding the three dollar price of the tea set, which is of course wholly unrealistic." Unfortunately for the critic, he had not taken the time to look for the copyright information. If he or she had, it would have been noticed that the story was written in the early 70s, and known that $2 was a reasonable price for a tea set. $2 in those days might be the equal of $30 today in terms of buying power.