Catchpenny Street

by Betty Cavanna

Unsure about her role in life, a young girl living in Camden, New Jersey, during World War I discovers a vocation in nursing.

Genres: Young Adult

223 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

American juvenile author (full name: Elizabeth Allen) Betty Cavanna suffered from a crippling disease, infantile paralysis, as a child, which she eventually overcame with treatment and exercise. During her convalescence, attentive adults read to her until she was old enough to read to herself, beginning a long love affair with books.

Cavanna majored in journalism at the New Jersey College for Women in New Brunswick, from where she received the Bachelor of Letters degree in 1929. She also took art classes in New York and Philadelphia. Cavanna's first job was as a reporter for the Bayonne Times. In 1931 she joined the staff of the Westminster Press in Philadelphia and over the next ten years served as advertising manager and art director. She also wrote and sold material to Methodist and Baptist publishing firms. In 1940 she married Edward Talman Headley, with whom she had a son. They moved to Philadelphia. After her husband's death, she married George Russell Harrison, a university dean of science, as well as nonfiction writer, in 1957. He died in 1979.

Cavanna became a full-time writer in 1941. Since then she has written more than seventy books under the name of Betty Cavanna as well as two pseudonyms: Betsy Allen, under which she wrote the "Connie Blair Mystery" series, and Elizabeth Headley, under which she wrote several books, including the Diane stories. As Betty Cavanna she also published the nonfiction "Around the World Today" about young people living in various countries.

Cavanna's juvenile fiction, about the difficulties of adolescenc, appealed to generations of teenage girls. Her characters confronted loneliness, sibling rivalries, divorce, and tense mother-daughter relationships. Her books, although characterized as pleasant, conventional, and stereotyped, have been extremely popular and recommended by critics for their attention to subjects which have reflected girls' interests. Going on Sixteen and Secret Passage were Spring Book Festival honor books in 1946 and 1947.

In the 1970s Cavanna turned to writing mysteries, which she termed "escape fiction," because she said she felt out of sync with the problems of modern teenagers. Two of her books have been runners-up for the Edgar Allan Poe Award: Spice Island Mystery in 1970 and the Ghost of Ballyhooly in 1972.

She died in France (2001).

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first book by Betty Cavanna, a popular author among teen girls in the 1950s, was a historical novel set in Camden, NJ in 1917. Since it's about a girl, Ellen, who aspires to be a nurse, I expected a lot nursing content, and even had hopes (early on) that we'd follow her to nursing school. But it turns out to be just an account of the summer after Ellen's high school graduation, her interactions with two suitors, and the eventual decision about her future. I enjoyed the period detail, and I read it in the course of one evening -- I don't know when I last finished a book so quickly! 3.5

[Mary Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book as a teenager - read it over and over! - and wish I still owned a copy! It's a gem, a sweet romance set during WWI, which evokes the era vividly. I felt so caught up in that era, as if I was almost living there. The heroine is very relatable and her dilemma as to which man to choose, which level of society to aspire to, is so well written. The ending - ooooh! *Swoon* A MUST READ. :))

[Meg W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ellen Arthur must decide between to young men and two different walks of life at the start of World War I. Both Gordon and Tony were nice guys. Why do some girls have all the luck?

[Deb · Rating 3 out of 5]

CLM gave me this book, but she might be surprised - the book's author is "Elizabeth Headley" and it was published by Grosset and Dunlap in 1951 as a "Starlight Novel For Modern Girls!" Obviously it was reissued under the Betty Cavanna name when the author became a seller...I liked it and wondered why I had never heard of the author - several other titles are listed in the series under both "Betty Cavanna" and "Elizabeth Headley." "Take a Call, Topsey" and "She's My Girl" by Headley and "Spring Comes Riding" and "Two's Company" by Cavanna.