Love and Peanut Butter

1961, possibly first edition, from Norton
Lesley Conger
Illustrated by Doug Anderson
Love and Peanut Butter
Original and purchase price unknown
Worn hardcover with stains
B

This is similar to Please Don't Eat the Daisies, although less satiric and more narrative.  Like Kerr, Conger had six kids, although hers were already at least preschoolers at the time of her book.  Conger had four teen or preteen sons and two younger daughters.  Some of them seem to have been more memorable than others.  (Even she admits that Andy is so even-keeled that they take him for granted.)  Her professor husband suggested they do something adventurous for her year-in-a-life book, but she wanted to show a more typical year for the family.  Still, there are events, from a foster daughter's marriage and pregnancy to the boys' successful and ridiculous production of Frankenstein.

Like Kerr, Conger is both typical and atypical for a housewife-writer.  She's more sentimental about her children than Kerr, but she, too, loses her temper.  The family is calmly atheistic, and she argues that television violence is less upsetting to children than contrived sitcom mishaps.

Also like Kerr's book, this has illustrations, although fewer and weaker.  To make up for that, I'd rather have grown up a Conger than a Kerr.  The family just seems to have been more fun, for parents and kids.