According to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_Bunch and this site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_Bunch , Josephine Lawrence was the ghost writer for the first 16 Honey Bunch books. If the ghost writer for book 17, Honey Bunch: Her First Little Circus has been identified, I don't know who s/he was.

Both of Honey Bunch's parents will be gone on a trip long enough that their little girl is staying at Broad Acres Farm with her Uncle Rand Morton, her Aunt Carol, her cousin Stub, and Stub's baby brother, David. (I see the Syndicate decided it was high time one of the Morton brothers had a son to carry on the family name and this way Honey Bunch gets to stay an only child.)

Honey Bunch is a naturally good and thoughtful little girl (without being a pain about it), as usual. Uncle Rand and Aunt Carol are wise enough not to nag their klutzy and thoughtless Stub to be more like her cousin. Honey Bunch is so nice and friendly that everyone except bullies like her. Stub has good intentions, but they often don't work out. There will be examples of this. None of the kids get spanked or switched. Even when Stub does something she was warned not to do and endangers some valuable animals because of it, she's only forced to eat dinner by herself.

I don't have all of the books in this series, so I don't know when Aunt Carol's hired girl, Liny, was replaced with Jenny. Jenny has less patience. She doesn't like having Stub feed her pet rooster, Ginger, breakfast in the kitchen when Jenny herself has cooking to do. The best incident involving Jenny is the one with the peppermint candy. I hadn't reread this book in 18 years and that was the only part I remembered reading before.

An old man named Jim Downey, who travels around in his truck with his two trained seals, Bessie and Jemima, has truck trouble near Broad Acres. He has to order a replacement part so the girls get to enjoy having seals in two empty stalls if the calf barn. Mr. Downey has the seals perform and demonstrates some fancy steps of his own. Honey Bunch likes to practice making the seals do their tricks. Stub gets into trouble with the seals instead.

This series practices the virtues of helping the less fortunate, so Aunt Carol visits the County Home for Crippled Children and takes the girls with her. Don't be fooled by the name. This institution has doctors and nurses who work to either cure the children or at least improve their health. One of the patients is Benny Miller, the nephew of Mrs. Miller, the kind washerwoman who works for Honey Bunch's parents. He gets to make a day visit to the farm.

Benny likes to read. He's currently reading Honey Bunch: Her First Days on the Farm, so he feels at home. (Honey Bunch is surprised to see her name and picture on the cover. There is no explanation given for this. I hope her parents and aunt & uncle are getting paid for this invasion of their privacy.)

The girls help make toys for the handicapped children. When a circus that was supposed to perform at the Home has to cancel, Honey Bunch gets an idea. Yes, her first little circus is an amateur one even though it has a few professional animals in its acts. Norman Clark comes to the farm to be the clown. Norman pulls a stunt for which he didn't get his parents' permission first. I wonder if he got into any trouble when he got home. Three local children also help Honey Bunch and Stub. The ghostwritter gives one of them a full name, one a last name only, and doesn't bother to name the last. The barn cats get names, but not this kid.

Besides holding a circus, Honey Bunch helps a couple of other people, including a young man who can't find work. (This was written during the Great Depression, after all.)

This is a nice little book overall. ( )