Lucy Fitch Perkins
From the Author’s Introduction...Away, away, ever so far away, near the western shores of the Ocean of Peace, lie the Happy Islands, the Paradise of Children. Some people call this ocean the 'Pacific' and they call the Happy Islands 'Japan,' but the meaning is just the same. Those are only their grown-up names, that you find them by on the map, in the geography. They are truly Happy Islands, for the sun shines there so brightly that all the people go about with pleasant, smiling faces, and the children play out of doors the whole year through without ever quarreling. And they are never, never spanked! Of course, the reason for that is that they are so good they never, never need it! Or maybe their fathers and mothers do not believe in spanking. I have even been told--though I don’t know whether to think it’s true or not--that Japanese parents believe more in sugar-plums than in punishments to make children good! Anyway, the children there are very good indeed. In a little town near a large city on one of the Happy Islands, there is a garden. In the garden stands a house, and in that House there live Taro, who is a boy, and Take (Pronounce Tah’-kay), who is a girl. They are twins. They are Japanese Twins and they are just five years old, both of them.
