The three Graper Girls - sisters Marian, Ernestine and Beth, whose high school years were chronicled in the eponymous The Graper Girls, and whose first two years at university were covered in The Graper Girls Go to College - return in this third novel devoted to their adventures, enjoying a pleasant summer in New York City with their Cousin Hildegarde before returning for two more years at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison. Ernie, having fallen head over heels in love with New Yorker Stanley Davis at the beginning of the book, spends the next two years eagerly anticipating his letters and occasional visits, while still chumming around with her childhood pal Bob Hammond, and finding herself inducted into Phi Beta Kappa - a rare academic honor for a Junior. Marian, still as popular and as kind-hearted as ever, finds herself rescuing and/or helping her unfortunate fellows, from transfer student Amy Strobridge, whom she initially resents as an interloper in the Gamma Delta sorority, but whose engagement to Lester Peabody she helps to encourage; to hopeless would-be poet Tubby Williams, whose children's stories she transcribes and sends off to a publisher friend, with great results. Beth, who is a sophomore and junior here, rather than a junior and senior like her sisters, finds herself involved in the founding of the English Club, playing a role in the nuptials of Clara Andrews (a sorority sister she dislikes), and discovering the usefulness of Phi Beta Kappa - into which she too is unexpectedly inducted as a junior - in banishing that most obnoxiously persistent of suitors, Dorry Mallinson. Closing as Marian and Ernestine prepare for their graduation, the book leaves Marian once again engaged, this time to Tubby Williams!, Ernie determined to move to New York City and get a job, and Beth looking forward to her senior year.

The tone and style here are similar to that found in the first two Graper Girls books, with each sister narrating three of the nine chapters in a uniformly lighthearted, snappy fashion, despite the ostensible changes in perspective. The sisters' romantic entanglements, whether serious or trivial, loom large, as do the realities of daily life in a sorority house. Although published in 1934, there is no sense here that The Great Depression is occurring, and the Graper Girls come across as cushioned by the privilege of their fathers immense wealth, and their rather sequestered life as college women and sorority girls. I thought that this was rather interesting, as other vintage girls' series depicting this period that I have read - Lizette M. Edholm's Merriweather Girls books, for instance, which were published in 1932 - do reference such things as unemployment and people in need. Here there is one episode in which a less wealthy neighbor needs help attending college, but otherwise the wider social and economic events of the times might just as well not have been occurring. Changes in gender norms, on the other hand, do register in the story, despite some of the very conventional ideas - romance is paramount, and college is seen by some as something one does before marrying - that also appear. There were some interesting reflections on issues of women and intelligence - Beth loathes Dorry Mallinson, for instance, who is depicted as a self-involved bore who is afraid of clever girls, and both she and Ernie achieve notable academic success - issues central to the wider society's perception of the growing number of college-educated women. I was struck by the way in which the Gamma Delta house was depicted here, as there seemed to be more conflicts between the members, than there were in The Graper Girls Go to College, and am all the more eager to pick up a copy of Shirley Marchalonis' College Girls: A Century in Fiction, which apparently analyzes the significance of sorority life in the series.

All in all, Growing Up With the Grapers was a worthwhile read, particularly for those who have read its two predecessors, or who are interested in either vintage girls' series or in the college novel genre that flourished in the US in the first part of the twentieth century. The story can be rather shallow at times, but it also entertains**, and the artwork is engaging. This last is something I had meant to mention in my reviews of the first two books in Elizabeth Corbett's series, as the illustrator, Ruth King, also worked on the somewhat later Debbie Jones series by Laura Cooper Rendina, which featured a young girl at boarding school. In any case, having come this far with the Graper Girls, I definitely plan to continue on to the end, and hope my ILL for the fourth and final entry in the series, Beth and Ernestine Graper comes through.

**Please note: although dated, there is little overtly offensive content here, save for one very regrettable use of the word "n*gger," when Marian comments upon her sister Ernestine's "kinky hair," during a humid summer. Although not particularly surprising, in a title of this date, this sort of casual use (as opposed to something deliberate, such as in Mark Twain's work) always gives me a jolt, and throws me out of the narrative. ( )