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Audiobook editionPaperback · 6 × 9 in · 260 pagesHardcover · 6 × 9 in · 260 pagesAbout this book
What happens when girls from neat town streets find room to roam on the wide Texas prairie?
In Eleanor H. Porter's The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch, a circle of friends leaves Sunbridge for a ranch far from home. Familiar habits and settled expectations give way to open country. The contrast between town and prairie brings the girls new freedom, with space to ride, explore, and meet a different way of life.
The girls share more than a journey. Surprises, mistakes, and small disagreements test their friendship as they experience ranch life together. Porter keeps the story warm and hopeful, finding adventure in companionship and unfamiliar surroundings. The pleasures are gentle: open space, fresh possibilities, and the chance to see how friends respond when familiar routines no longer guide them.
What you’ll discover
- Town meets open country Follow the Sunbridge girls from familiar streets into the wide spaces of the Texas prairie.
- Friendship through small trials Discover how shared surprises, mistakes, and disagreements test and strengthen a circle of friends.
- Room to ride and explore Experience the freedom ranch life offers girls beyond the settled expectations of their town.
- A warm, hopeful spirit Enjoy Porter's cheerful storytelling, where companionship and new surroundings give a gentle adventure its appeal.
- An earlier imagined West Enter the American West as an earlier generation imagines it, through an old-fashioned girls' adventure.
Who will love it
You will love this if you enjoy friendship stories, comic clashes between East and West, and young heroines who learn to be kind.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A holiday opens a wider world
- Cordelia carries other people's hopes
- A quiet gift reveals affection
- The cowboys fear being rejected
- Love can sound like anger
- Kindness must notice actual needs
- Adventure makes room for courage
- Genevieve learns to look beneath appearances
- Generosity needs thought as well as heart
Who’s who
- Genevieve HartleyA warm, impulsive ranch girl from Texas who is at school in the East and wants to share her home with her friends.
- Cordelia WilsonA conscientious minister's niece who keeps a list of lost people to find in Texas and worries about doing exactly right.
- Tilly MackThe youngest Hexagon, red-haired and quick with jokes, who teases everyone but proves loyal when it counts.
- Elsie MartinA girl who lives with an aunt who remakes old dresses, and who longs for something new to wear.
- Bertha BrownA talkative friend who likes to say I told you so and wears her shoes to bed in case of accidents.
- Alma LaneThe peacemaker of the club, who smooths over quarrels and looks closely at everything she sees.
- John HartleyGenevieve's generous rancher father, who pays for the trip and wants his daughter to learn both Eastern and Western ways.
- Quentina JonesA pretty minister's daughter in Bolo who turns everything into poetry and longs to go East to school.
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The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch
by Eleanor H. Porter · 1913
Six New Hampshire girls cross a continent to a Texas ranch, where cowboys wait in stiff collars to greet them.
Medium level2–5 hours to read20 languages
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“If you do something bad in order to do something good, which is it, good or bad?”
In short
Picture a cowboy in a frock coat three sizes too small, a red and green silk handkerchief knotted at his throat, standing stiffly on a Texas railway platform. He has dressed this way to spare a girl from shock.
The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch at a glance
- Reading time
- About 4 h 50 min3 h 50 min fast, 5 h 45 min slow
- Length
- 68,500 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1913by Eleanor H. Porter
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A whole town catches Texas fever
The story opens in Sunbridge, a quiet New Hampshire town. Miss Sophronia hears astonishing news. Her niece Cordelia, sixteen years old, is going to Texas next week. Sophronia is sure the plan is mad, but her sister-in-law Mary answers with unusual spirit.
For twelve years Cordelia has been the family's helper, fetching and carrying for five younger cousins. She has never had a playday, and Mary thinks she has earned one. The chance comes through Genevieve Hartley, whose father, John Hartley, wants to repay the girls who visited her when she sprained her ankle. He will cover every expense and travel with them, and Mrs. Kennedy will go along as chaperone.
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Six New Hampshire girls cross a continent to a Texas ranch, where cowboys wait in stiff collars to greet them.
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Details
- First published
- 1913
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 5 h 35 min
- Level
- Medium level
- Paperback
- 260 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Hardcover
- 260 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Large print paperback
- 430 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Large print hardcover
- 430 pages · 6 × 9 in
- Delivery and returns
- Printed when you order. Usually here in 12 to 14 days.Arrives Wed 2 Dec to Tue 8 Decto United States, printed for you at cost
For Christmas, order by Thu 12 Nov
Cite this edition
Porter, Eleanor H. The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-sunbridge-girls-at-six-star-ranch.
Porter, E. H. (2026). The Sunbridge girls at Six Star Ranch. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-sunbridge-girls-at-six-star-ranch (Original work published 1913)
Porter, Eleanor H. The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-sunbridge-girls-at-six-star-ranch.
@book{porter2026sunbridge,
author = {Porter, Eleanor H.},
title = {The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-sunbridge-girls-at-six-star-ranch},
note = {First published 1913}
}
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What is The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch about?
Six friends from Sunbridge, New Hampshire, called the Happy Hexagons, travel to the Texas ranch of their classmate Genevieve for a summer. The book follows the trip, the ranch adventures, and the school year that comes after.
Who are the Happy Hexagons?
They are a girls' club of six friends: Genevieve Hartley, Cordelia Wilson, Tilly Mack, Elsie Martin, Bertha Brown and Alma Lane. Each has a distinct habit, such as Cordelia's rules, Tilly's jokes or Elsie's love of clothes.
What is the Six Star Ranch?
It is the Texas ranch owned by Genevieve's father, John Hartley. The girls realize the name fits them perfectly, because there are six of them, and so they feel the ranch belongs to the club as well.
The author
Eleanor H. Porter
1868–1920 · American novelist
Eleanor H. Porter (1868–1920) was an American novelist born in Littleton, New Hampshire. She lived in Massachusetts and died in Cambridge. She wrote novels for children and adults. Her books include Miss Billy (1911), Miss Billy’s Decision (1912), Pollyanna (1913), and Miss Billy—Married (1914).
“If you do something bad in order to do something good, which is it, good or bad?”
More by Eleanor H. Porter
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