Cheaper by the Dozen

by Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, Frank B. Gilbreth Jr., Frank B Gilbreth Jr and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, et al.

Book Overview

One of the best-loved American memoirs of an oversized family and the parents who held them together.What do you get when you put twelve lively kids together with a father--a famous efficiency... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0553272500
• ISBN13: 9780553272505
• Release Date: November 1984
• Publisher: Laurel Leaf Library
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.19 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.3" x 6.8"
• Age Range: 9 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 4 to 7

Customer Reviews

I regret not reading this sooner

A beautiful book about a big family with two loving parents who loved both their kids and efficiency. Though it also showed the struggles the family had which made me more emotionally invested. I finished the book last week and I’m still upset how the mother, Lillian wasn’t respected by the media as a smart career women with multiple degrees and accomplishments. After reading this Lillian is my role model and I want her to be more well known for her engineering and physiology accomplishments

Excellent read for anyone

Non-fiction is a category with very few books I would recommend that everyone read. Usually, the topics are tied too closely to interests. I think that this is one of the few books that is actually of general interest. Frank Gilbreth Sr. was the sort of over-the-top character you could imagine would invent a new field, and so he did. Motion study, and industrial engineering owe him a lot. His wife and he were an excellent team who innovated the way people work. The book takes great pains to explain the factors that made their family unique, from size to father and mother. All sorts of bizarre and funny moments are recorded within. Personality of the players is excellently displayed in the various events. If you want a peep into another era and culture, or just some humorous anecdotes, this book is excellent. If you are entering the workforce, you might find some excellent time-saving tips in there as well. This is simply one of my favorite books.

A Great Book

This book is great, funny, and descriptive and tells the true story of a 12 kid family and all their adventures. Cheaper by the Dozen tells about everything the family did before the dad died. This book also has the kid's point of views with the adults. Probably the best part of the story is when a boy is at Ernestine's window and they pull a prank on him. They threaten to burn down the tree along with him he was so scared, that he ran away crying! It was really sad when the dad died. Everyone almost never talked. The mom was never scared anymore and was really harsh when someone did a bad thing. Despite all the troubles, this is an excellent book.

A neccesary and very funny read......

The first thing I have to say about this book is that it's funny and will make the reader understand how a super large family really can make it financially.I read this book the first time because it was required in junior high (now known as middle school). I just read it again with my teenage daughters to maybe bring some understanding to them about saving time and money and that time is money. This father is the king of creative spending and overlapping chores to save time.A very enjoyable book to read. This is an excellent book to co-read with your children of any age and might help you get a few frugal points accross to them. It's a comical read laced with some very neccesary ideas of financial knowledge.This is a quick book to read, and in my case a shared time of family financial understanding. Don't pass up reading this fun book. It'll make you laugh and think..."That's a good idea." reading about dad's fanatical penny pinching ways. A great story that everyone should read.

One of the funniest family books ever

I used to giggle over this book as a kid. It was a huge hit amongst my classmates, and we wore through several copies of Cheaper By the Dozen. The Gilbreth family of 12 kids, parented by efficiency experts Lillian and Frank, were a bit eccentric and very funny. I still can remember the line one of the kids rapped out to a guest at dinner "Please, we are NOT in the mood for an organ recital." This was the standard reprimand for belching in the family and never intended for public airing. The Gilbreths were actually serious innovators of efficiency for the new factory assembly lines, figuring out the number of movements needed to complete a task and establishing a unit of work movement called the Therblig. They were also warm, funny, loving parents and their story is a good one to read out loud to kids, who invariably love this book.

By jingo!

My mother used to read me this book when I was growing up in the 60's and 70's - but when we lost our copy we could never find another one - they were as rare as Hen's teeth - and we definitely wanted another copy. What a relief to see it is reprinted, and to find that the stories are just as funny and wonderful as they ever were.This is a book about the Gilbreth family; Father, mother and twelve (yes 12!) children. Most especially this is the story of the Father, and his time-motion studies which he applied in work and in life. He was a time and motion expert in the first couple of decades of the twentieth century - travelling internationally and showing the new factories how to improve their production by increasing their efficiency.This book has been written, with great affection and humour, by two of his children - Frank and Ernestine. I find it truly amazing that not only did the family boast twelve children but they all learned to speak foreign languages, touch typing, mental maths and even morse code - all because their father worked out dozens of ingenious ways to motivate them - although often it was quite reluctantly on their part. Their father was a truly larger than life character who dominates the book with his booming pronouncements and occassionally humbling mistakes - but you can almost see his eyes twinkling with a ready laugh.This isn't just a book for adults, kids love having the stories read to them. If nothing else there are wonderful tips about how to get your children to want to learn!