Five stars: Shawneen and the Gander by Richard Bennett (1937) is a story of an Irish boy who wants to buy a trumpet and lengths he goes to do so. Shawneen lives with his mother on their farm in a time when a penny can buy a box of matches. It's on one such errand that he first spies the trumpet and learns how much it costs. It's more than he and his mother will ever easily make on the farm.
