The New Chronicles of Rebecca continues Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. It presents a series of stories about a creative child who is sent to live with rigid relatives in a small town, due to the inability of her widowed mother to support her, an onerous mortgage, and her siblings.

Kate Douglas Wiggin (September 28, 1856 – August 24, 1923) was an American educator and author of children's stories, most notably the classic children's novel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. She started the first free kindergarten in San Francisco in 1878 (the Silver Street Free Kindergarten). With her sister during the 1880s, she also established a training school for kindergarten teachers. Kate Wiggin devoted her adult life to the welfare of children in an era when children were commonly thought of as cheap labor.