The setting of each book in the series suits and often affects the issues that the family deals with. Meet the Austins, The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas, and The Anti-Muffins all take place in the Austin's small hometown of Thornhill, Connecticut, and most of the action occurs at their rambling, twohundred-year-old farmhouse. These three books all deal with home-oriented issues, such as getting along with siblings and friends, learning to be an individual and to make one's own judgments, and taking responsibility for one's actions. All the stories seem more or less contemporary; by patient work, the reader may deduce that they occur during the 1960s.