Long before the Duggar family of 19 Kids And Counting television fame the most well known large family was the Gilbreths of the Cheaper By The Dozen books. I first read Cheaper By The Dozen and its sequel Belles On Their Toes (the story of the family after the father died) as a child and loved them enough to read them many times. The books, written by two of the children, Frank and Ernestine Gilbreth, tell the story of the Gilbreth family of twelve children who grew up in the 1920s. Their father, Frank Gilbreth, was a well know efficiency expert and ran his family on the same efficiency principles as he did his business. Whether it was having tonsils out en masse, learning to touch type or playing educational games so as to skip grades at school the results were often very humorous. If you get a chance watch the 1950 film of the same name with Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy which is true to the books in a way that the versions with Steve Martin are definitely not