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This week we’ve been celebrating author Michaela MacColl, her books and her recent release The Revelation of Louisa May based on authoress Louisa May Alcott. I have so many incredible memories of her book Little Women. When I finally arrived at Louisa Alcott’s home Orchard House with my own brood in tow, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
The first time I met Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy I was ten years old. Every Thursday I had a date with Marmee, I mean mom, as she stood there ironing. To make her arduous task go by faster, I read Little Women to her. Orchard House seemed the perfect setting to iron in and besides it was a family we felt we related to. Though 100 and some years had passed since Jo wrote plays for her sisters, our 1970’s/80’s household seemed to hold the same passions and desires. All we really needed was Laurie living next door and a mean old aunt who wanted us to read to her. Hey wasn’t I already reading to somebody? There you have it — I was one step closer to being Jo March.
(Here is where my mother would want me to point out that she wasn’t ironing her husband and children’s clothes. She was a wedding dress designer; she always steamed and pressed the wedding and bridesmaids’ dresses on Thursdays so they could be packed and delivered on Fridays.)
That summer of Little Women was packed gently away in the recesses of my mind until many years later when I was, yet again, utterly lost on the Boston highways and by-ways. After what seemed like endless driving, I found myself in the little town of Concord Massachusetts. Passing before us were colorful clapboard colonial houses boasting quaint little gardens. As the country road kept turning and winding, I couldn’t help muttering every two minutes to my son, “We are so lost. If it wasn’t so nice to look at I’d be worried.” Just after one of those mutterings and country road turns I saw a sign for “Orchard House.” Surely that couldn’t be my Orchard House, could it? I made a hasty right-hand turn into the parking lot, and sitting before me was the Orchard House of my imagination — just as I had left it.
“Let’s get out of the car,” I said to my son, gazing at the house.
“Mom, do you know where we are?”
“I think so.” I started walking up towards the house.
“Mom, where are we going? Do you know these people?”
“Yes,” Came my quick reply. “We’re visiting some old friends.”
“Mom, who lives here? I thought we were lost.”
“The Marches live here. My friend Jo March and her sisters live here.”
By this time we had come to the kitchen door.
I knocked and without waiting for a reply I entered. There to greet us was a very kind woman who, I might add, looked an awful lot like Marmee.
“Are you here for the tour?” she asked.
“Tour?” I questioned.
“Yes, you’re at Louisa May Alcott’s house, author of Little Women.”
From there we got a private tour into the world of Louisa May Alcott and an up-close visit into the life and times of this cherished author. During our visit to Orchard House seeds were planted, and I just had to discover what ideas were to unfold. We decided to stay in Concord, or stay “lost,” as my son likes to put it.
Over the next three days, we met her, her family, and neighbors, all contributors to American education, thought and literature.
Louisa May Alcott was the second daughter of Bronson and Abigail May Alcott. Born on the same day as her father, on November 29th, 1832. Louisa was raised along with her sisters Anna, Elizabeth, and May in a very unique family.
Louisa’s father Bronson Alcott, a transcendentalist and educator, believed that the key to social reform and spiritual growth was at home and in family life. He woke his family everyday at 5 am to run outdoors. They would finish with a cold morning bath before starting their daily studies and chores. He was a philosopher who loved public speaking and often would stand outside his house to discuss his ideas with passersby. Next door neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was a very solitary and private man, had a path built above his house in the forest which led around the Alcott home and came out on the other side so he could avoid meetings with Bronson Alcott.
Concord looked at the Alcott’s as an eccentric family. The Alcott family made many life choices which contributed to them standing out from the rest of their community.
Louisa and her sisters were home-schooled, taught by their father until 1848. He instilled in them the values of self-reliance, duty, charity, self-expression and sacrifice. Noticing how bright and curious Louisa was, Ralph Waldo Emerson, another neighbor, invited her to visit his library any time she wished. What followed was Mr. Emerson becoming her literature and philosophy teacher. They would spend hours together discussing literature, thought, poetry, rhetoric and the like. Another of Louisa’s teachers was naturalist and essayist Henry David Thoreau. Louisa and her sisters accompanied him often on his long nature walks. Along with the art of nature observation he taught them biology.
Though Louisa’s father was a very educated man, he brought in little income. Louisa, her mother, and her sisters had to hire themselves out to clean houses, take in laundry, and work as tutors in schools. Louisa had been writing poems and stories under a couple of pseudonyms. She started using her own name when she was hired to write children’s stories. At the age of 15 she decided that her family would no longer live in poverty. The first book she wrote was Flower Fables, which she wrote for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s daughter Ellen Hawthorne. She wrote Little Women in ten weeks and the sequel Little Men in another ten week session. Both books were written at Orchard House and while we were visiting there we saw the small desk by the window that Bronson Alcott made her. All of her children’s books have been continually published since the late 1800’s and translated into 50 languages.
Louisa was a very strong-willed woman. During the Civil War she worked as a nurse in Washington D.C. There she contracted typhoid fever and the mercury used to cure her ended up poisoning her. She suffered from chronic illness for the rest of her life.
Her family was staunchly abolitionist and housed slaves moving towards freedom. John Brown’s widow and children stayed with the Alcott’s for several weeks after the death of Mr. Brown.
Like many educated women of her time, Louisa was an advocate for women’s suffrage. She was the first woman registered to vote some 40 years before women had the right to vote in the United States. Louisa walked into a school board election and pounded on the table saying “I have the right to vote and you won’t stop me.” The election chair gave her a ballot and registered her to vote. Whether her vote counted or not, no one knows, but people actively speak about Louisa as the first woman to vote in the United States.
As in her book Little Women, Louisa’s sister Beth died from smallpox, which she contracted taking care of a poor immigrant family. Later her sister Amy moved to Europe to study painting at the Beaux Arts in Paris. Amy married a Swiss man and later died after giving birth to her daughter who they named after her sister Louisa (Lulu). Upon the insistence of her sister, Louisa took care of Lulu at Orchard House until she was ten years old and then sent her back to Switzerland. The eldest of the Alcott sisters, Anne, loved to act just like the older sister Meg in Little Women. As I was walking up Walden Street in Concord I noticed a little theater which I learned was founded by Anne Alcott. To this day plays are performed there seasonally and a production of Little Women is an annual event.
Louisa never married and wrote until the day she died at 55 years old. Just as she was born on the same day as her father, she died just two days after his death.
We paid a visit to the Sleepy Hollow cemetery. This lovely place was created by Ralph Waldo Emerson as a place of beauty for the citizens of Concord to come and reflect on nature, literature, music, poetry, and their loved ones. As they were in life, all of the above-mentioned people are neighbors in death as well. As we approached Louisa’s grave in her family plot we took part in the tradition of leaving a pen at the authoress’s grave, as well as a stone on Henry David Thoreau’s grave just nearby. Walking a few feet we also paid homage to Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Since returning from Concord we’ve started our own family journal practice. In the Alcott household, journals were meant to be shared. The Alcott family would write about the daily happenings in their lives, what books they were reading and the thoughts they inspired, political opinions, women’s suffrage, plays they were working on or had seen, walks and observations, poems they had written and poems to be shared. Anything at all that held their attention would be written in their journals. Each evening after dinner they sat around the table and read from their journals.
In our family we’ve taken to collecting not just snippets from our daily lives but to writing down poems we’ve discovered during the week. We also include riddles, jokes, favorite recipes, and this week’s favorite music. The family journal sits on the old radio by the kitchen table where everyone puts something daily into it. On Sunday dinner we read from our weekly family journal. It’s been fun to watch what catches the eye of my growing family and how we are creating this weekly testament about the lives we share together.
By getting lost on our way back to Boston, we ended up in another era of American thought, literature, and history. Unbeknownst to me, I had no idea that by discovering Louisa May Alcott an entire world of famous American transcendentalist would plant the seeds of inspiration. Over those few days we walked the path of Henry David Thoreau, saw the birth of our nation at Minute Man National Park, and embraced the world of 19th century America.
For further information about Orchard House, Louisa May Alcott, her books, and the time period she lived in , please look here.
P.S….Don’t forget to enter my Michaela MacColl Booklist Giveaway!
::::::::::::
Natural Nester
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The post Discovering Louisa May Alcott at Orchard House in Concord MA appeared first on Jump Into A Book.
By: PennyF,
on 7/14/2014
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Whether your version of the perfect summer read gives your cerebrum a much needed breather or demands contemplation you don’t have time for in everyday life, here is a mix of both to consider for your summer reading this year.
If You Liked…
…A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, you should read Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Themes of family, coming of age, poverty, and idealism provide the framework for both titles. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott’s tale of four spirited sisters growing up in Civil War-era Massachusetts, continues to charm readers nearly 150 years after its original publication.
…Interview with the Vampire, you should read Dracula by Bram Stoker. An obvious association, but if you gravitate toward vampire tales you owe it to yourself to read the book that paved the way for True Blood and Twilight, among many others. Although Stoker did not invent the vampire, he is credited with introducing the character to modern storytelling. Told in epistolary form, the story follows Dracula from Transylvania to England and back, as he unleashes his terror on a cast of memorable characters.
…Bridget Jones’s Diary, you should read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. The parallels between these two protagonists prove that universal themes such as love and the absurdities of dating can transcend centuries. Fans of Bridget Jones, who was in fact inspired by Pride and Prejudice, will find amusement and sympathy in the hijinks Elizabeth Bennett experiences in one of literature’s most enduring romantic and comedy classics.
…The Harry Potter series, you should read The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. J.K. Rowling herself has purportedly cited this timeless children’s classic as one of her first literary inspirations, read to her as a measles-stricken four-year-old. Like Potter, Wind in the Willows employs child-centric characters, adventures, and allegory to explore such adult themes as morality and sociopolitical revolution.
…The Da Vinci Code, you should read Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Where Da Vinci Code’s treasure is symbolic in nature, Treasure Island’s booty takes a more literal approach. The book boasts the same page-turning suspense offered up by Dan Brown’s mega-hit, with some good old fashioned pirates thrown in for added fun. This edition includes a glossary of nautical terms, which will come in handy should you decide to take up sailing this summer.
…Jaws, you should read Moby Dick by Herman Melville. If you like to keep your holiday reading material thematically consistent with your setting, you may have read Jaws on a previous beach stay. For a more pensive and equally thrilling literary adventure, try Moby Dick. Where the whale pales in the body count comparison he surpasses in tenacity, stalking his victim with a human-like malevolence that will make you glad you stayed on the sand.
…Jurassic Park, you should read The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. Reading Jurassic Park without having read The Lost World is like watching the Anne Heche remake of Psycho and skipping Hitchcock’s classic version. Though most people are familiar with the book by Michael Crichton, you may not be aware that the blockbuster was inspired by a lesser-known original that dates back to 1912. And isn’t the original always better?
…The Hunt for Red October, you should read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Although an adventure of a different sort, Leagues takes readers on a similarly gripping underwater journey full of twists and turns. Verne was ahead of his time, providing uncannily prescient descriptions of submarines that wouldn’t be invented until years later. For a novel that’s been around for over 150 years, it still has the ability to exhilarate.
For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. You can follow Oxford World’s Classics on Twitter and Facebook.
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The post Summer reading recommendations appeared first on OUPblog.
The first time I met Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy I was ten years old. Every Thursday I had a date with Marmee, I mean mom, as she stood there ironing. To make her arduous task go by faster, I read Little Women to her. Orchard House seemed the perfect setting to iron in and besides it was a family we felt we related to. Though 100 and some years had passed since Jo wrote plays for her sisters, our 1970’s/80’s household seemed to hold the same passions and desires. All we really needed was Laurie living next door and a mean old aunt who wanted us to read to her. Hey wasn’t I already reading to somebody? There you have it — I was one step closer to being Jo March.
(Here is where my mother would want me to point out that she wasn’t ironing her husband and children’s clothes. She was a wedding dress designer; she always steamed and pressed the wedding and bridesmaids’ dresses on Thursdays so they could be packed and delivered on Fridays.)
That summer of Little Women was packed gently away in the recesses of my mind until many years later when I was, yet again, utterly lost on the Boston highways and by-ways. After what seemed like endless driving, I found myself in the little town of Concord Massachusetts. Passing before us were colorful clapboard colonial houses boasting quaint little gardens. As the country road kept turning and winding, I couldn’t help muttering every two minutes to my son, “We are so lost. If it wasn’t so nice to look at I’d be worried.” Just after one of those mutterings and country road turns I saw a sign for “Orchard House.” Surely that couldn’t be my Orchard House, could it? I made a hasty right-hand turn into the parking lot, and sitting before me was the Orchard House of my imagination — just as I had left it.
“Let’s get out of the car,” I said to my son, gazing at the house.
“Mom, do you know where we are?”
“I think so.” I started walking up towards the house.
“Mom, where are we going? Do you know these people?”
“Yes,” Came my quick reply. “We’re visiting some old friends.”
“Mom, who lives here? I thought we were lost.”
“The Marches live here. My friend Jo March and her sisters live here.”
By this time we had come to the kitchen door.
I knocked and without waiting for a reply I entered. There to greet us was a very kind woman who, I might add, looked an awful lot like Marmee.
“Are you here for the tour?” she asked.
“Tour?” I questioned.
“Yes, you’re at Louisa May Alcott’s house, author of Little Women.”
From there we got a private tour into the world of Louisa May Alcott and an up-close visit into the life and times of this cherished author. During our visit to Orchard House seeds were planted, and I just had to discover what ideas were to unfold. We decided to stay in Concord, or stay “lost,” as my son likes to put it.
Over the next three days, we met her, her family, and neighbors, all contributors to American education, thought and literature.
Louisa May Alcott was the second daughter of Bronson and Abigail May Alcott. Born on the same day as her father, on November 29th, 1832. Louisa was raised along with her sisters Anna, Elizabeth, and May in a very unique family.
Louisa’s father Bronson Alcott, a transcendentalist and educator, believed that the key to social reform and spiritual growth was at home and in family life. He woke his family everyday at 5 am to run outdoors. They would finish with a cold morning bath before starting their daily studies and chores. He was a philosopher who loved public speaking and often would stand outside his house to discuss his ideas with passersby. Next door neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was a very solitary and private man, had a path built above his house in the forest which led around the Alcott home and came out on the other side so he could avoid meetings with Bronson Alcott.
Concord looked at the Alcott’s as an eccentric family. The Alcott family made many life choices which contributed to them standing out from the rest of their community.
Louisa and her sisters were home-schooled, taught by their father until 1848. He instilled in them the values of self-reliance, duty, charity, self-expression and sacrifice. Noticing how bright and curious Louisa was, Ralph Waldo Emerson, another neighbor, invited her to visit his library any time she wished. What followed was Mr. Emerson becoming her literature and philosophy teacher. They would spend hours together discussing literature, thought, poetry, rhetoric and the like. Another of Louisa’s teachers was naturalist and essayist Henry David Thoreau. Louisa and her sisters accompanied him often on his long nature walks. Along with the art of nature observation he taught them biology.
Though Louisa’s father was a very educated man, he brought in little income. Louisa, her mother, and her sisters had to hire themselves out to clean houses, take in laundry, and work as tutors in schools. Louisa had been writing poems and stories under a couple of pseudonyms. She started using her own name when she was hired to write children’s stories. At the age of 15 she decided that her family would no longer live in poverty. The first book she wrote was Flower Fables, which she wrote for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s daughter Ellen Hawthorne. She wrote Little Women in ten weeks and the sequel Little Men in another ten week session. Both books were written at Orchard House and while we were visiting there we saw the small desk by the window that Bronson Alcott made her. All of her children’s books have been continually published since the late 1800’s and translated into 50 languages.
Louisa was a very strong-willed woman. During the Civil War she worked as a nurse in Washington D.C. There she contracted typhoid fever and the mercury used to cure her ended up poisoning her. She suffered from chronic illness for the rest of her life.
Her family was staunchly abolitionist and housed slaves moving towards freedom. John Brown’s widow and children stayed with the Alcott’s for several weeks after the death of Mr. Brown.
Like many educated women of her time, Louisa was an advocate for women’s suffrage. She was the first woman registered to vote some 40 years before women had the right to vote in the United States. Louisa walked into a school board election and pounded on the table saying “I have the right to vote and you won’t stop me.” The election chair gave her a ballot and registered her to vote. Whether her vote counted or not, no one knows, but people actively speak about Louisa as the first woman to vote in the United States.
As in her book Little Women, Louisa’s sister Beth died from smallpox, which she contracted taking care of a poor immigrant family. Later her sister Amy moved to Europe to study painting at the Beaux Arts in Paris. Amy married a Swiss man and later died after giving birth to her daughter who they named after her sister Louisa (Lulu). Upon the insistence of her sister, Louisa took care of Lulu at Orchard House until she was ten years old and then sent her back to Switzerland. The eldest of the Alcott sisters, Anne, loved to act just like the older sister Meg in Little Women. As I was walking up Walden Street in Concord I noticed a little theater which I learned was founded by Anne Alcott. To this day plays are performed there seasonally and a production of Little Women is an annual event.
Louisa never married and wrote until the day she died at 55 years old. Just as she was born on the same day as her father, she died just two days after his death.
We paid a visit to the Sleepy Hollow cemetery. This lovely place was created by Ralph Waldo Emerson as a place of beauty for the citizens of Concord to come and reflect on nature, literature, music, poetry, and their loved ones. As they were in life, all of the above-mentioned people are neighbors in death as well. As we approached Louisa’s grave in her family plot we took part in the tradition of leaving a pen at the authoress’s grave, as well as a stone on Henry David Thoreau’s grave just nearby. Walking a few feet we also paid homage to Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Since returning from Concord we’ve started our own family journal practice. In the Alcott household, journals were meant to be shared. The Alcott family would write about the daily happenings in their lives, what books they were reading and the thoughts they inspired, political opinions, women’s suffrage, plays they were working on or had seen, walks and observations, poems they had written and poems to be shared. Anything at all that held their attention would be written in their journals. Each evening after dinner they sat around the table and read from their journals.
In our family we’ve taken to collecting not just snippets from our daily lives but to writing down poems we’ve discovered during the week. We also include riddles, jokes, favorite recipes, and this week’s favorite music. The family journal sits on the old radio by the kitchen table where everyone puts something daily into it. On Sunday dinner we read from our weekly family journal. It’s been fun to watch what catches the eye of my growing family and how we are creating this weekly testament about the lives we share together.
By getting lost on our way back to Boston, we ended up in another era of American thought, literature, and history. Unbeknownst to me, I had no idea that by discovering Louisa May Alcott an entire world of famous American transcendentalist would plant the seeds of inspiration. Over those few days we walked the path of Henry David Thoreau, saw the birth of our nation at Minute Man National Park, and embraced the world of 19th century America.
For further information about Orchard House, Louisa May Alcott, her books, and the time period she lived in , please look here.
::::::::::::
The post Discovering the World of Louisa May Alcott and Little Women appeared first on Jump Into A Book.
Here is my entry to the annual Tomie dePaola Award.
He gave us all the challenge to produce an illustration in black & white – something I don't normally do. But I'm always up for a challenge!
We were to choose a passage, line or description from one of the following classic books to illustrate: “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain, or “The Yearling” by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
I chose this passage from "Little Women":
As Christmas apporached, the usual mysteries began to hunt the house, and Jo frequently convulsed the family by proposing utterly impossible, or magnificently absurd ceremonies, in honor of this unusally merry Christmas. Laurie was equally impracticable, and would have had bonfires, sky-rockets, and triumphal arches, if he had had his own way. After many skirmishes and snubbings, the ambitious pair were considered effectually quenched, and went about with forlon faces, shich were rather belied by explosions of laughter when the two got together. Several days of unusually mild weather fitly ushered in a splendid Christmas-day. Hannah “felt in her bones that it was going to be an uncommonly plummy day,” and she proved herself a true prophetess, for everybody and everything seemed bound to produce a grand success. To begin with: Mr. March wote that he should soon be with them; then Beth felt uncommonly well that morning, and, being dressed in her mother’s gift, – a soft merino wrapper, – was bourne in triumph to the window, to behold the offering of Jo and Laurie. The Unquenchables had done their best to be worthy of the name, for, like elves, they had worked by night, and conjured up a comical surprise. Out in the garden steed a stately snow-maiden, crowned with holly, bearing a basket of fruit and flowers in one hand, a great roll of new music in the other, a perfect rainbow of an Afghan round her chilly shoulders, and a Christmas carol issuing from her lips, on a pink paper streamer: –
“THE JANGFRAU TO BETH.
“God bess you, dear Queen Bess!
May nothing you dismay;
But health, and peace, and happiness,
Be yours, this Christmas-day.
“Here’s fruit to feed our busy bee,
And flowers for her nose;
Here’s music for her pianee,–
An Afghan for her toes.
“A portrait of Joanna, see,
By Raphael No. 2,
Who labored with great industry,
To make it fair and true.
“Accept a ribbon red I beg,
For Madam Purrer’s tail;
And ice cream made by lovely Peg,–
A Mont Blanc in a pail.
Their dearest love my makers laid
Within my breast of snow.
Accept it, and the Alpine maid,
From Laurie and from Jo.”
How Beth laughed when she saw it! How Laurie ran up and down to bring in the gifts, and what ridiculous speeches Jo made as she presented them!
#47 Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868)
43 points
So ahead of her time, it makes you think her father was doing something right. – Susan Van Metre
I still think Jo should have married Laurie. – The Sauls Family
And at last the oldest children’s book to appear on this list makes its appearance (sorry, The Tales of Peter Parley About America fans).
The plot from Anita Silvey’s Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children’s Book reads, “The four March girls – determined Jo, beautiful Meg, saintly Beth, and artistic Amy – experience first the problems of the Civil War years and then the period after the war. All struggled with character defects (Meg vanity; Jo tempter ; Beth shyness; and Amy selfishness); all deal with the problems created by their family’s poverty. Without question one of the saddest moments universally acknowledged in children’s fiction comes when Beth dies. And that, of course, underscores the great strength of Alcott’s work; she brings these characters to life. But Jo carries the story. She refuses to accept what society tells her to be. She is generous and loving, cutting off her own hair to provide money for the family, but she is never a victim. She finds her own path and becomes what she wants to be, a writer.”
And its origin story? The Reference Guide to American Literature describes the creation of the book(s) in this way: “Alcott’s purpose in writing Little Women was not to create a nostalgic portrait of an idyllic childhood, though the book is often read as such. She wrote it to make money.” Horn Book’s article “Introduction to the Centennial Edition of Little Women” by Cornelia Meigs goes into a bit more detail on the matter. “In September, 1867, [Alcott] mentions in her diary that Mr. Thomas Niles of Roberts Brothers had asked her for a book for girls. It seems to have been somewhat of a shot in the dark even for him; for her it was even more unpromising than that. She agreed to try, but linked the task so little that she did not go on with it. Other and easier-seeming undertakings were allowed to come in the way and in May, 1867, she sent her father to Mr. Niles to ask him if he would not be interested in a fairy book. Thomas Niles answered firmly that he wanted a book for girls.” And so, dear reader, she did.
The second part of Little Women was originally published in 1869 as Good Wives. Usually that book is paired with the first into one great big Little Women, though. Part one was drawn quite a bit from Alcott’s own life (even to the point where Amy was simply the rearranged letters of Louisa’s actual sister). Elizabeth, Lousia’s sister, died at twenty-three. Louisa was very disappointed when the family broke up. The Alcott girls donated their Christmas breakfast to a needy family once. Louisa won a hundred dollars in a writing contest. The girls often performed their own plays. It’s all there! I was particularly pleased to find a letter in the May 1903 edition of St. Nicholas from Annie Alcott Pratt, otherwise known to the world as “Meg”. She clarifies a couple points. ” ‘Meg’ was never the pretty vain little maiden, who coquetted and made herself so charming. But ‘Jo’ always admired poor, plain ‘Meg,’ and when she came to put her into the story, she beautified her to suit the occasion, saying, ‘Dear me, girls, we must have one beauty in the book!’ So ‘Meg,’ with her big mouth and homely nose, shines forth quite a darling, and no doubt all the ‘ little wo
One summer, I read
Little Women 20 times. Summers were longer back then and responsibilities, fewer.
THIS summer, I read
Little Women and Me by Lauren Baratz-Logsted. Once.
Fourteen-year-old Emily March has to write an essay naming three things about a book she really enjoyed and one thing that she would change. She picks
Little Women. She is sucked into the book and becomes the FIFTH March sister, the one in the middle. And there she stays throughout the entire book of
Little Women.Emily learns a lot about herself, relationships and family while stuck in Marchville.
Baratz-Logsted uses a couple of clever devices to get Emily from one end of
Little Women to the other. For one thing, if it didn't happen in the book, it doesn't happen to Emily. So, Emily is forever trying to remember what
did happen in the book to understand who new characters are or what she is supposed to know. Emily remembers the big events and tries hard to prevent catastrophes. But Baratz-Logsted finds ways for things to occur the way they did in the book - or close to it - no matter what Emily does.
Fans of the original
Little Women will enjoy
Little Women and Me. The ending will cause some discussions. And anyone who is a middle sister, or who has sisters, or wishes they had sisters will relate to Emily and her March sisters - both the 19th century and the 21st century clans.
The Jack Gantos giveaway has a few more days. It ends on August 31st at 11 :59 pm. Leave a comment to enter.
By:
Annie Beth Ericsson,
on 1/18/2011
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Since writing my first post about My Princess Boy, I got to thinking about boys who wear pink, and other non-traditional gender roles. Was there a place for them in children’s books before this news story? Turns out, there was, and librarians and readers have been making lists for ages! Here’s my own list, with some personal favorites for boys and girls:
(Note: I also went to the bookstore and read My Princess Boy. My two cents? I’m not a fan of an illustration style with faceless figures, though I understand the attempt to be “universal” and androgynous, and I know others that liked it. Ultimately, though, I respect the point of the story, and that’s satisfying enough for me!)
Little Women – by Louisa May Alcott / There’s no contest: Louisa May Alcott, in the guise of her autobiographical protagonist, Jo March, is the original tomboy. She’s independent, stubborn, and refuses to accept the feminine societal norms that eat up the rest of her sisters’ time and energy. Women for generations have idolized the way she bravely cuts off her hair (her one beauty!), but fans were a little less content with her refusal to marry Laurie… or anyone at all. In fact, Alcott later wrote,
“Jo should have remained a literary spinster, but so many enthusiastic young ladies wrote to me clamorously demanding that she should marry Laurie, or somebody, that I didn’t dare refuse and out of perversity went and made a funny match for her”.
Listen to a great story about Jo March on NPR, here.
Hattie Big Sky – by Kirby Lawson / There are many wonderful contemporary novels featuring spunky historical heroines, but my favorite is “the one about the girl homesteader”, aka. Hattie Big Sky. Hattie is a 16-year-old orphan who winds up with a piece of land in rural Montana, and has to successfully farm it in less than a year to stay. I love Hattie’s unique voice and the community that she creates for herself within a harsh setting… she can’t help but have guts to stick through her situation!
0 Comments on My Princess Boy Part II: Books With Non-Traditional Gender Roles as of 1/1/1900
Some books are amazing, and some are not, and some are OK. (Yes, I can make bad jokes like this all day, and I shall.) Below is a Q&A with author Allan Metcalf about his book OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word. Metcalf is also Professor of English at MacMurray College, Executive Secretary of the American Dialect Society, and punnier than I can ever hope to be. -Lauren Appelwick, Blog Editor
Q. Why write a whole book about OK? I mean, it’s just…OK.
A. Ah, but it’s OK the Great: the most successful and influential word ever invented in America. It’s our most important export to languages around the world—best known and most used, though used sometimes in weird ways. It expresses the pragmatic American outlook on life, the American philosophy if you will, in two letters. And in the twenty-first century, inspired by the 1967 book title I’m OK, You’re OK (which is the only famous quotation involving OK), it also has taught us to be tolerant of those who are different from us. On top of all that, its origin almost defies belief (it was a joke misspelling of “all correct”) and its survival after that inauspicious origin was miraculous. And strangely, though we use it all the time, we carefully avoid it when we’re making important documents and speeches. So, wouldn’t you say OK deserves a book?
Q. Then why hasn’t someone written an “OK” book before?
A. Good question. The answer goes back to your first question—it’s just OK. It’s so ordinary, so common nowadays that we use it without thinking. And its meaning is lacking in passion, so it doesn’t seem very interesting. But that’s just what is interesting. OK is a unique way to indicate approval without having to approve. If we want to express enthusiasm when using OK, we have to add something, like an A or an exclamation mark, AOK or OK! The neutrality of OK is incredibly useful, but it doesn’t catch our attention, and so there has been no previous book. Mine is a wake-up call, I hope.
Now although there haven’t been books, there have been articles aplenty about OK. But they mostly deal with the origins of OK, and they are mostly wrong. The true beginning of OK is truly improbable.
Q. OK, so why are so many explanations wrong? And what is the true origin?
A. Very soon after the birth of OK, its origins were deliberately misidentified, and for more than a century etymologists were led astray by that red herring. It was only in the 1960s that a scholar of American English, Allen Walker Read, did the research and published the detailed evidence that shows beyond a doubt—
Q. What?
A. That OK began as a joke in the Boston Morning Post of Saturday, March 23, 1839. As Read demonstrated, the Post’s o.k., which was explained to mystified readers as an abbreviation for “all correct,” was just one of numerous joking abbreviations employed by Boston newspaper editors to enliven their stories, two others being “o.f.m.” for “our first men” and “o.w.” for “all right.”
Q. So how come nobody remembered that explanation?
A. Because other explanations sprang up before OK was a year old.
One explanation was true, as far as it goes. Martin Van Buren was running for reelection as the Democratic candidate for president of the United States. Well, it happens that his hometown was Kinderhook, New York, so in the election year 1840 his supporters began to call
The fall issue of SCBWI Illinois' Prairie Wind is online, with the fourth installment of author Carmela Martino's series on naming characters, "What's in a Name?"
I'm all aglow because she cites a couple of my blog posts from a few months back about character-naming issues—and, amazingly, I don't sound like a complete idiot. Yes, sounding like a complete idiot is one of my big fears. For as often as I sound like a complete idiot, I'm still not quite used to it.
But read the article because, truly, it's not just about me. It's about how names' sound and connotation (etymological or personal) affect characterization. Carmela points out that depending on connotation can be an iffy thing because names may evoke different meanings for different readers. (Thinking of naming a character Rudolf? Are your readers going to think "red-nosed reindeer" or "Nazi war criminal"?)
While reading, I thought of the four March sisters in Little Women. Perhaps it's just because they are so familiar to me, but could the girls' names be more perfect? Meg, starting with that warm "mmm" like "mommy." Meg reminds me of nutmeg, the warm, sweet smells of baking, very domestic—and Meg, of course, often must act as mother to her sisters. Then there's Jo, an abrupt name, gender-ambiguous, evoking the brash, tomboyish character. Beth, a name that no matter how loudly you say it ends with a sigh, a whisper; sure enough, sweet, gentle Beth fades away. Finally, Amy, a stalwart, no-nonsense name with a bit of a whine from the long "a"; again, it suits Amy, spoiled baby of the family, to a tee.
I never could get over the name Laurie for the boy next door, though. That's a nickname that hasn't withstood the test of time.
Thanks to Carmela's article, I've also got a new blog to read now: author Darcy Pattison's Revision Notes. She posts frequently with ideas about how to approach different children's book genres, plus tips and information about the children's book industry—for example, What Kids Think Is Funny and 12 Picture Book Topics to Avoid. Looks like meaty reading!
(Regarding the post title: it's literal, of course, but tonight I also began watching the BBC's Brideshead Revisited. I'm enjoying it so far but am afraid it will all end in tears. No, I have not read the book. No spoilers, please!)
The Winona Ryder one is my favorite too. Mostly because it also has Christian Bale.
I’ve read this book over 50 times (seriously, I finally stopped counting) although I haven’t read it in years. When I was younger I thought the saddest part was Beth dying. When I grew up, I changed my mind. The saddest part is when Beth realizes she’s not going to make it to adulthood.
I believe Louisa May Alcott did not want to marry Jo off to anyone but created Prof. Bhaer out of pressure from fans.
Betsy, wonderful post with covers suggesting enough for somebody to write a thesis, or at least provide an evening’s worth of conversation. I got excited about William Shatner as Prof Bhaer, which could have opened a whole new audience, with maybe my husband first in line, but when I clicked on the the video you provided for the 1978 film, it says the prof is played by Wiliam Schallert. The Winona Ryder version remains my favorite, too, though I was taken by the fingerless gloves Jo wears in that 1978 version.
I generally prefer strict adherence to text in film versions of my darlings, but Gabriel Byrne for Professor Baer was JUST fine, thank you very much. And let the record show that Kristin Dunst was the only good Amy in history (partly because they didn’t require the same actress to play a twelve year old and a twenty year old, an attempt which always ends up being … disturbing.)
Shoot! I may have mixed up my videos, Jeannine. I will figure out where I went wrong.
I saw the Schatner Little Women — it was the Kirkmeister himself, and far more horrible than you could imagine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBd9-P-SkPI
Such beautiful covers, this is really cool! I’ll put a teaser in my Louisa blog and send my readers this way. Jeannine, thanks for the refer!
Betsy, I apologize. You were right. They just had William Schallert in the credits, but Shatner is in this 1978 made-for-tv version, too.
I have such fond memories of reading Little Women the first time. It was the year I was in 6th grade. My Mom had a horrible policy that those in 7th grade or up (my older brother and sister) could stay up as late as they wanted, but those in 6th grade or younger (including the BABY, for heavens’ sake!) had to go to bed at 7 pm.
So — I had a walk-in closet. After bedtime, I’d go in my closet, curl up on my sleeping bag and read for awhile. I specifically remember that one night reading Little Women, I went on until NINE PM!!!! When you consider that at this time there were 7 children in the family, it’s not so surprising that I was never caught.
That was also about the time I started thinking the best books were those that made you cry. How I wept over Beth!