Betsy-Tacy, Betsy and the Great World, and Betsy's Wedding, Maud Hart Lovelace

Émile Vernon, Best of Friends, 1917

(July 14, July 25, August 3) Got Betsy-Tacy out of the library because Mallory Ortberg was rhapsodizing about Betsy and the Great World and I realized I had read those books as a kid.... had read them and really loved them, because I can remember naming paper dolls and other “people” we had “Tacy” and “Tib”... and I just remember being really fond of the stories and nodding in approval whenever I saw societies and reading groups devoted to them.

Re-reading Betsy-Tacy was a bit of a shock -- I had to wonder how drab my life was at the time that I loved those stories so much: they are the plainest vanilla stories ever... sweet, but too young for anyone who can read for herself. The Bobbsey Twins books were way more inventive and absorbing it seems to me even now.

However, the grown-up Betsy books redeemed Maud Hart Lovelace for me. They are totally enjoyable. The two later books are not profound, and the plot lines are a little predictable… but Lovelace always puts a little twist into things that keeps them interesting.

They're sweet, like Anne of Green Gables books without literary pretensions, and they have that travel-to-a-different-time effect that I like…. full of strange daily activities and customs taken for granted then (early 1900s), completely forgotten now.

I’m missing them now…. wishing I had the outcome of a little luncheon party or a letter to Somebody Significant or such like to look forward to reading.