Comments (7)

By Mom Unplugged, February 17, 2009 10:44 pm

I find so much good stuff by surfing Amazon! Having no “real” bookstore here and only a tiny library, it is one of my best ways for discovering great books.

One of our latest wonderful reads is Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace. I believe it is something of a classic although it was new to me. Hopefully I am not demonstrating my ignorance of classic children’s literature by recommending it, but recommend it I do!

The story revolves around two five year old neighbors, Betsy and Tacy, who become such inseparable friends, that the title of the book must be Betsy-Tacy (rather than Betsy and Tacy, get it?):

“Betsy’s brown braids went with Tacy’s red curls, Betsy’s plump legs with Tacy’s spindly ones…” (p.1)

Betsy is outgoing, Tacy is shy. But, after a rocky start, opposites do attract and the pair become a “unit” as suggested by the title.

The girls enjoy simple adventures, mostly involving a lot of imagination. It is all very sweet and innocent and charming. There is nothing that I could find to scare particularly sensitive readers. Even I enjoyed reading a bit further along every night before bedtime.

The only potentially upsetting moment is when Tacy’s baby sister dies of an illness. The episode is not really about Baby Bee, but the focus is on how Betsy sweetly comforts sad Tacy. It was well-handled and my rather sensitive children were not upset by it at all.

The author Maud Hart Lovelace was born in Mankato, Minnesota in 1892. This series of books is about her memories of her childhood, “…the happiest childhood a child could possibly know…” (quote from Maud Hart Lovelace, inside of back cover).

The author is Betsy, right down to the straight hair that wouldn’t curl. Her lifelong best friend Frances Kenney (known as “Bick” - baby-talk for “Brick” - due to her red curls) is the model for Tacy. The pair met at Maud’s 5th birthday party, just as Betsy and Tacy meet at Betsy’s 5th birthday.

The book has a very interesting section at the end about Maud Hart Lovelace and her life, complete with some photos of both her and “Bick.” For even more information, there is a Betsy-Tacy Society in Mankato with its own website: www.betsy-tacysociety.org. If you want to, you can even attend their Betsy-Tacy Convention from July 17-20, 2009 in Mankato, MN.

DETAILS - 14 Chapters plus author information, 122 pages, fairly large type-face, some line-drawn illustrations.

Hmmm…..I guess these books are way more popular than I realized.

Enjoy!

PS. We’ll be reading all the others ASAP. By the way, although these books would obviously appeal to girls, my 6 year-old son was just as captivated as his 8 year-old sister. If you have a young boy, you might want to try one from the library because he just might love it also!

Here are all the books in order:

Comments (17)

By Mom Unplugged, September 11, 2008 3:06 pm

My oldest daughter (now just turned 8) is a really good reader and has been reading at chapter book level for quite some time.

Since she started reading so well at a young age (6) and is also a somewhat sensitive child, I found it difficult at first to find books that were challenging enough, but not scary or upsetting. She was ready for upper level reading, but not for mature or even remotely suspenseful themes.

Of course everyone knows that the The Little House series is wonderful (although beware, there are a few scary episodes). Since I adored those books as a child (and I am a terminal packrat) I kept all my old Little House books and gave them to my daughter.

I also kept some other wonderful classic books from my childhood, but at the time, they were a bit beyond my daughter’s comfortable reading skill level: Heidi, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, the Anne of Green Gables series, the Emily books (my old copies are the ones my mother read and loved as a child in the 1930′s!), The Borrowers series…etc.

So once the Little House books were all read, what then? We only have one bookstore in town and as it is very small, the choices there are limited. I began looking online, and scouring the local thrift stores.

I had some great thrift store luck! My first find is the subject of today’s post:

The Cobble Street Cousins series by Cynthia Rylant

These are very easy first chapter books about nine year-old cousins Lily, who wants to be a poet, Tess, who wants to be a Broadway star, and Rosie, “who wants a little cottage with flowers by the door.” The girls share some happy, innocent adventures while spending a year sharing an attic bedroom in their Aunt Lucy’s house.

Cynthia Rylant immediately piques every young girl’s interest in the first page of each book by explaining that the cousins’ parents are all ballet dancers and are off on a world tour for a year. What young girl wouldn’t want ballet dancing parents? Your girl will most likely be hooked from then on!

The six books in the series are each only a bit over 50 pages long (except for Wedding Flowers which is a bit longer) and are quite suitable for beginning chapter book readers. The type-face is fairly large and the chapters (between 3 and 6 depending on the book) are each short enough to accommodate young attention spans.

My thrift store find was Some Good News, which is actually Book 4, but the books can really be read in any order. It was a perfect choice for my then 1st grade daughter. Since she loved it so much, I ordered the other four online and she devoured them all.

The Cobble Street books would also make pleasant read-alouds for children not quite ready to read them on their own.

Here are all six titles in order:

Book 1: In Aunt Lucy’s Kitchen
Book 2: A Little Shopping
Book 3: Special Gifts
Book 4: Some Good News
Book 5: Summer Party
Book 6: Wedding Flowers

Tip: These are currently part of Amazon’s 4-for-3 promotion, so if you like the series and want to order online, you could get 4 books for the price of 3!

Next week I’ll publish Part 2 of this post: another wonderful discovery of nice chapter books for girls.

UPDATE: Here is the link to Part 2.