2006 books 18-25

maud hart lovelace's betsy-tacy series
[there are actually ten books in the series, but since the first few are shorter, i'm only counting it as eight books.]

for some reason, most of my favorite books when i was a kid were written decades before i was born--we're talking books by edward eager, noel streatfeild, l.m. montgomery, whoever wrote mrs. mike, and, of course, maud hart lovelace, author of the betsy-tacy books. written in the 1940s-50s, this series takes place in rural minnesota in the early 1900s, and follows the irrepressible betsy--who longs to be an author--and her best friend tacy, along with many other assorted characters. when i was a kid, i only owned the first three volumes of the series, because the rest were out of print. i distinctly remember checking the rest out from the carnegie library in squirrel hill--every week i'd get a new one and i knew exactly where they were on the shelf [the same was true for other books that struck my fancy later--like up the down staircase and the girls of huntington house).

i remember being perhaps a little inconsolable when i finished the final book (betsy's wedding) and there were no more adventures to follow. i've reread the first three more than a few times over the years and was pretty gleeful when i rcently discovered that the whole series had come back into print. being the obsessive sort of girl that i am, i promptly bought the seven i was missing and devoured all ten in more-or-less one go. the first three were just as i remembered, and the fourth followed suit (these first four are also all illustrated by lois lenski, a great author in her own right). however, i hit a snag with the fifth (heaven to betsy), which follows betsy and her older sister in their quest to convert to episcopalianism (??), and which was a little off-putting, being so, well, christian-y. luckily by the sixth and seventh things picked up again (betsy is occasionally a prig in those, but in a very realistic teenage way) and when i couldn't not read the eighth immediately upon finishing the seventh, i knew i was as hooked as i'd ever been.

hallmarks of the series, for me, include the characters' early stirrings of feminism, the accurate reflections of teen life (these books are very autobiographical, apparently), betsy's constant worries about her hair, the loyalty to friendships throughout all the books, and--of course--the intellectual, self-made hunk based on lovelace's husband. i think joe willard was the first fictional male i ever had a crush on (definitely before gilbert blythe, and probably also before dickon from the secret garden).

now if only the complete works of streatfield would come back into print!