Saturday, November 15, 2014

2014 book 272

Sydney Taylor's Ella of All-of-a-Kind Family
Thanks to the intro of the Lizzie Skurnick edition, I now know that the final book in the series wasn't supposed to be the final book--Taylor had planned books focused on each of the girls, but died after completing this one. Sadface. Anyway, this one finds oldest sister Ella trying to decide between a singing career (on vaudeville--not quite her dream) or giving it up for the guy she's been dating since book two. This is actually handled with a lot of sensitivity--presumably because it's more than a little autobiographical (though Taylor left her dancing career to have a baby, she went back to music/writing when her daughter was a little older). There's also some sweet suffragette action here. Love this series and am sad to think of the ones that could have been.

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