A horrifying book. I read and enjoyed it as a child, I re-read it as an adult and was really and truly stunned. It has everything, backing down to abusers, absent and then hyper controlling parents, racism, a child clinging to literally the only kind adult they had ever met and the old south!

Admittedly, these stories did significantly improve my grammar. But please. I beg you. DO NOT LET A YOUNG IMPRESSIONABLE CHILD READ THESE. ( )

The first book in the series I tried to find out what this was actually all about. I'm usually very generous with books written such a long time ago, because life and views and experiences and beliefs were very different from what they are now. However, I couldn't believe that a little girl should be like Elsie.

I read the following two volumes, and I felt more and more uneasy: this seems to me not a normal parent-child relation, it definitely stinks of a pedophile father and his dependent victim. Although I'm sure that this thought never crossed the author's mind, it is just too exaggerated. All those father-daughter contacts are quite excessive and don't ring true to me. Still, it was so strange that I read two more sequels, so for that it deserves two stars. ( )

If you cry easily, have some tissues set aside while you are reading this book. If you are the kind of reader that feels every emotion as the characters in the books, be prepared. I still own my copy from when I was in middle school school. Being in 6th grade reading this book, I was definitely a mess. This book is about a young girl named Elsie Dinsmore who tries to win the heart of her cruel father. Blaming Elsie for his wife’s death, he has finally agreed to meet her 8 years later. Throughout the book, Elsie tries to keep a loving outlook toward her father. There is even a part in the book where Elsie was forced to sit in another at the piano keyboard while her family ate their dinner. Elsie soon passes out due to hunger and her family said she wanted “attention.” It’s very sad but I promise the ending is worth it. ( )

Don't know how other people have found this to be a classic. So dripping with Christianity that there's no plot or story really. Gave up fast. ( )

Referenced in 'Jo of the Chalet School', this is the first of the much maligned 'Elsie' books. It features the rather too-good-to-be-true Elsie, who is brought up with her aunts and uncles of similar age until her father Horace returns to the family home. She is regularly bullied by her young uncle, picked upon by their governess, and then finds that her father is very strict and apparently cold to her. She longs for love, finding it in her maid 'Mammy', who has brought her up as a devout Christian. There is rather too much preaching for my tastes; I can't imagine how this would appeal to today's children, and can understand why the book have been parodied. Nobody could be quite so humble and pious at the age of eight; Elsie's worst fault appears to be her tendency to dissolve into tears at little provocation. And yet, somehow, it made compulsive reading. So much so that I've downloaded some of the sequels which are also available free for the Kindle. ( )