Understood Betsy (1916)

I can’t even remember when I first read this; presumably as a child. I think it deserves a much greater reputation as a children’s classic than it has. It’s about a little orphan girl, Elizabeth Ann, who is being raised by her two overprotective, uptight, city-dwelling aunts. Poor Elizabeth Ann is frail and vaguely sickly and afraid of everything, just like her aunties who “understand” her and smother her with love. When a family illness means she must be sent away to stay with another branch of the family who live way out in the country, she is terrified. But she blossoms as she encounters nature, animals, having responsibilities, doing things for herself, and especially her brusque but kind, plain-spoken new family. Elizabeth Ann (now Betsy) begins attending a one-room school house that amazingly seems exactly like a Montessori school, and she makes friends for the first time. The part where Betsy is left behind at the Fair, and the ending where Betsy must choose where she is going to live, elevate this book into a masterpiece. ( )

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Slow read. It was fun to see Betsy mature and read about the individuals she lived with. ( )

Oh, I like that. The Putneys are a very clever lot. It's great watching Betsy flower - though it does require narrator intervention to point out a lot of it (more told than shown). For that reason, I liked the Wolf Pit and the fair better than the earlier unfoldings, though those are lovely too. I meant to read it and be done, but I suspect I'll be rereading this - it's quite like Eight Cousins and The Little Princess, both favorites. And a lovely ending - a trifle convenient, but in a realistic way. ( )

I first read this when I was about nine, one summer at my grandparents farm in Maine. I felt like my life was just like Betsy's, because I was in a place that was just like the description of the farm she was on. Except I wasn't an orphan and had umpteen zillion parents, grandparents, and siblings, and cousins around. And a television. And a car. Okay, I was actually nothing like Betsy, but I loved the book, and when I reread it yesterday I still loved it. ( )