Oh dear - a new illustrator, and the girls are starting to think about boys & even more about beauty now.

Ok, now that I'm done, my thoughts are about the same as when I picked it up. Let's see. The second of these two was a bit more realistic - money wasn't spent as freely, other people (like Tib's extended German family) were included, and Betsy actually thought things through a bit. And I suppose it's only natural that she was shallow and self-centered in the first one, as that was about her first year in high school. But still, I want more Tacy, and fewer infatuations with boys.

I will continue to read the series - but the only way I can appreciate the latter set is to read them as separate from the first four, in which the girls were children. ( )

I enjoyed meeting Betsy as a teenager after being an avid fan of her childhood. In Betsy in Spite of Herself, Betsy makes the mistake of trying to be someone different -- more sophisticated -- for a boy. Some things never change, even between 1908 and now. Hundreds of other details are very different from life now, which is one of the great charms of these books.

There's a nice brief biography of Maud Hart Lovelace at the back of this book too, with photos of places and people she wrote about in her books. ( )

A story set at the beginning of the 20th century but incredibly relevant to the issues faced by young women growing up today. A timeless story which I have loved since I first read it when I was ten years old. ( )

Re-reading to get "in the mood" for the Betsy-Tacy Convention! ( )

It occurred to me that when I originally read Maud Hart Lovelace's novels, I was aware that they were set in the past, but now Betsy and Tacy's high-school years of 1906 to 1910 are literally a century ago. Realizing all the changes in the world just since my own high-school years ended in 1982, and adding those on top of the preceding 80 years, turn-of-the-20th-century Deep Valley seems like another world entirely - and in many ways, it was. But coming back to the stories now, with the perspective of having lived a few more years, it also occurred to me that in many respects, they're both modern and timeless.

The quality of writing doesn't tend to stand out for me as much when I read youth fiction, unless it's poor quality - and Lovelace's books are not of poor quality. I'm better equipped to consider that now than I was when I originally read the Betsy-Tacy books, though, and I did notice the writing more this time - a few minor quirks and peculiarities jumped out at me at times, most arising from the fact that these books were written in the 1940s about the early 1900s. The stories are well-crafted and the characters are vivid. It's enjoyable seeing Betsy gain self-awareness and confidence over the course of her four years at Deep Valley High School, trying to learn from the setbacks and having lots of fun when things are going well. There's depth to these stories that escaped me the first several times I read these books, and I can appreciate that much more coming to them as an adult.

READ MORE: http://www.3rsblog.com/2009/12/book-talk-back-to-deep-valley-high.html ( )