The reader of Alice Turner Cook's Little Maid series - a collection of twenty-five children's novels featuring young girls growing up in colonial and revolutionary America - might be forgiven for thinking that the Revolution was a fairly minor conflict conducted by amiable rivals, rather than a bitter struggle that divided neighbor from neighbor - a war fought by guerrilla-rebels against an occupying force that did not feel itself obligated to observe any of the customary rules of war. The terrible prison ships of Wallabout Bay, where deliberately inhumane conditions caused more American deaths than all the battles of the war combined, make no appearance in A Little Maid of Old New York; nor does the internecine violence between Patriot and Tory neighbor have any place in A Little Maid of Narragansett Bay.

By the same token, readers of A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia might wonder how such notable figures as George Washington, the Marquis de la Fayette, and General Howe found the time to conduct a war, with so many visits from endearing young girls looking for lost dogs, or eager to deliver messages and help the cause. Valley Forge makes an appearance, but don't expect tales of emaciated soldiers munching on candles to survive the winter. There is certainly mention made of hardship, but it is quickly glossed over by a tale of bringing honey to the men...

Time and distance often do soften the harsh realities of history in our collective imagination, but I think the sanitized picture painted in Curtis' books (of which I have now read three) probably owes more to the conventions governing children's literature in the early part of the twentieth century, when these titles first saw publication. The tale of two young Philadelphia girls - Ruth Pennel and Winifred Merill - who take part in plays, go to May-Day parties, and get lost while driving their pony-cart in the country, A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia can tell us more about social expectations of childhood in 1919 than in 1778. Ruth's great deed in warning Lafayette of a British plan to capture him occurs almost at the end of the book, and feels like an afterthought to the "real" story.

Still, this was an entertaining book, that will appeal to those readers with a taste for sentimental children's novels, and an interest in vintage girls' series. Just don't expect real historical fiction... ( )