![]() ![]() But even then I remember thinking what an achievement that was on the part of Louisa May Alcott - to make Laurie so real that I ached with disappointment when Jo refused him, and he married Amy instead. If I had been Jo, obviously I wouldn't have turned her Teddy Laurence down. ![]() ![]() Like thousands of young bookworms, I passionately wanted to be Jo - dashing off romantic stories to save her family, bravely selling her hair, getting things wrong but always asking forgiveness. Specifically, I wanted their Christmas trunk packed with intriguing treats like jumbles and crullers and plumcake. The boarding school I wanted to go to was Allsover, the establishment Katy and Clover attended in What Katy Did at School. Most classics were at least 30 years old and were full of rationing and :good behavior" and woollen uniforms. Growing up in the pre- Harry Potter '70s and '80s, I found British children's favorites depressingly gray. There was something colorful about American children's books, something vivid and exotic, yet still almost touchable, like a distant, exciting cousin. Where better to go, when cooped up on a drizzly Sunday, than a land where the weather was at least dramatic? Sun seemed to shine on endless prairie meadows or, alternatively, on dazzling, deep snow, the kind that required sleds and snowshoes and mufflers. This youthful book-a-day reading habit was fed by two factors: my librarian mother's house full of books and the never-ending rain in the English Lakes. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |