Anyone who fondly remembers how the fresh air of the moors puts a blush in the cheeks of sallow young Mary in The Secret Garden will love Dorothy Canfield Fisher's Understood Betsy just as much. First published in 1916, this engaging classic tells the tale of a thin, pale 9-year-old orphan named Elizabeth Ann who is whisked away from her city home and relocated to a Vermont farm where her cousins, the "dreaded Putneys," live. The Putneys are not as bad as her doting, high-strung Aunt Frances warns, however, and Elizabeth, who had been nurtured by her aunt like an overwatered sapling--positively blooms under their breezy, earthy care.
Elizabeth Ann's first victories are small ones--taking the reins from Uncle Harry, doing her own hair, making her own breakfast--but children will revel in the awakening independence and growing self-confidence of a girl who learns to think for herself... and even laugh. Along the way, "citified" readers of all ages will get a glimpse into the lives of people who are truly connected to the world around them--making butter ("We always bought ours," says Elizabeth Ann), experiencing the "rapt wonder that people in the past were really people," and understanding the difference between failing in school and failing at life. Fisher is a wise, personable storyteller, steeped in the Montessori principles of learning for its own sake, the value of process, and the importance of "indirect support" in child rearing. She also captures the tempestuous emotional life of a child as few authors can, crafting a story that children will find deeply satisfying. And in the end, readers will have grown as fond of the happier, stronger "Betsy" as the gentle, unassuming Putneys have.
Loving care was dolloped on this 1999 reissue of an old favorite--with sweet new pencil illustrations by Kimberly Bulcken Root, and an introduction and afterword by Eden Ross Lipson that offer a historical context for the book and its author. (Ages 8 to 12) --Karin Snelson
Understood Betsy ANNOTATION
A small and timid girl discovers her own abilities and the world around her when she goes to live with relatives on a farm in Vermont.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Thanks to loving but over-protective guardian aunts, Elizabeth Ann is a fearful, self-absorbed, nine-year-old hypochondriac. Most terrible on her list of fears is "those horrid Putney, Vermont cousins" her aunts shudder at mentioning. When they are suddenly no longer able to care for her, she is, incredibly, sent to live with those very cousins. Upon arrival in Vermont, she is immediately invited by Uncle Henry to drive the carriage. Steering the fearsome horses begins her adventures in New England - and independence. Rules at the comfortable farmhouse are relaxed. Aunt Abigail serves baked beans in the kitchen, Elizabeth Ann - now Betsy - must wash her own dishes, and is expected to walk to school alone. Gradually Betsy comes to enjoy the "queer Putney ways" of her country cousins, not realizing that they are teaching her to think for herself. When the aunts write inviting her to return, Betsy must make a difficult choice.
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