Authors and Books
for Children

Betsy-Tacy: Remembrance of Things Past

Remember stopping for banana splits on the way home from school? Singing around the piano in the parlor? Going to ice cream socials and having picnics on the hill? Making fudge when friends drop in? Rolling up the rug to dance?

No, probably not. Such things are the artifacts of an earlier, seemingly more innocent time--perhaps already quaint even when Maud Hart Lovelace first began writing about them in 1940, with the world enduring the agonizing uncertainties of a second World War.


But her themes of learning how to cope with the big and little heartaches of everyday life, of worrying about fitting in while still being true to oneself, of finding comfort in getting together with friends and being silly, of stumbling along on the road to adulthood--these are the nearly universal remembrances of childhood and adolescence that still reverberate with each new generation of readers.

What Maud Hart Lovelace did in the Betsy-Tacy series was what all good writers do: she found the universal by telling a very specific story, a fictionalized account of her own girlhood and adolescence.

Written between 1940 and 1955 as an outgrowth of the stories she told her daughter, the series begins with almost-five-year-old Betsy Ray forming a fast friendship with her shy new neighbor, red-haired Tacy Kelly, in Deep Valley, Minnesota, in 1897, and follows the little girls' escapades as they form a trio with Tib Muller--the girl from the chocolate-colored house.

The first four books cover roughly a year each, detailing the girls' simple adventures and troubles--starting school, picnicking, playing with paper dolls, selling colored sand, cutting their hair, welcoming a new baby to the family and saying goodbye to a baby who dies, feuding with older sisters. As the years pass, the girls begin to roam farther from home, marking such milestones as getting a library card at the Carnegie library, going window shopping downtown, attending a theatrical performance, riding in a newfangled automobile, and even planning to marry (the prospective bridegroom is the youthful king of Spain).

The next four books each deal with one year of high school, and the flightiness and melodrama of adolescence: from chasing boys and worrying about hairstyles, to coping with heartache and making life-altering choices. Though the times have changed, the feelings do not, and readers can still identify with Betsy's aching homesickness, her wretchedness over missed opportunities, her grand but often short-lived plans for self-improvement, her search for spiritual meaning--and, more importantly, with her simple joy in her life, her supportive family, and her nurturing friendships.

Two further books follow Betsy on a European sojourn after she decides to drop out of college, and then through the early days of her marriage to her one-and-only, ending with Tib's wedding, just as the American doughboys are preparing to leave for the war in Europe. In three additional titles--Winona's Pony Cart, Carney's House Party, and Emily of Deep Valley, all recently rereleased as "Deep Valley Stories" after long being out of print--Betsy is a minor character.

The structure of stories in the Betsy-Tacy series becomes increasingly complex--the first books are in some ways collections of nearly self-contained episodes--and the books' reading level increases as the characters age. Humorous illustrations by Lois Lenski add charm to the first four books; the other titles are all illustrated by Vera Neville, with images of lean, willowy young ladies who look as if they never ate a bite of that fudge they are so fond of making.

Simpler times, indeed. Maybe such times never really existed; maybe it's just that we look back with a nostalgic, romantic haze, our rose-colored glasses firmly in place. After all, when we shine a harsher light, we see it was a world in which women in the United States were still denied the right to vote; in which a brutal World War was simmering; in which the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire killed 146 sweatshop workers, most of them young women; in which Emma Goldman was preaching anarchy and free love and socialism, while Ida B. Wells was trying to put an end to lynching; in which Lillian D. Wald and Jane Addams were struggling to provide basic services to the poor. It was an age of reformers because there was so much that needed reforming.

But the world of Deep Valley is a world of softly glowing lights, as comforting and cozy as a Sunday night lunch in the Rays' welcoming dining room. As such, it represents a gentle, genteel past that should have been.