Book Review: Betsy-Tacy

Title: Betsy-Tacy

Author: Maud Hart Lovelace

Date: 1940

Publisher: Crowell (later Harper)

ISBN: 0-06-440096-4

Length: 130 pages

Illustrations: drawings by Lois Lenski

Quote: “‘Hello!’ called Betsy. ‘What’s your name?’ The other child made no answer. She jumped off the bench.”

In 1940, Maud Hart Lovelace published the first volume of a series about friendship that grows with the children involved, based on her more pleasant childhood memories. In this book, Betsy and Tacy are barely five years old. Too young for real friendship, Betsy has been prepared to think of “another child to play with” as a sort of new toy. Tacy, less carefully prepared, runs away. When she finally turns back and says “Tacy,” Betsy thinks that sounds like a nasty name Tacy’s calling her, not Tacy’s own name.

It’ll all be straightened out at Betsy’s birthday party, where the unusual happens: Betsy and Tacy really do begin to become friends. Later in the book they’ll add a third tot, Tib, and in each successive volume they’ll add a friend or two each year. Boys will be part of the crowd. Some of them will marry some of the boys. The books get longer and the children’s adventures more sophisticated, with some of them going to college and some marrying straight out of high school, but Lovelace never wrote about even the Teen Romances in ways that would confuse or upset a six-year-old reader. (Bore one? Possibly.)

Like many child readers I always seemed to prefer the volumes in this series where the kids were close to the age I was, and actually I preferred several other books to Betsy-Tacy. But eeeverybody liked Betsy-Tacy in the early 1970s; before the Judy Blume fad came the Betsy-Tacy reprints fad, and I will say I liked Betsy-Tacy better than Blume...those turn-of-the-century characters talked and acted more like the real people I knew. I still rate the Betsy-Tacy books—nice. Not great, not mind-stretching, but cheerful and wholesome and fun. So will you. So, probably, will the girls their age (or a bit younger) that you know.

If you’re in the mood for gentle fiction to share with the very young, you’ll like Betsy-Tacy, too.

To buy it here, send $5 per book plus $5 per package plus $1 per online payment to the appropriate address, as discussed in the "Greeting" post. At least four Betsy-Tacy books will fit into one package.