Betsy-Tacy has been reissued in a spiffy new edition. Nice big trim size, appealing to young readers. The beloved Lois Lenski art inside. Quite a beautiful painting on the cover—you may recognize it from the previous edition, which featured the same art peeking through a cutout on the front cover. And a nice bonus: in back is a big chunk of interesting biographical material about Maud Hart Lovelace. My young B-T fans (and their mother) were delighted.
The bad:
This doesn’t necessarily mean the entire series is being reissued. As you may recall from posts last year, many people have lamented the gradual going-out-of-print of this series, which is one of the best children’s serieseses of all time (she says authoritatively). If you’re a fan, now’s the time to show you want books like this in print…I for one will be stockpiling enough copies for my brood.
(P.S. Pardon the lack of wrapped text around the picture above. WordPress is being persnickety with me. Can’t remember the HTML do wrap it manually. Tried float=”left”. Didn’t work, obviously. Too lazy to google it. Too lazy even to capitalize google. Almost too lazy to close my parenthesis here, but…will…muster…the…strength.)
I can’t believe I have never read Betsy Tacy! I hate knowing that there is a good book or series that I missed out on… I believe I’ll have to check that out.
I love Betsy-Tacy, but I love Carolyn Haywood’s Betsy books even more. I just told a funny story on my blog about the hedgehog in your Martha books and a porcupine in our back yard.
[...] posted on one of my favorites, Heaven to Betsy, at The Expanding Life. Sounds like Susan and I share a common grief over the out-of-print status of the high-school Betsy-Tacy [...]
I love this series. I’ve shared the first three with my 4 year old daughter and she loves for us to play Besty and Tacy going on a trip (like they pretend to do while sitting in the carriage in Besty’s barn). I’m so sad to hear that many of them are out of print! I didn’t discover these stories until college but now I am so glad that I asked for the whole series for Christmas that year and my generous parents got all the books for me.
I have spent my adult life trying to overcome my book hoarding habit, and here you are working me up again, now, in addition to not passing on any of my childhood books I actually have to look for replacements for any that might have disintegrated so that they will be available for my children?! Puts me in mind of Ashurbanipal, the worlds first librarian (668 BCE) — hooray for homeschooling, before which I totally thought Alexandria was the first library.
(A roundup post with links to my notes and reviews)
Hey, what happened to all those booklists you used to have in your sidebars at the old blog?
They're still accessible at melissawiley.typepad.com, where this blog lived from January 2005-March 2008. You can also find all my Lilting House posts there, or try the search bar here. All my previous Bonny Glen and Lilting House posts have been imported to this site.
Every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious—and childhood even more so. I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.
(Excerpt from this post about Real Life, quoted here because I don't want anyone to be under the impression that things are always perfect around here! Heaven knows we are anything but. Perfect, frictionless, orderly? Nope. Happy? Most of the time!)
Be like the bird
Who, pausing in flight
On limb too slight,
Feels it give way beneath her,
Yet sings,
Knowing she has wings.
—Victor Hugo
Twitter Updates
“Exploration,” says John Stilgoe, author of Outside Lies Magic, “is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun.”
Yes: it is so, so much fun, and that is why I write these posts all chattery with excitement over this or that connection the kids made today. (Or that I made myself!) I know I get carried away, but that’s the point, isn’t it, that way leading on to way has carried me away?
And yet—and yet—I think we are at once ‘carried away’ and made more fully present in the now, more rooted, by these relationships between ideas about things past and future. The joy of connection makes me want to celebrate this moment, this brief encounter with wild-haired child and broad-trunked tree, bus going by, sign on church wall, Scottish warlord creeping over the tower wall and startling the English soldier’s wife who has just put her babe in arms to sleep by crooning that the Black Douglas won’t get him. Child, laughing, shouting “Dinna ye be sae sure aboot that!” across the courtyard outside the library. How can I not celebrate this freedom?
Betsy-Tacy has been reissued in a spiffy new edition. Nice big trim size, appealing to young readers. The beloved Lois Lenski art inside. Quite a beautiful painting on the cover—you may recognize it from the previous edition, which featured the same art peeking through a cutout on the front cover. And a nice bonus: in back is a big chunk of interesting biographical material about Maud Hart Lovelace. My young B-T fans (and their mother) were delighted.
I can’t believe I have never read Betsy Tacy! I hate knowing that there is a good book or series that I missed out on… I believe I’ll have to check that out.
LOL Glad you found the strength to go on!
Posted on May 28th, 2008 at 10:51 pmGood to know! I’m slowly collecting a few of the books through Paperbackswap but they are hard to find!
Posted on May 29th, 2008 at 3:16 amMan, I need to let my mom know so she can stockpile them for her grandchildren. I loved those books when I was a kid.
Posted on May 29th, 2008 at 3:45 amWe’ve been furiously collecting and even got the audio cd’s of the first book, it’s delicious!!
Posted on May 29th, 2008 at 6:11 amI love Betsy-Tacy, but I love Carolyn Haywood’s Betsy books even more. I just told a funny story on my blog about the hedgehog in your Martha books and a porcupine in our back yard.
Posted on May 31st, 2008 at 12:01 pmCarnival Time! | Melissa Wiley says:
[...] posted on one of my favorites, Heaven to Betsy, at The Expanding Life. Sounds like Susan and I share a common grief over the out-of-print status of the high-school Betsy-Tacy [...]
Posted on May 31st, 2008 at 1:42 pmI love this series. I’ve shared the first three with my 4 year old daughter and she loves for us to play Besty and Tacy going on a trip (like they pretend to do while sitting in the carriage in Besty’s barn). I’m so sad to hear that many of them are out of print! I didn’t discover these stories until college but now I am so glad that I asked for the whole series for Christmas that year and my generous parents got all the books for me.
Posted on May 31st, 2008 at 5:40 pmI have spent my adult life trying to overcome my book hoarding habit, and here you are working me up again, now, in addition to not passing on any of my childhood books I actually have to look for replacements for any that might have disintegrated so that they will be available for my children?! Puts me in mind of Ashurbanipal, the worlds first librarian (668 BCE) — hooray for homeschooling, before which I totally thought Alexandria was the first library.
Posted on June 5th, 2008 at 4:44 am