The Betsy-Tacy reissues are out! And just in the nick of time: my old copies are about to fall apart from an abundance of love.
Over the next few weeks, a number of bloggers will be sharing their enthusiasm for the books of Maud Hart Lovelace in the Betsy-Tacy Book Blog Tour. Of course, my own enthusiasm has been spilling all over this blog for the past many weeks. I am tickled pink to see these books back in print. (I’ve been sitting here searching for the right adjective for “books” in that sentence: wonderful? delightful? important? fabulous? life-affecting? Everything sounds hackneyed or overused, but they’re all true.)
This week I reread my favorite of the “young” Betsy books.
(The series divides neatly into the young books—the first four titles, during which Betsy grows from age 5 to 12—and the older books, one for each year of high school, plus Betsy’s year abroad, and the year of her wedding. There are also a few related titles: Winona’s Pony Cart, another “young” book, and two older ones: Carney’s House Party and Emily of Deep Valley, which you know I adore.)
Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill, the third book in the series, is one of those books that stays with you a long time. Snippets and images from Big Hill pop into my head all the time, especially when I’m witnessing quarrels between my daughters—a great deal of the plot centers on a disagreement between Betsy-and-Tacy and their older sisters, Julia and Katie. Like so many of the childhood events that weigh heavily on small shoulders, this quarrel over who is to be the Queen of Summer—which begins lightheartedly but turns tense and ugly—is deeply distressing to ten-year-old Betsy, who is torn between angry frustration and a desire to put things right with her beloved and much-admired sister. Lovelace’s sensitivity and good humor are in full force as Betsy and the other girls struggle to find their way out of the mess.
But in the book’s opening, there is no hint of a storm on the horizon.
Oh, Betsy’s ten tomorrow
and then all of us are ten!
We will all be ten tomorrow,
We will all be ladies then.
Who can forget the fun of that opening scene! Tib turned ten in January, and Tacy was ten in March, but with Betsy lagging behind—she’s an April birthday—the others are too polite to make a big deal about having reached such an advanced age. Now it’s the day before the long-awaited April date, and the three friends are ready to put childish things like parades behind them and commence being ladies, prinking their little fingers over tea and expanding their vocabulary to include mature words such as “prefer” and “indeed.” And with the sixteen-year-old King of Spain making a stir in all the papers, it is inevitable that such sophisticated persons as Betsy and Tacy will decide it’s high time they fell in love. It’s a bewildered Tib, they decide, who ought to marry him—after all, her new accordion-pleated dress is fit for a queen. Alas, she is not of “the blood royal,” and the girls feel compelled to pen a letter explaining to the young king why the marriage cannot take place. That’s what sophisticated ladies would do, you know.
In the first two books, we got to know Betsy, Tacy, and Tib in the cozy setting of their small-town neighborhood: their kitchens, their yards, their school, and the gentle, grassy slope of the Big Hill that rises beyond Betsy and Tacy’s houses. Now that they are such grown-up young ladies, the trio of ten-year-olds ventures beyond the crest of the hill all alone for the first time. The adventure that meets the girls on the other side is wholly unexpected and unexpectedly thought-provoking.
Here in Betsy’s beloved Deep Valley, Minnesota, we expect to meet folks like the kindhearted Scandinavian neighbor, Mrs. Ekstrom, Tacy’s bustling Catholic family, and Tib’s proud German mother. What we don’t, perhaps, expect to find in this turn-of-the-20th-century small Midwestern town is a thriving community of Lebanese immigrants—refugees from religious persecution, recently arrived in America and proudly working toward American citizenship.
The community called “Little Syria” in the Betsy-Tacy books is, like most of the events in this series, based on real people. Just over the hill from Mankato, Minnesota (Deep Valley in the books) was a village called Tinkcomville, named after its founder, James Tinkcom. Tinkcom bought the land in 1873, expecting to sell it in lots for development, but it turned out to be too far from town to appeal to most Mankato folks. Finally, in the 1890s, he sold the lots to a group of immigrants from Lebanon. In Big Hill, Tinkcom—that is, “Mr. Meecham”—is described as a reclusive and curmudgeonly sort, living in a big brick house near Little Syria and not mingling overmuch with the Deep Valley folks. However, there’s a place in his heart for anyone who befriends the good people of Little Syria—which is exactly what Betsy, Tacy, and Tib find themselves doing when their last pre-double-digits parade takes them over the crest of the Big Hill to a slope overlooking the village.
The girls’ shock at having walked so far alone dissipates quickly when they remember how grown-up they are now, on this eve of Betsy’s big day.
“Well, I’m surprised!” said Tacy. “I never knew we could walk to Little Syria.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Betsy.
“You’re not?” asked Tacy.
“No,” said Betsy. “Remember I’ll be ten tomorrow. It’s the sort of thing we’ll be doing often from now on.”
“Going to other towns?” asked Tacy.
“Yes. Little Syria, Minneapolis. Chicago. New York.”
“I’d love to go to New York and see the Flatiron Building,” said Tacy.
Tib looked puzzled.
“But Little Syria,” she said, “is just over our own hill. We didn’t know that it was. But it is.”
“Well, we certainly didn’t find it out until today,” said Betsy.
“We certainly never walked to it before,” said Tacy.
“That’s right,” admitted Tib.
This sunny confidence is what makes Betsy irresistible to the Deep Valley small fry—and to generations of readers. (In the high-school books, her confidence will waver a little, and she is sometimes prey to a kind of listless depression—but this, too, is part of Betsy’s appeal. She’s a real girl, imperfect, wrestling with moods and passions and uncertainties, trying to figure out who she is and who she wants to be, and sometimes puzzled by how vehemently her family and friends declare she’s just right just the way she is, imperfections and all.)
One day Betsy will roam the Great World, but right now, poised atop the Big Hill and at the brink of ten, the path before her is full of adventures she—yes, even she of the big imagination—could never have imagined. First there is the encounter with Naifi, one of the Syrians, “a little girl so strange she seemed to have stepped out of one of Betsy’s stories.” Strange, that is, to the eyes of a Deep Valley girl who has never seen a child with earrings and a “long skirt, like a woman’s,” speaking a language Betsy, Tacy, and Tib cannot understand. The language of picnics is universal, however, and over their different kinds of bread, a friendship is born. Before long the Deep Valley trio will find themselves springing into battle to defend their new chum, venturing into houses where the grandpas smoke hubble-bubble pipes and the grandmas pound lamb with mallets, and, eventually, learning from these new neighbors a deepened pride and appreciation for what it means to be an American.
And then, of course, there’s that sisterly quarrel still to patch up. Who will be the Queen of Summer? And whatever became of the letter Betsy, Tacy, and Tib sent to the King of Spain?
Would you believe I was supposed to write about two books in this post? I could easily go on yapping for several more pages about Big Hill. Could spend about a week mining the riches of Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown. But this post is already a ridiculous 1400 words long. So let me ask you: Which one do you like best—Big Hill or Go Downtown? (I mean: the Christmas shopping, the play, the delicious Mr. and Mrs. Poppy, the horseless carriage! The three telephone calls! Oh!)
Several Betsy-Tacy fan club chapters around the country are hosting special events to celebrate the reissue of the books. If you’re in the vicinity of any of these—I’m jealous!
9/30 Aliso Viejo, CA, at the Aliso Viejo Library
10/3 Mankato, MN, at the Betsy Tacy Houses
10/3 Mesquite, TX, at Borders
10/23 Bainbridge Island, WA, at the Library (This date is tentative.)
11/7 Highland Village, TX, at Barnes and Noble
11/8 St. Paul, MN, at the Red Balloon Bookshop
4/17/10 Dallas, TX, at the Dallas Heritage Museum
Related posts:
Heaven to Betsy! High-school-and-beyond books being reissued! (Sept 2009)
Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill
The Betsy-Tacy Songbook
Interview with Mitali Perkins, Jennifer Hart, and me about Maud’s books
Betsy-Tacy booksigning at ALA Midwinter
Photos of my visit to the real Deep Valley, as chronicled by Margaret in Minnesota
Why I love Carney
Why I love Emily
A Reader’s Guide to Betsy-Tacy
Y’all know I’d do just about anything to introduce new readers to the most wonderful wonderful, out of all hooping Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace.
And I think I’ve mentioned how excited I am that the six high-school-and-beyond Betsy books are coming back into print in September.
(Remember how I wept when they began going out of print?)
Well, it’s almost September! And I am giddy with glee. Here they come!
I’ll be participating in the Betsy-Tacy book blog tour, an event that promises to be enormous amounts of fun. All through September, bloggers will be writing about particular Betsy books—my girls and I have been asked to talk about books 3 and 4, and Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill and Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, which will be a pleasure. Betsy’s encounter with the folks in Little Syria has always been a favorite episode of mine. Bonny Glen’s tour date is September 23, always a festive day around here. (Bruce Springsteen’s birthday, of course!)
Also, today is the last day to sign up for Betsy-Tacy Convert Week. If you’re a B-T devotee, and you know someone who isn’t—yet—hop over to Book Club Girl’s blog and find out how you can get a copy of the about-to-be-released reissue of Heaven to Betsy/Betsy in Spite of Herself (two books in one) to give to your lucky convert. Laurie of Seaglass Hearts, I’ve got my eye on you!
This is another easy one, a kind of warm-up for the overloaded shelves to come. As I mentioned yesterday, I am short, so I tend not to crowd too much onto the higher shelves. So here again, one of the living-room bookcases, second shelf from the top.
First we have a stack of books lying flat on their sides. Working from the bottom up:
Our nice big family Bible, a beautiful wedding gift from one of Scott’s cousins.
The Mary Frances Housekeeper in hardcover. Why is that way up there where no child can possibly see it, much less use it to learn to keep house? Must remedy this.
Uh-oh, an overdue sign language instructional DVD from the Deaf Missions Video Library. Must get that packaged up for tomorrow’s post-office run.
Next to this stack, filling the remaining two thirds of the shelf:
A bunch of Math-U-See DVDs.
Our Maud Hart Lovelace collection, or most of it anyway. When the Betsy-Tacy books began to go out of print, sob, I rounded up our copies and shelved them here, up high, on purpose, to ensure that they will not be lost or scattered. This explains why the children’s bathroom stepstool is very often on the floor in front of this bookcase. These are some of our most beloved books, and it seems someone around here is nearly always in the middle of one of them. What’s on the shelf right now:
Betsy-Tacy
Betsy-Tacy and Tib
Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown
Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill
Winona’s Pony Cart
Heaven to Betsy
Betsy in Spite of Herself
Betsy and Joe
Betsy and the Great World
Betsy’s Wedding
Emily of Deep Valley (my favorite; I posted about it here)
Carney’s House Party
Winona’s Pony Cart (yes, a second copy, this one in hardcover—my editor at Harper knew what a fangirl I am and sent me some extra copies she had lying around)
(So it looks like Betsy Was a Junior is in circulation somewhere.)
The first four are the “young Betsy” books—she starts out five years old and is, I think, about ten in the fourth book. (Isn’t Big Hill the one where they sing “O Betsy’s ten tomorrow and then all of us are ten! We will all be ten tomorrow; we will all be ladies then…” to the tune of The Battle Hymn of the Republic?) The Winona book belongs in that time frame; the girls are around eight years old, I think; but it’s a stand-alone story and I like it better after Big Hill.)
Then come the four high-school books, which are a deep delight, and then Great World and Betsy’s Wedding. The books about Carney and Emily come before Betsy’s wedding in the Deep Valley chronology, but they were written later and once again I think it’s best not to break up the flow of Betsy’s own narrative. Carney is a fun treat afterward (especially the brief glimpse of her college life), because you get to go back in time a few years and see a summer of the gang’s life that wasn’t portrayed in detail in Betsy’s books, and then, well, there’s Emily of Deep Valley to put a soul-satisfying coda on the whole series.
Back to the shelf. Next to the Lovelace treasures there are some DVDs. Chris Rock, Monty Python collection, two Bruce Springsteen concerts (detect a trend?), The Office, Bob Newhart, Schoolhouse Rock. So that’s where Schoolhouse Rock is. I was looking for it.
That’s it for shelf #2. And now I’m in the mood to go read some Betsy-Tacy.
UPDATED 2012: Thanks to the tireless efforts of HarperPerennial’s Jennifer Hart and the Betsy-Tacy Society, all of Maud Hart Lovelace’s Deep Valley books are now back in print. They’ve been reissued in beautiful editions with vintage illustrations, photographs, and introductions by authors who cherish the Betsy-Tacy books, including Judy Blume, Anna Quindlen, Meg Cabot, Mitali Perkins, Laura Lippman, and yours truly. 🙂 I’ve written about the entire series (with a chronological list) here.
The post below was written in early 2007, when many of Maud’s books were going out of print.
It’s almost hard for me to believe, now, that I grew up without Betsy Ray and her Deep Valley friends. I never heard of the Betsy-Tacy books until 1994, when I was a young staffer at HarperChildren’s, and the galleys for the reissues—the very editions that are now going out of print—began to float across my desk. You never saw a happier little coffee-fetcher than the girl I was, newly married and soon to be expecting baby Jane, sitting in my cubicle devouring those galleys and getting paid for it. Not paid a whole lot, mind you, but still.
Where had Betsy Ray been all my life?
Clearly she was a kindred spirit of the likes of my beloved Anne and Laura. I loved her instantly and passionately, right down to her gap-toothed smile. My own dear mama has the same smile, and I could picture Betsy’s grin exactly. (I would have it too, but for the junior-high braces.)
I had taken that job because I wanted to write, and I hoped working in a publishing house would open some doors for me. (Happily, it did.) In the evenings I would go home to the bitsy three-room Queens apartment in which Scott and I began our married life, and the whole scene was so very Betsy-and-Joe I could hardly contain myself. Betsy’s bird print above her writing desk (Uncle Keith’s trunk) reminded me of the picture I’d hung on the wall beside our computer: a sepia-toned print of a stone doorway between a courtyard and a garden, taken at a monastery we’d passed through briefly on our honeymoon. That doorway spoke to me of all the possibilities that lay on the other side. Step through, it beckoned, and see what surprises await you down these paths.
Betsy would have understood just how I felt.
Even little tiny Betsy, the five-year-old or the ten-year-old: she knew all about the fun of discovering what lay over the Big Hill or alongside the downtown streets. Her cheery disposition, her impish sense of humor, her fierce loyalty, her quarrelsome streak—she was a real and whole person, and when I discovered I was expecting a baby, I couldn’t wait, couldn’t WAIT, to share Betsy with her. Oh, but what if she were a he? Well, then, his sister. Surely, surely, there were girls in my future, my own little Betsy and a Tacy and an Anne and a Jane-of-Lantern-Hill. Right? Right?
When the late-1990s reissues came out, I got to take copies home to lay in wait for the passel of children I hoped to have. And here they are, a passel indeed, and as diehard a bunch of Betsy-Tacy fans you’ll never see—except perhaps in the Edmisten house. And, um, the Cottage. And at Dumb Ox Academy. And okay, fine, in hundreds of other homes around the world.
But hundreds of homes is not enough, not enough to generate new print runs in a world of bottom-lines. And so we’re in danger of having to say bye-bye Betsy. Will the day come when my daughters fight over who gets to have mom’s collection?
There’s one book I won’t let them fight over.
I bought a bunch of copies just in case it, too, disappears, as will likely be the case one of these days. Maud Hart Lovelace’s most beautiful novel, Emily of Deep Valley, takes place in the same Minnesota village as the Betsy-Tacy books, and indeed Betsy makes a cameo appearance. Emily wasn’t part of the original relaunch plan, and when I left my job at HarperCollins to stay home with the due-any-minute Baby Who Would Be Jane, I did so with a photocopy of Harper’s library copy of Emily of Deep Valley in my backpack—a gift from one of the editors on the next floor.
Two years later the same editor sent me, triumphantly, an actual book. She’d been successful in lobbying for the reissue of Emily of Deep Valley, and I could kiss her for it. If you haven’t read this book, oh what a treat you are in for. Emily is the kind of character we don’t often see in these days of “you have to do what’s right for you.” What seems “right” for Emily, devoted scholar, is a college education like the rest of her high-school chums. But she lives with a very elderly grandfather, and somehow, somehow, she can’t bring herself to leave him alone. That, her conscience whispers, wouldn’t be right.
Sometimes, you see, “right for you” isn’t the same as just plain Right.
Doing the real right thing, Emily finds, is often the hardest thing. She also finds out that the Right Thing can be like a doorway, and when you step through it, you find beauty on the other side, beauty in places you never knew existed.
That’s why I have a stack of Emily of Deep Valley tucked away for my children. She mustn’t disappear, this strong and gentle young woman who understands that love means sacrifice and cheerfulness, and the kind of love that cheerfully sacrifices blesses the giver a hundredfold. I can’t think of a finer role model for my young brood—not even Betsy or Anne or Laura.
Related posts:
Heaven to Betsy! High-school-and-beyond books being reissued! (Sept 2009)
Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill
Betsy-Tacy booksigning at ALA Midwinter
Betsy-Tacy e-books!
The Betsy-Tacy Songbook
Interview with Mitali Perkins, Jennifer Hart, and me about Maud’s books
Photos of my visit to the real Deep Valley, as chronicled by Margaret in Minnesota
Why I love Carney
A Reader’s Guide to Betsy-Tacy
