Little Women Next Door - Hardcover

Klass, Sheila Solomon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0823414728 ISBN 13: 9780823414727

Publisher: Holiday House, 2000

Synopsis

Recounts the efforts of Louisa May Alcott's family to establish a utopian community known as Fruitlands in Massachusetts in 1843, as seen through the eyes of the shy eleven-year-old girl next door.

About this title

About the Author

Sheila Solomon Klass a gifted professional writer is retired from a long career as a college English professor but goes on teaching She has three children. A child of the Depression, Sheila was raised in Brooklyn by Orthodox Jewish parents who considered education an unnecessary luxury for girls. Starting with her college education, she has fought for everything she’s ever accomplished. For Sheila, fanatically frugal, wasting time or money is a crime, and luxury is unthinkable.

Reviews

Grade 3-6-Eleven-year-old Susan Wilson, a lonely farm child who stutters, observes the Alcott family and the rest of the Consociates as they move into Fruitlands to begin their experiment in communal living. She and her Aunt Nell deliver food to the new neighbors and Louisa gains a friend who longs to learn and be with other children. Susan's father, a stern widower, has no time for his shy, quiet daughter, and no patience for her stammering. When Aunt Nell pleads the girl's case, he reluctantly allows her to be taught by Bronson Alcott and the strict Charles Lane. Klass skillfully weaves real people and real events into this story of the lively friendship between the two girls. Louisa, her sisters, and Will Lane swing from trees, learn mythology, and explore the world with exuberance. At the same time, the folly of the adults, their lack of farming skills, the tension between doing hard work and "thinking," and attitudes about "women's work" come through clearly. Dramatic events like saving the harvest from a storm or Abigail (Marmee) Alcott's exhaustion from continuous work are included in this engaging story about one of America's utopian experiments.
Kathryn Kosiorek, Cuyahoga County Public Library, Brooklyn, OH
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Klass's (Shooting Star: A Novel About Annie Oakley) storytelling runs thin in this earnest historical novel set during Louisa May Alcott's girlhood. Susan, a shy, stammering 11-year-old from a hardworking farm family, chronicles the Alcotts' brief stay at Fruitlands, the Transcendentalist community founded in part by Louisa's idealistic father, the educator Bronson Alcott, and visited by such luminaries as Thoreau. Susan and Louisa instantly become best friends, and Mr. Alcott, the Fruitlands schoolteacher, includes Susan in his classes. Louisa comes across as melodramatic and headstrong, an overdone version of Little Women's beloved Jo (e.g., Louisa instructs Susan to cure her stutter by pretending to be King Alfonso of Spain, stamping her foot and declaiming, "Begone, vile stammer"). The various other Alcotts either seem like shadows of Louisa May Alcott's fictional characters or fit stereotypes about intellectuals. The best moments come from Susan's musings about the adults, including her surprise at the skimpy menus (no animal products or animal by-products are allowed) and her bemusement at the great thinkers' heated discussions in the fields while they neglect their crops. While Klass sets the stage for Fruitlands' eventual demise, the story dwindles rather than climaxes. Ages 8-12. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Holiday House
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0823414728
• ISBN 13: 9780823414727
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32