Community Chat

[gizmogal]

For those Little Women fans who also enjoy TV adaptations, good news. 

The book is  is coming to life as a 3 part Masterpiece presentation on PBS. It’s in production now, so there is no air date announced. Probably Spring 2018. 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/specialfeatures/little-women-comes-to-masterpiece/

Here’s some casting info. Looks like quality talent!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/specialfeatures/little-women-casting-announcement/

hope that that gets both readers and viewers excited. 

[Noel7]

In college, I took a class in children's lit, for teachers, I just took it because I love the subject.  When my girl was in elementary school, I volunteered to be the Scholastic Books mom.   The artwork in kid's books can be so amazing.

I also read a lot of comic books as a kid.  My mom gave me enough money to buy ten a week at the neighborhood drugstore.

[Oznell]

Gosh, this discussion has got me all interested in Louisa May Alcott's extraordinary life again.  Always wanted to read her book "Hospital Sketches" which is a thinly disguised account of her episode of dashing off to Washington to nurse the soldiers during the Civil War. 

She was traumatized by what she saw, and had to do, but like the true rock-ribbed New Englander that she was, she got on with it, and did it.  Army hospitals were horrible then, and filthy, and "gently reared" volunteer nurses were not prepared for the stark realities.

She contracted disease while working there, and was treated with mercury based calomel.  This basically ruined her health from the age of thirty on, and she suffered the rest of her life.

Another aspect of her life:  the highly idealistic Alcotts had made their house a station on the Underground Railroad.  They were very involved in high-minded causes of the time. Louisa's mother's family were the Mays, who were a prominent and distinguished family.

Louisa's father, Bronson Alcott, was a well-known philosopher of the time, but an eccentric who inflicted much hardship on his family by joining various communes of the time and insisting on weird deprivation diets, etc.  Nevertheless, he was close friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau, and other notables, and Louisa knew them well too.

She had a secret love during her sojourn in Europe, a young Polish man, "Laddie", I think short for "Ladislaus".  I believe although they were great friends, her love was unrequited. I always felt bad about that.

[Oznell]

gizmogal, great info! Thanks for the heads up!

[yellowBeetle]

---

@Oznell wrote:

I grew up with television, and it was indeed a powerful drug, much like electronic media is today.  I loved TV, and as a child and teen I roved all over pop culture, both the culture of my era and plunging way back.  I was obsessed with jazz, and vintage films, and with comedy albums, of all things.  I managed to get an album of Lenny Bruce, and found him hilarious.  Other ground-breaking comedians too, like Mort Sahl.  I loved the singers of a long-lost era, like Al Jolson and Bessie Smith.

But I think you can have a range of interests.  There will always be parents who recognize the classics, and try to pass them on to their children.  My mother would bring home the most wonderful, eclectic books-- from "Black Beauty", to the "Limberlost" series, to Dickens, to all kinds of poetry, and on and on.

I don't disparage other people's choices at all, but I'm so grateful for what my parents encouraged in me, and I've passed it on as best I can to the next, cyber-obsessed generation!

@Oznell

Very well said! I agree that we can have a range of interests! And we are much the richer for it, imo!

Now maybe for some, reading a novel about four sisters set in the 1860s is not appealing, and of course, they are welcome to their opinion. But to say that "Little Women" is not relevant to today is incorrect, imo. With that logic, much of the world's greatest literature would be passed over.

Actually in "Little Women" there are many themes, ideas, and concepts that are timeless and.as applicable and relevant to life today as to life for the March sisters in the middle of the 19th century. In most great novels, no matter the date they were written, the storylines and underlying themes have no expiration date. 

And in addition to the telling of a good story, a beautifully written novel such as "Little Women" is a truly enriching experience for the reader.

Everyone has different tastes and preferences. But I think to have an eclectic taste in literature is one of the greatest pleasures we can have!

[Oznell]

Very much agree with your eloquent points, yellowbeetle!

[Moonchilde]

---

@Oznell wrote:

Noel7, I adored the Cherry Ames books.  I liked the way there was usually a mystery tied in with her different nursing assignments.  And didn't you love the little Greenwich Village apartment that she and the other nurses shared after graduation, ha.

---

I read and enjoyed all the Cherry Ames and Nancy Drew books very much, but...not great literature ;-)

[Susan Louise]

---

@Oznell wrote:

On this day, September 30, 1868, the first volume of Louisa May Alcott's astonishingly successful "Little Women" was published.

(I'm putting this in the Community Chat section rather than Books, because in my opinion, "Little Women" is as much a historical and cultural phenomenon as a literary one.)

How many kids first learned about nineteenth century life, how the poor lived, how disease ravaged families in that period, how the Civil War affected the home front, and how girls were raised and educated then, by reading "Little Women"?

It took the world by storm.  Did every little girl want to be "Jo",  and wish that "Amy" had never set eyes on "Laurie"???

---

@Oznell I'm 57 and never heard of the book...didn't even see the movie on tv til a couple of yrs ago. I think I slept through most of it...LOL

[Moonchilde]

---

@Noel7 wrote:

In college, I took a class in children's lit, for teachers, I just took it because I love the subject.  When my girl was in elementary school, I volunteered to be the Scholastic Books mom.   The artwork in kid's books can be so amazing.

I also read a lot of comic books as a kid.  My mom gave me enough money to buy ten a week at the neighborhood drugstore.

---

I read tons of comics as a young child - mostly Superman & Co and Archie & Co as I recall.

Also, all the books for the horse-crazy from Walter Farley & Marguerite Henry, i.e. the Black Stallion and Misty books.

[Oznell]

Right, Moonchilde, but fun.  Maybe introduced some kids to the joy of reading.  I think esp. Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys had pretty good values--  the kids tackled lots of problems, were resourceful and exceptionally kind and civic-minded.

The Cherry Ames series, the Vickie Barr series and others were pretty well done, and appealed to my sense of adventure and desire for far-flung travel!