The enchantment doesn’t even end with the main Betsy-Tacy series. These books are not merely historical fiction-or school stories-or family sagas-and they’re not just about an aspiring writer, or romance, or music, or broadening travel-they’re all of those things and more. For me, the fun and fascination has only increased over the years, and I notice something new about the books every time. And I still feel the stings of dismay and swirls of excitement of Betsy’s ups and downs in romance, the same way I did at age fifteen. For me, none of the magic has dissipated as I reread the series for the umpteenth time-I still derive the same joy from Betsy and Tacy’s paper doll games that I did at age six. My beloved series of books was over-forever! But the splendid thing about Maud’s novels is the re-readability. I still remember the twinge of satisfaction mingled with disappointment that I felt upon finishing Betsy’s Wedding, the last in the series. This is just one example of Maud’s stunning symmetry throughout the series that I grew to love in its entirety-after I’d grown used to the changes in Betsy’s life, just like Betsy herself. The ending of Betsy and Joe, for instance, circles back to the beginning of Heaven to Betsy, as Betsy’s two journeys to Butternut Center mirror each other in heartwarming precision. I still tend to think of the four high school books as one cohesive volume that tells a single story from beginning to end. Suffering from a nasty cold, I read all four high school books in a matter of days, spirinting through each one so quickly that they began to blur together in a cozy whirlwind of brass bowls, Rhetoricals, green stationery, essay contests, and Okto Deltas. Nevertheless, I picked up Heaven to Betsy again the spring I turned fifteen.
I went back to rereading the first familiar four. But it was quite a shock to find that so many changes had taken place-moving to High Street! No more yellow cottage! Tib in Milwaukee! Betsy struggling to adapt to a new neighborhood! It was not to be borne. When I was thirteen, I endeavored to read Heaven to Betsy-the first of the series that depicts Betsy’s experiences in high school.
As a child, I spent countless hours copying the Lois Lenski illustrations in painstaking pencil, acting out the scenes with my dolls, and writing endless fan fiction on an old computer. I grew up reading and rereading the first four books in this classic series of an imaginative girl growing up in the early 1900s, which were published in the 1940s and ‘50s. In fact, I can’t even remember a time when I didn’t count Betsy Ray and Tacy Kelly among my best book friends. I discovered the work of Maud Hart Lovelace at a very young age.
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