Books like The Betsy-Tacy Treasury

\ ********* Learning to Fly *********\ \ \ \ ******************************\ It's so very hard to ever pick one single favorite book from one's childhood, but I have such an easy time picking out tons of 'favorites.' The Betsy-Tacy books would definitely be up there on the favorites list. If there was ever a book character in child form who came close to who I was a child, it would have been Betsy, the star of these books. She was all over the place, and I loved her for it. Her crazy schemes and ideas often mirrored some of the games that I forced my own friends to play. She loved to write and explore, and gently 'boss' her friends into doing things. I can relate. And while I do have lots of memories of fun adventures and the like, I don't think I got to live quite as epically as Betsy did, so my former child self loved to indulge in these books and take my own imagination to another level of what childhood could be like. I'm glad that adulthood didn't dampen the enjoyment of these stories. Maybe it helps to be able to remember how I felt the first time that I read the books. Because, for whatever reason, I never get that same giddy excitement when I try to read a newer/more modern children's book. The closest I came might have been with the Percy Jackson series, and that's more likely because the author included humor that would also appeal to adults, so that's kind of cheating. The illustrations absolutely MADE the reading experience. Every single picture helped recreate Betsy, Tacy and Tib's world in my mind. I never would have imagined anything half as grand as what the illustrator gave the readers. Given that I was reading a historical book, I wouldn't have known how the clothing looked, or the rooms, etc. so it was an extra treat to have someone explain everything to me through pictures. And the girls were so darn cute. The magic of the Betsy-Tacy world was a large part of my favorite childhood reading experiences. I was happy to get to revisit this world and still find that the magic had never left.End note for offensive content warning : (Very) Brief mention of blackface. Little Tib reflects that she could perform a character in a play if she blacks her face. If I were to read this story to a child now, or let a child read the story, I would use the mention as a teaching experience to illustrate why this behavior is wrong and hurtful, and I would explain the history behind it. If this same mention was entertained as acceptable in a modern day book, I would refuse to finish it. Any modern author should know better. There's also a touch of outdated gender roles in the mix as well. When Tib expresses interest in growing up to be an architect, her father tells her that this is something her brother would do, and that she would become a housewife. Again, I'd use this as another teaching moment to show how times and people have changed. Perception was not always the same as it is now. And history can be used to learn how to do better than the people who came before us.