Maud Hart Lovelace

Anyone who has loved Maud Hart Lovelace’s ‘Betsy-Tacy’ series will no doubt be delighted to learn that these books were basely almost entirely on her very happy girlhood in a small Minnesota town at the turn of the last century.  Maud grew up in a loving and supportive family that encouraged her in her dreams of writing from the time that she was a child.  What began as bedtime stories for her own little girl of the adventures of her youth later became her best-known and most beloved work: the chronicle of Betsy Ray and her two best friends, Tacy and Tib, through childhood, young womanhood, and into the Great World beyond.  What makes these books so special is that Betsy is a real, living human girl, with beautiful ideals and honest struggles that girls of any time can identify with.  Reading them as a teenager, I saw in Betsy someone I longed to be friends with; reading them as a 30-year old married woman (yes, I admit it!) I found that we had been friends all along. 

Maud Hart Lovelace exemplifies the adage to ‘write what you know’.  And what she knew was that the love of family and friends can make a story of a life.

 For a complete listing on the books of Maud Hart Lovelace, please visit this site.

3 Comments

  1. Lanier,

    I love the Betsy-Tacy books, too! I just recommended them a few weeks ago to a friend who was searching for good books for her young daughter. Hmmm…. I might have to dig those out and read a few….

  2. These are some of my all time favorites! Growing up, when we lost a tooth, mom and dad would give us a “tooth book” instead of a visit from the tooth fairy. One time mom was catching up on teeth and bought me a Betsy-Tacy treasury containing the first four books and that was my introduction to Betsy-Tacy. Several years later I was browsing the library and found the rest of the books about Betsy. Since then, I’ve read at least one or two yearly.

    I’m going to reread Betsy and the Great World soon. We’re the same age now and I expect that the way I relate to Betsy might be a little bit different. I’m the same age or older than most of my childhood book heroines now. 🙂 It’s interesting to see how perspective changes as you grow up with these girls (figuratively), pull even, and then pass them up in age.

  3. I’m a little late to this post… I loved the Betsy-Tacy books as a girl! My best friend and I used to hand color the illustrations with our Crayola colored pencils 🙂 I live about 40 minutes away from Maud’s hometown – Mankato. For my friend’s birthday, we visited Mankato and walked around Maud’s neighborhood, looking for Betsy, Tacy and Tib’s houses. We also climbed the Big Hill. I’m ashamed to say that I’ve only read the first four books (several times). I think I just may need to read through the whole series soon!

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