18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I thought I was the only one!!, September 5, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: The Betsy-Tacy Companion: A Biography of Maud Hart Lovelace (Hardcover)
"I thought I was the only one," is the comment most often uttered when meeting another Betsy-Tacy fan. We make up a tight little society that can't be explained to those who have not read the B-T series and this Companion is a most welcome addition to the body of works. It helped me find the pension in Munich where Betsy stayed and the Casa del'Oro in Venice where she fell in love with Marco, even though we were all pining for Joe Willard. I fed the pigeons in St. Mark's Square just as Betsy did and this delightful, informative book helped in my search. The author has done a painstaking research job and I, for one, know that it was a true labor of love. Sharla has taken her rightful place on my bookshelf right next to all of Maud's other works. I can think of no higher honor.
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24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Will the real Betsy and Tacy please stand up?, February 23, 2001
This review is from: The Betsy-Tacy Companion: A Biography of Maud Hart Lovelace (Hardcover)
This book represents an incredible effort that can only be described as a labor of love and a gift to all Betsy-Tacy fans. Sharla Scannell Whalen has done an impressive amount of research, interviewing people connected to the characters MHL wrote about, reading correspondence, examining old newspapers and county records, and recreating even the floor plans of old houses.
Probably no biography could ever answer all of the questions of devoted B-T fans like myself. Short of a personal interview with Maud Hart Lovelace, nothing could probably satisfy our curiousity. Whalen's book, in many ways, is less a biography than a corroboration of the Betsy-Tacy books. In itself, that makes it precious to fans of the series. I liked knowing something about the characters' counterparts. Presumably due to the vagaries of historical research, we learn more about some (e.g. Carney/Marney) than others (e.g. Marguerite/Emily). A few of the episodes most important for understanding Betsy's character and growth (and thus, according to Whalen's well-substantiated argument, Maud's), are not verified - for example, the interlude in Betsy's Wedding when Joe's aunt comes to live with them, prompting Betsy to interrogate her own possessiveness and to expand her ideas of family.
I loved this book, but unfortunately I think its appeal will be largely limited to Betsy-Tacy fans and people interested in children's books. I don't know that it would have been feasible for Whalen to do this, given her interest in documenting the similarities between Betsy's and Maud's lives, but I would have liked to see her set the overlapping stories of their lives in a broader social history context. How much richer the book would have been if we could have understood Betsy's and Maud's girlhoods against a larger picture of early 20th century adolescence. How unique was it, for example, that all of Betsy's friends attended high school, and many of them college, in an era when less than 20% of the school-aged population graduated from high school? This suggests important and interesting things about Betsy's/Maud's family and class background, the economy of Deep Valley/Mankato, and the social mores of her Crowd. This book is so readable that, if it had presented the B-T books not only as a window into Maud Hart Lovelace's life but into the lives of young women of a certain racial, social, and class background in the early 20th century, it could be a huge contribution to the field of women's history. In short, the book is long on description and documentation; I would have only liked to see more analysis.
But there is limited use in bemoaning what a book does not do. What this book does is pretty tremendous. It's truly a pleasure to read, and invaluable to anyone who ever wanted to know what happened to Betsy, Tacy, Carney, Tib, Cab, and Tony after the end of the series.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must-have for all Betsy-Tacy lovers, April 19, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: The Betsy-Tacy Companion: A Biography of Maud Hart Lovelace (Hardcover)
This book is heaven-sent! While probably not very interesting to anyone who has not read the Bets-Tacy books, this book is a jewel for all those who have. It tells absolutely everything! If photos are what you're after, they're in the Companion. If you want to learn all the details of Maud's real life, you'll also find those. I love the clips of Maud's letters to her friends, and I sorely lament the fact that she burned her diaries. Would she have burned them if she had known how much she'd be loved? This book has all the answers to all the questions you've ever asked. I was ecstatic when I found it, and I hope many more people will find it. It's defiantly not worth ignoring!
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