Customer Reviews

The Quiet Little Woman: A Christmas Story

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This beautiful, gift-sized book is a wonderful collection of lost treasures, a perfect holiday gift for fans of Louisa May Alcott. Young girls should really enjoy these moving stories.

This book is Heart Warming and is the perfect gift on Christmas! Three enchanting stories to make you laugh, cry, smile and enjoy for years! This book was very cool!!!

I bought this for our 9-year-old and she loved it. It's a collection of several Christmas stories and is very old fashioned and sweet.

"The Quiet Little Woman - A Christmas Story" is a delightful collection of three Christmas tales written by Louisa May Alcott. This small 5 1/4 inch by 7 1/4 inch, 122 page book would make an excellent Christmas Stocking Stuffer for your favorite girl. Boys would also enjoy reading it. This book is a collection of three short Christmas stories written by Louisa May Alcott. Actually the three Christmas stories were written for a small magazine called "Little Things" founded by the five Lukens girls: Carrie, Maggie, Nellie, Emma and Helen. The Lukens girls became friends with Louisa and exchanged letters with her as they worked on their small magazine. At the height of Louisa May Alcott's busy career she found time to encourage the Lukens girls and contributed the three stories found in this little book to their magazine. What is amazing is that Louisa contributed these stories while she was very busy writing other projects and was in ill health suffering from mercury poisoning during the Civil War.

The first story in the book is my favorite and is entitled, "The Quiet Little Woman". This story is about a 13 year - old orphan living in an orphanage. Patty was a frail and bashful orphan drained of much of her hope and happiness. She worked very hard in the orphanage but never seemed to be adopted. One day a lady named Miss Murray met her at the orphanage and encouraged her. A little later Miss Murray's sister-in-law comes to the orphanage and adopts Patty. During her first year at Miss Murray's sister-in-law's house Patty is treated with kindness, fed well, was not given too much work, was clothed well, was allowed to go to church and was not scolded very often. And yet something major was missing in Patty's quest for real happiness. She was basically a devoted and faithful servant to all the family but no one ever showed her any love as they did to the other members of the family. No one praised her for her efforts. No one seemed to think she had any hope beyond her daily work. Christmas comes and Miss Murray (Aunt Jane) invites the whole family to her house for Christmas. The Murrays come but they don't bring Patty with them and Aunt Jane is extremely upset. The family tells Aunt Jane their true feelings about Patty asking the question, "You didn't expect us to bring our servant girl with us, did you?" At this Aunt Jane pulls out a number of letters that Patty sent her revealing how lonely and unloved Patty felt in the Murray household. You will want to read the story to find out how these letters changed the people's lives and Patty's too. You will shed a tear or two as you read this tender story.

The second story in the book is called, "Tilly's Christmas" and is a tender story showing the importance of the Golden Rule and loving your neighbor as yourself. Tillie and two other girls are on their way home from school for the Christmas vacation. Tillie's two friends are talking about all the presents they are getting but poor Tillie knows she won't have any because it takes all her mother has to provide a little warmth and food. The girl's fantasize about finding a wallet with a lot of money in it as they walked through the snow. Suddenly Tillie yelled and said she found the wallet. When the other girls looked they saw Tillie lifting a crippled cold and frightened robin from the snow. Tillie exclaimed that she received her Christmas present. The other girls just mocked her. When Tillie got home she and her mother treated the robin with love and tenderness. You will want to read this story to see how Tillie was rewarded for her kindness and love to the robin.

The final story is entitled, "Rosa's Tale" and is based on the legend that animals are given the ability to talk for one hour beginning at midnight on Christmas Eve, in memory of the animals who lingered near the manger when Jesus was born. After everyone in the house including the family cat gets a Christmas present, Belinda remembers one who had not received anything, the family horse, Rosa. Belinda rushes out to the barn with an apple, cake and Christmas wishes from the family. As the horse begins to rub her nose against Belinda, a miracle occurs. For one full hour the horse begins to tell Belinda all about the joys and sadness of her life. Your will laugh and cry as you read the horse's account of her life.

At the very end of the book there is a brief commentary on the three Christmas tales and also an interesting brief biography about Louisa May Alcott.

This book is a quick enjoyable read and teaches some really important morals. It will also fill the reader's life with more love and kindness at the Christmas season or anytime during the year.

This one book features 3 lovely Christmas stories, each penned by Louisa May Alcott.

Timid Patty is a small girl who has been adopted into a new family. Her story (entitled "The Quiet Little Woman") is the first one in this book.
Instead of considering Patty as a daughter, the new family treats her like a servant, always making her do the extra work around the house. Patty only has one small glimmer of love around her--and it's 20 miles away. Can the Christmas spirit bring love & joy closer to home?

You'll also cherish the second tale in this book "Tilly's Christmas", which tells a story about the most important gifts you can give.

The third story is "Rosa's Tale"... where a special Christmas surprise befalls a young girl named Belinda, and a lovely bay mare.

These 3 stories make a great read for anyone who enjoys the classics, and the book would be especially splendid to have on a cold Winter day.

I ran across this delightful little book in a local book store. I fell in love with it and wanted to share it with our grandchildren next Christmas so I turned to Amazon.com to find the copies I would need.
It contains three short stories involving children, animals and developing good attributes. It will be a great read-out-loud book or an easy read for a grandchild wanting some alone time.
It has an extra value because the first story was written by Alcott for five sisters who were starting their own literary publication. She sent the story as a gift to be used in their publication.
Any grandmother or young mother would enjoy this book as a new Christmas tradition for their family.

These three sweet stories remind me of American Girl stories. They reflect the innocent hopes and dreams of real children. If they are "good" children someone will surely come to save them. If they do a simple kindness it will be multiplied and come back to them. They will find a way to help their family or buy their mother a pretty present. They can suspend belief and accept that animals can talk for one hour after midnight on Christmas Day. These are the classic writings of an important American author that can be enjoyed as much by children and adults today as when they were written.

I bought this book for my 8 year old daughter, a devoted Louisa May Alcott fan. We did not realize we already had the "newly discovered" Christmas story in another volume of collected writings by Louisa published many decades ago, and also that the story in question (retitled, for some reason, by the current editor) is not one of Louisa's better efforts - a formulaic Cinderella tale. I'd advise other would-be purchasers not to ignore, as I did, the scathing BOOKLIST review to be found on this page.

This book was really not that great. I remember reading one of the stories somewhere else, and the rest were rather predictable. Tilly's Christmas especially I thought was a complete waste of time. Patty's Christmas was O.K., but Patty is just too perfect to be believable. Rosa's story was the one I had read before, and it must have been somewhere else.

I laughed, I cried, the feel-good book of the year