Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart LovelaceHarperCollins, 2000 (originally Thomas Y. Crowell, 1940)

As a child, I didn’t much like rural “old-fashioned” stories: I read a few Laura Ingalls Wilder books and thought they were OK, but couldn’t get through Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms or Anne of Green Gables and had never even heard of Betsy-Tacy. I think I appreciate the sweetness (& quaintness) of this story, which is set in a small Minnesota town in the late 1800s, more now than I would have as a kid. It’s based on Maud Hart Lovelace’s own childhood, and the setting is evoked in such detail: dusty roads walked barefoot, maple and butternut trees, goldenrod & asters. I love the domestic details: how all the houses have a front parlor and a back parlor, how when Betsy and Tacy play dress-up and go to call on a neighbor, Betsy brings her mother’s calling-card case and the neighbor serves them cambric tea. Lois Lenski’s illustrations are charming: especially the one of Betsy and Tacy climbing a tree together, bundled in their winter clothes.