{"id":145,"date":"2007-07-07T21:22:06","date_gmt":"2007-07-08T01:22:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lettersandsodas.com\/books-test\/?p=145"},"modified":"2007-07-07T21:22:06","modified_gmt":"2007-07-08T01:22:06","slug":"betsy-tacy-by-maud-hart-lovelaceharpercollins-2000-originally-thomas-y-crowell-1940","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/betsy-tacy-by-maud-hart-lovelaceharpercollins-2000-originally-thomas-y-crowell-1940\/","title":{"rendered":"Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart LovelaceHarperCollins, 2000 (originally Thomas Y. Crowell, 1940)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As a child, I didn&#8217;t much like rural &#8220;old-fashioned&#8221; stories: I read a few Laura Ingalls Wilder books and thought they were OK, but couldn&#8217;t get through <em>Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms<\/em> or <em>Anne of Green Gables<\/em> and had never even heard of <em>Betsy-Tacy<\/em>. I think I appreciate the sweetness (&amp; 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&#8217;s based on Maud Hart Lovelace&#8217;s own childhood, and the setting is evoked in such detail: dusty roads walked barefoot, maple and butternut trees, goldenrod &amp; 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&#8217;s calling-card case and the neighbor serves them <a href=\"http:\/\/www.epicurious.com\/cooking\/how_to\/food_dictionary\/entry?id=1668\">cambric tea<\/a>. Lois Lenski&#8217;s illustrations are charming: especially the one of Betsy and Tacy climbing a tree together, bundled in their winter clothes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a child, I didn&#8217;t much like rural &#8220;old-fashioned&#8221; stories: I read a few Laura Ingalls Wilder books and thought they were OK, but couldn&#8217;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 (&amp; quaintness) of this story, which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-young-adultchildrens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}