A review by piburnjones
Meet Felicity: An American Girl by Valerie Tripp
4.0
This week, I discovered the American Girls Podcast, so there's going to be some re-reading going on. I was very into American Girls as a kid, and it deserves at least partial credit for my love of history, and of social history in particular.
That said, I haven't revisited most of these books in a long time, possibly over 20 years, so my memory of them is hazy. Felicity was neither my most or least favorite, and I don't remember having any particularly strong feelings about this book.
THAT said, I was also horse crazy at the time I would have first read this book. I would not have batted an eye at the idea of Felicity sneaking around to spend time with a horse she coveted. For that matter, a LOT of books I read in which kids had adventures involved sneaking around the adults in their lives, so that would have seemed like Normal Story Progression, too.
As an adult, do Felicity's questionable choices outweigh the appeal of a "spunky" (per AG's usual description of her) main character who finds herself capable of patience and perseverance when she cares enough?
Um. It does still have a certain charm for me, and I mean - she's gotta start somewhere, right?
(This probably deserves 3 stars instead of 4, but it gets an automatic Old School AG boost, so there.)
Added later: Let's talk for half a sec about Felicity being kind of a tomboy.
The only reason it bothers me is that when these were written, she was the collection's only word on girlhood in the colonial period. And what we get is, horses are life, wow pants are amazing, embroidery and cooking suck.
Which for Felicity as an individual is fine - people in all time periods can like what they like - but it bothers me because the "women's work" that Felicity dislikes is also exactly the kind of work that historically has been minimized or underappreciated specifically because it was done by women.
The only answer, I think, is more characters so there can be more representation of different experiences. You'd hope that Elizabeth could help with that, but her book is a hot mess. Caroline, who loves both sailing and embroidery, provides a nice balance - it's a shame she was archived so quickly.
That said, I haven't revisited most of these books in a long time, possibly over 20 years, so my memory of them is hazy. Felicity was neither my most or least favorite, and I don't remember having any particularly strong feelings about this book.
THAT said, I was also horse crazy at the time I would have first read this book. I would not have batted an eye at the idea of Felicity sneaking around to spend time with a horse she coveted. For that matter, a LOT of books I read in which kids had adventures involved sneaking around the adults in their lives, so that would have seemed like Normal Story Progression, too.
As an adult, do Felicity's questionable choices outweigh the appeal of a "spunky" (per AG's usual description of her) main character who finds herself capable of patience and perseverance when she cares enough?
Um. It does still have a certain charm for me, and I mean - she's gotta start somewhere, right?
(This probably deserves 3 stars instead of 4, but it gets an automatic Old School AG boost, so there.)
Added later: Let's talk for half a sec about Felicity being kind of a tomboy.
The only reason it bothers me is that when these were written, she was the collection's only word on girlhood in the colonial period. And what we get is, horses are life, wow pants are amazing, embroidery and cooking suck.
Which for Felicity as an individual is fine - people in all time periods can like what they like - but it bothers me because the "women's work" that Felicity dislikes is also exactly the kind of work that historically has been minimized or underappreciated specifically because it was done by women.
The only answer, I think, is more characters so there can be more representation of different experiences. You'd hope that Elizabeth could help with that, but her book is a hot mess. Caroline, who loves both sailing and embroidery, provides a nice balance - it's a shame she was archived so quickly.