There's a new Goodwill store open near me, and I couldn't resist checking out their book selection! They had a lot of books in very good shape, and well. . . . I thought I ought to break it in!

So I'll be registering these books tonight. I read this one before I joined BookCrossing, so I don't have a review for it to put in here.

I was so happy to come across this copy, as I released my other copy for the "What's My Name" Challenge.

I can't believe I'm already up to 1934 in the Read the Newberys project!

Several one-off comments I wanted to record here:

• I just recently re-read Little Women (which I highly recommend adults do), and I really enjoyed this one more having done so. I read this in 3rd or 4th or 5th grade, but I'm sure it was only because I'd just read LW. My guess is that this is much more enjoyable if you read it following the novel. Much less plodding, and far more interesting.
  
• The secretary on the cover of my copy (pictured here) is at such an angle that every time I look at it, I think it's a laptop! LOL
  
• I'd totally forgotten about the Weekly Pillow Fights! My sister has 4 boys, so I wrote her this week, "I think you should consider instituting weekly pillow fights." Her response, "So...you want S3 to get more stitches and for his brothers to catch up with his record?" So I replied, "You know that's not how Beth died, right?"
  
• "Determination, however, can take the place of patience, if earnestly applied." Brilliant!

It is interesting to me that this book is in the Newbery lexicon, though. It's not really a "story" and it's not fiction. So other than the first Newbery book, The Story of Mankind, it's the only nonfiction I can think of (or at least so far). I can't help but think that it made it to the list because so many girls of this age love Little Women. Since LW was published long before there was a Newbery award, but it's clearly superior literature (heck, for my money, it's head and shoulders above every Newbery book we've read so far (1922-1934); perhaps this was a way of acknowledging its greatness.

There were several things in this book that most readers should have picked up on in reading Little Women. However, if you didn't get it there by osmosis, Meigs spells it out a little more clearly here. For example, in regards to Louisa teaching Sunday School in Boston, "It was one of the Alcott beliefs that no matter how poor a person is he or she always had something which could be given away."

I loved Louisa's choice about clothing in the discussion of An Old-Fashioned Girl: "'People are remarking on how familiar my best black silk has become' she says in substance. 'I shall either have to get another or go home to Concord. I am going home to Concord.'"

Last, and right on the money, Meigs totally gets it why girls of all ages love Little Women (and because of this, I like this book too): "Part of the magic of Louisa's charm for young people surely lies in the fact that she sees things through their eyes, that she depicts the ups and downs of the early adventures of life, all from the young point of view. The youthful readers all feel, entirely, that Louisa is on their side."