Dear readers, One of the great pleasures of staying with my parents is revisiting all the books I loved as a child. No, “pleasure” is the wrong word: too simple and neat. Like most things, it’s complicated. When I found these two old favorites in a Safeway box marked “Sadie’s Books,” between a cardboard crate filled with baseball gloves and another jammed with Christmas ornaments, my feelings were mixed. When I looked up a few hours and 30 years later, they were still more mixed. —Sadie “Daddy Long-Legs,” by Jean WebsterFiction, 1912
I first read Webster’s 1912 fairy tale when I was 10, although it was not written explicitly as a children’s book. In fact, it was read to me; we were on vacation, but I’d come down with a bad cold and my mother found this volume — a childhood favorite of her own — in the inn’s small library of left-behind books. While the rest of the family did outdoor things, my mother read aloud to me the story of the plucky orphan Jerusha Abbott, who is rescued from her dreary life at the John Grier Home by the benevolence of a faceless benefactor. The ensuing book is composed of a series of cheeky letters by the newly christened “Judy” to “Dear Daddy Long-Legs” from the Vassar-esque paradise of her new life. The ending is happy; the book was a smash. I loved it too. I rejoiced in our heroine’s scholastic accomplishments, delighted in her personal triumphs, growing social conscience and beautifully described outfits, and longed for her to find love. The book is, in some very real senses, progressive. Webster (real name, Alice Jane Chandler Webster) came from a long line of feminist activists and became involved in penal reform and settlement work while at Vassar. Even the most lighthearted of her girls’ books, like the earlier “Patty” series, take education seriously and present a comprehensive view of the possibilities for a professional woman. And, after all, the real Webster supported herself as a writer, was well traveled and politically engaged, had a vibrant circle. But be forewarned: Some things in the novel have not aged well. Despite her family’s convictions, Webster’s books were not free of casual racism (and “Dear Enemy,” the sequel to “Daddy Long-Legs,” was pretty squishy on eugenics). Nevertheless, picking it up again at my parents’ house, I expected to feel the original magic. And for a few pages, I did. Then the tone began to grate. There was Judy’s unrelieved cutesiness and frivolity, for one thing — a lack of moral seriousness that didn’t jibe with the facts of her early life. And this rather babyish quality, annoying in any narrator, becomes actively disturbing when one considers the manipulative behavior of the much older “love interest,” who actively works to keep Judy away from young men her own age. By the final pages, I was horrified. I marched downstairs, book held between my fingertips, and confronted my mother. “Have you read ‘Daddy Long-Legs’ lately?” I demanded. “What, the one about the groomer?” she responded. I guess she had. Read it as a portrait of a moment; read it, if you like, as an act of wish fulfillment for an author whose own life story was far from easy. Ironically or otherwise, this advocate for women’s issues died, as was common at the time, from complications in childbirth. Read if you like: Maud Hart Lovelace’s later Betsy-Tacy books and their spinoffs (especially “Carney’s House Party”); “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,” by Kate Douglas Wiggin; “Emily of New Moon,” by L.M. Montgomery. “The Hundred Dresses,” by Eleanor EstesFiction, 1944
Wanda Petronski has no friends, lives in a poor part of town and wears the same dress to school every day. Popular Peggy and her best friend, Maddie, are the ringleaders in taunting her, laughing at Wanda’s claim that she has “a hundred dresses.” It begins to bother Maddie, who is poor herself and knows instinctively that she could otherwise be the butt of the joke. When the teacher holds a drawing contest, the students are amazed to find that Wanda has won — by submitting 100 beautifully rendered dresses. But at the same time, they learn that her father, tired of anti-Polish discrimination, has moved his family to the city. In my memory, that’s the end of Estes’s classic novel: Wanda’s triumph. But in fact, the final third of the book deals with Maddie’s guilt. She decides she’ll never sit by and allow someone to be bullied. She and Peggy make a halfhearted attempt to track Wanda down, then write her a friendly letter that stops just short of apologizing. And when Wanda writes to the class, they seem to have found absolution. But surely, the real absolution came from writing this book. As Estes’s daughter wrote in a foreword to a later edition, the novel was based explicitly on an incident involving a Polish classmate in Estes’s childhood hometown of West Haven, Conn. “What could she do, so many years later, my mother wondered, to set things right — to reach out to the girl who had stood lonely and silent against the red brick wall of the school?” We read a great deal about books written for revenge; less, those that serve as a belated apology. But rereading “The Hundred Dresses,” I thought the form had a great deal to recommend it. I put it down feeling both sad and hopeful. I added it to my son’s shelf for future years. Read if you like: “All-of-a-Kind Family,” by Sydney Taylor; “Alan and Naomi,” by Myron Levoy; “The Whale Rider,” by Witi Ihimaera. We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Friendly reminder: Check your local library for books! Many libraries allow you to reserve copies online. Like this email? Sign-up here or forward it to your friends. Have a suggestion or two on how we can improve it? Let us know at books@nytimes.com. Plunge further into books at The New York Times or our reading recommendations.
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