27-32. Meet Addy

[osprey_archer]

The Addy books are the best written of the American Girl books, I think. The six books tell a complete, tightly woven story. You never get the feeling, as you sometimes do in the other series, that this or that book (charming though it is) could be left out without harming the overall thrust of the series.

And the characters are so much fun! Again, there’s an older single woman - this time much older: M’Dear, the widowed mother of the keeper of the boardinghouse where Addy stays. “I was there the day God made dirt,” M’Dear tells Addy; and the two of them, along with M’Dear’s singing bird Sunny, become friends. (Intergenerational friendships! Hooray!)

The Addy books quite handily thread the needle that we discussed back in the Kirsten books, of presenting an ugly piece of history to children without either whitewashing it or traumatizing them. In that earlier discussion, anomilygrace suggested that children need hope in their books, perhaps more than adults do, and judging by the Addy books, I think she’s onto something. Back when my mom read the Addy books to me, I was shocked by some of the things that happen to Addy: her father and brother get sold south, the overseer feeds her tobacco worms when her grief distracts her from her work.

But I didn’t feel brutalized by it like I did by, say, Bridge to Terabithia - or for that matter Jacob Have I Loved. Nobody even dies in that book, but it’s nonetheless replete with hopelessness.

The Addy books, on the other hand, skillfully weave hope into their difficult situation. Though Addy’s family is broken up in the first book, they’re reunited by the last, a situation that Porter cleverly makes plausible by having Addy's family discuss running away before Addy's father and brother were sold. They had picked a destination - Philadelphia - so although the family is shattered, they all know where to meet up.

In a lot of the American Girl series, I find on rereading that I’ve forgotten most of the siblings: but I remembered Addy’s. Her good-naturedly teasing big brother Sam reminded me of my brother, and his reunion with Addy stuck with me all these years. It’s a touching, lovely scene, sweet and fun and a little sad, too, because he lost an arm fighting in the war. It’s not untinctured by tragedy. But that touch of bitterness makes the hopeful reunion more sweet.

The Addy series is not only the best written, but also the gutsiest - a fact that is all the more obvious reading them back to back with the Marie-Grace & Cecile books, which mostly sweep prejudice under the rug. The Addy books, in the other hand, face the issue head-on. Prejudice is a sort of background radiation, infecting employment opportunities, parades, ice cream parlors and streetcars. Addy reacts accordingly: "I hate white people," she comments, more than once.

Addy's parents gently try to steer her away from this. It's ultimately self-destructive to focus too much energy on hate, they say; focus on loving your family and our friends. There's a sense threaded throughout the books that everything is not going to be all right, that some things are broken - Addy's brother loses his arm; Addy's friend Sarah has to leave school to help her family earn money - and they're going to remain so.

But despite that, there's a delicate joy in the books as well: Addy's friendship with Sarah, with M'Dear, the scene where she learns to jump rope double dutch. It's an exquisite balancing act.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

This is a lovely review. Thank you. The series sounds excellent.

The tobacco worms. I'm always horrified, repeatedly horrified, by the things people do. I suppose in the context of a culture that permitted slavery, I shouldn't be surprised, but I am. But then, I can't imagine the parents--parents!-who threw things at six-year-old Ruby Bridges when she went to attend a formerly white-only school. People, man. I have to keep remembering the heroism and the million daily kindnesses, too, because that's also people.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I think perhaps the important thing for historical fiction is to reflect that balance - to leaven the tobacco worms of history with those daily kindnesses, if at all possible.