Book Review: Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown
Jul. 27th, 2023 08:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI love all the Betsy-Tacy books, but if someone put a gun to my head and demanded that I choose a favorite, I would pick Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, which is simply a box of delights.
Betsy’s world is opening out. Betsy and Tacy and Tib have a wider range than ever before, as evidenced in their repeated forays downtown, and their social world is also growing. They have begun, very cautiously, to look at boys; but really this is the book of Winona Root, their teasing classmate with snapping black eyes, who loves to take the villain’s part in plays.
Winona’s father runs the newspaper, and she’s got three extra passes to the matinee of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. (Betsy of course has read the book six hundred times and can practically recite it from memory.) Betsy and Tacy and Tib are all dying to go, but can they convince Winona to take them?
In the end they do, but not before a couple of missteps, including an attempt to hypnotize her by staring at her all morning in school. And then they go to the play, Betsy’s very first play, and she’s transported by the magic of it, the opulence of the opera house, the magic of the moment when the curtain rises… Truly a glorious description of theatrical magic.
Also, the first motor-car comes to town, and brave Tib gets a ride! (I felt a profound empathy with the harness-maker, who grimly sees the writing on the wall.)
And then the library sequence… ah, the library sequence is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. A Carnegie library has opened in Deep Valley, and because Betsy intends to be a writer, her parents agree that every other week, she can spend Saturday at the library - all day Saturday, with 15 cents to spend buying lunch at the bakery across the street! A whole day to read at the library, sitting in the deep soft chairs in the children’s room in front of the roaring fire.
I realize there are reasons libraries no longer have roaring fires, but what if…
Also it’s just so delightful when she marches in and informs the librarian that she intends to read “the classics.” Which ones? All of them! God bless you Betsy.
And after she leaves the library, she falls in with Mrs. Poppy, who invites her to have hot chocolate in her penthouse in the Melborn Hotel! (The Poppies own the Melborn Hotel.) Another sequence of delights. The visit to the hotel, the statue of Winged Victory on the stairs (and Betsy who has been reading Greek myths all day understands the statue as she could not have even yesterday), the view of the river from the penthouse, the hot chocolate and whipped cream and little cakes!
Oh, oh, and how could I forget Betsy’s new writing desk! It’s her uncle Keith’s theatrical trunk, which has been in storage for years, ever since he sent it to his sister for safekeeping after he enlisted to fight in the Spanish-American War. He ran away to be an actor long ago, and no one knows where he is now.
But then Mrs. Poppy (a former actress, and also her husband owns the Opera House) arranges for Betsy and company to act as extras for a traveling troupe’s performance of Rip Van Winkle... Well, you can probably guess what happens, just from that. It all comes together in a most satisfactory manner. Just a beautifully constructed book, each sequence perfect in itself and all of them fitting together as neatly as the gears in a music box.
Betsy’s world is opening out. Betsy and Tacy and Tib have a wider range than ever before, as evidenced in their repeated forays downtown, and their social world is also growing. They have begun, very cautiously, to look at boys; but really this is the book of Winona Root, their teasing classmate with snapping black eyes, who loves to take the villain’s part in plays.
Winona’s father runs the newspaper, and she’s got three extra passes to the matinee of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. (Betsy of course has read the book six hundred times and can practically recite it from memory.) Betsy and Tacy and Tib are all dying to go, but can they convince Winona to take them?
In the end they do, but not before a couple of missteps, including an attempt to hypnotize her by staring at her all morning in school. And then they go to the play, Betsy’s very first play, and she’s transported by the magic of it, the opulence of the opera house, the magic of the moment when the curtain rises… Truly a glorious description of theatrical magic.
Also, the first motor-car comes to town, and brave Tib gets a ride! (I felt a profound empathy with the harness-maker, who grimly sees the writing on the wall.)
And then the library sequence… ah, the library sequence is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. A Carnegie library has opened in Deep Valley, and because Betsy intends to be a writer, her parents agree that every other week, she can spend Saturday at the library - all day Saturday, with 15 cents to spend buying lunch at the bakery across the street! A whole day to read at the library, sitting in the deep soft chairs in the children’s room in front of the roaring fire.
I realize there are reasons libraries no longer have roaring fires, but what if…
Also it’s just so delightful when she marches in and informs the librarian that she intends to read “the classics.” Which ones? All of them! God bless you Betsy.
And after she leaves the library, she falls in with Mrs. Poppy, who invites her to have hot chocolate in her penthouse in the Melborn Hotel! (The Poppies own the Melborn Hotel.) Another sequence of delights. The visit to the hotel, the statue of Winged Victory on the stairs (and Betsy who has been reading Greek myths all day understands the statue as she could not have even yesterday), the view of the river from the penthouse, the hot chocolate and whipped cream and little cakes!
Oh, oh, and how could I forget Betsy’s new writing desk! It’s her uncle Keith’s theatrical trunk, which has been in storage for years, ever since he sent it to his sister for safekeeping after he enlisted to fight in the Spanish-American War. He ran away to be an actor long ago, and no one knows where he is now.
But then Mrs. Poppy (a former actress, and also her husband owns the Opera House) arranges for Betsy and company to act as extras for a traveling troupe’s performance of Rip Van Winkle... Well, you can probably guess what happens, just from that. It all comes together in a most satisfactory manner. Just a beautifully constructed book, each sequence perfect in itself and all of them fitting together as neatly as the gears in a music box.
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Date: 2023-07-27 12:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-28 02:39 pm (UTC)