This is the blog in which I will contribute to my classroom community and share my thoughts about the texts we encounter. Although I hope to reach a level of sophistication in my thought process that reflects a measure of maturity and education appropriate to my age, I also would like to maintain the spirit of the genre by striving always to approach the text from a child's perspective.
Thinking back on the books that affected my own childhood, it is difficult to pinpoint a favorite. My mother purchased the children's illustrated classics collection, which formed the cornerstone of our children's library, while my father read to us every night from a variety of authors from William Shakespeare to Harper Lee to J.D. Salinger. We also read and re-read picture books such as Blueberries For Sal and Ferdinand, and everything we could find by Shel Silverstein. On my own steam I read dozens of Nancy Drew mysteries and Babysitters Club novels, as well as our school's collection of Newberries and Lone Star selections.
The one book that I feel had the greatest impact on my personality and character development is Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. I strongly identified with the sister relationships in the novel. I spent most of my childhood attempting to emulate Beth in her charity and patience, while continually finding myself a Jo: a bit too wild (and a bit too literary) to truly fit in. Little Women may be the reason I became an English major at all. Or else it was a major part of the children's library that so captivated my attention that I never much developed any significant hobbies other than reading.
Little Women seems to be a touchstone text for female English professors. In grad school, I was part of an intellectual circle that worked through feminist canons, in response to the omissions in some of our grad seminars. We held a special Little Woman-fest at the end of one year, and every single one of us -- fresh-faced MAs, pseudo-sophisticated PhD candidates, wizened full professors -- expressed in varied ways what this book has meant to us. And,several years ago, TCU theatre adapted the novel for the stage. Dr Gaul tried to organize a group of female colleagues to go, and we almost didn't get seats. I was appointed the job of Jo -- begging, weedling, deal-making with the box office to ensure that we were the last 8 people to be seated when the no-shows / late shows hadn't arrived. It was a memorable experience.
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