Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy by Anne Boyd Rioux

Title: Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters

Author: Anne Boyd Rioux

Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. 2018

Genre: Nonfiction

Pages: 273

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: I Love Libraries; Nonfiction Bingo - Biography

In Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, Rioux recounts how Louisa May Alcott came to write Little Women, drawing inspiration for it from her own life. Rioux also examines why this tale of family and community ties, set while the Civil War tore America apart, has resonated through later wars, the Depression, and times of changing opportunities for women.

Alcott’s novel has moved generations of women, many of them writers: Simone de Beauvoir, J. K. Rowling, bell hooks, Cynthia Ozick, Jane Smiley, Margo Jefferson, and Ursula K. Le Guin were inspired by Little Women, particularly its portrait of the iconoclastic young writer, Jo. Many have felt, as Anna Quindlen has declared, “Little Women changed my life.”

I was very excited to read this one considering I really love Little Women. And the first section was very interesting. I loved learning more about Alcott’s life and inspiration. I enjoyed seeing the connections between her life and her various written works. The second half of the book didn’t catch my attention as much. The writing seemed very stilted and a little too much literary criticism. The writing was a bit dry and I started losing attention pretty quickly. So a mixed bad I guess.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Flower Fables by Louisa May Alcott

Title: Flower Fables

Author: Louisa May Alcott

Genre: Classic fairy tales

Pages: 140

Rating:    2 / 5 stars

Reading Challenges: Telling Tales; Mount TBR; Fall into Reading

How I Got It: I own it!

Flower Fables is a treasury of six different stories penned by Louisa May Alcott. These old-fashioned fairy tales have been compiled and edited by Daniel Shealy, who has done editing on several Alcott books. The text is very readable, and has magic flavor added via the font's joining together of several letters. Today's children, like many children of the past, will enjoy meeting Alcott's fairies, sentient flowers, and other real and imagined characters. Illustrator Leah Palmer Preiss has filled the book with delightful and interesting fairies and other creatures. The illustrations are bright and full. Readers may want to watch for the bonuses of quotations and tiny portraits of those who influenced Louisa May Alcott. This book would make a good bedtime storybook, and like many tales of old, has good morals that children could take away with them perhaps without even realizing there was a lesson involved. The afterword is also interesting as it shares interesting details about Miss Alcott. For example, she wrote these tales when she was 16. Another bonus at the end of the book is the biographies that go along with the quotations and miniature portraits. -- FromIndependent Publisher --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Bored.  That's my initial thought after reading this volume.  I'm bored.  These tales just aren't interesting or exciting to me.  I don't want to read anymore.  And I love old fairy tale stories.  These just lacked any oomph.  That's all.  Boring.