The Betsy-Tacy Companion: A Biography of Maud Hart Lovelace

Rating:
Summary: Too Much Information!
Review: As a big Betsy-Tacy fan, I eagerly awaited my copy of The Betsy-Tacy Companion, but I found it to be a disappointment. Sharla Whelan dissects every minute detail in the life of Maud Hart Lovelace, including floor plans of Betsy-Tacy characters' houses, comparisons of Deep Valley vs. Mankato street names and much other information. Do we really need to know that a particular date in Betsy Ray's life was a Tuesday, but that same date in Maud Hart's life was a Friday? I was hoping for a straightforward biography of Maud Hart Lovelace, but this book was tedious and sometimes downright boring. I'm considering selling my copy because I doubt that I'll ever want to read it again. One redeeming factor is the many photos of Maud and her friends and family.

Rating:
Summary: A labor of love
Review: Betsy-Tacy fans, rejoice! Sharla Scannell-Whalen has written the ultimate book for those of you who want MORE! The author gives a wealth of information about the real-life counterparts for just about every character in the Maud Hart Lovelace classics. Interesting details about the history of the Lovelace family is also included. The many photographs add immensely to the reader's understanding. I had the pleasure of meeting Sharla several years ago and it was obvious that this project was her joy and her life - and the book shows it, too. You won't be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: The Ultimate Betsy Tacy Companion
Review: I recently ordered The Betsy-Tacy Companion, and I was quite unsure as to what I should expect. My hopes were high though, and I wasn't to be disappointed. The Betsy-Tacy series is a special one, and the companion goes deep into the magic of Deep Valley and Mankato without killing it altogether. Definitely a must have for anyone in love with Deep Valley.

Oh and I was pleasantly surprised to see chapters for Emily of Deep Valley and Carney's House Party.

Rating:
Summary: A Treasure of a Book
Review: I was greatly pleased when I saw how thick this book was, and even more pleased when I discovered the great attention to detail throughout the book. Whalen must have put thousands of hours of research into the book, and the result is a magnificent depiction not only of Maud Hart Lovelace and her Crowd, but of life from the turn of the century through the 1920s.

Whalen devotes a separate chapter of the book to each Deep Valley book, including Carney's House Party and Emily of Deep Valley. Particular attention is devoted to the last six books of the Betsy series, from Heaven to Betsy through Betsy's Wedding. Whalen painstakingly compares and contrasts Lovelace's own life with Betsy's for each of the books. She includes maps of Mankato, MN (Deep Valley) during Betsy's time, floor plans and addresses of homes with accompanying pictures, pictures of the Crowd, and pictures of many locations from the books. There is also information on Mr. and Mrs. Hart's lives before they married, as well as information on what happened to the story characters in later life. Much of the information is taken from interviews of Betsy-Tacy family members and others who knew Mankato at that time. The author also makes good use of newspaper articles from the time in her efforts to describe life in Mankato and Minneapolis as clearly as possible. I especially appreciated the attention paid to excerpts of interviews of Lovelace and letters that she wrote. This was made of particular good use in the chapter on Betsy and the Great World, in which Lovelace's letters home served as her travel journal (just as Betsy's did).

I highly recommend this book, and greatly admire the author for so successfully accomplishing a project of such great magnitude. This book is a must-have for any fan of Betsy. It is absolutely fascinating to learn so much about the facts behind these stories, as well as the social customs of the time. The details and pictures make the stories come to life even more so than before. Read this book... you'll be glad you did!

Rating:
Summary: A Treasure of a Book
Review: I was greatly pleased when I saw how thick this book was, and even more pleased when I discovered the great attention to detail throughout the book. Whalen must have put thousands of hours of research into the book, and the result is a magnificent depiction not only of Maud Hart Lovelace and her Crowd, but of life from the turn of the century through the 1920s.

Whalen devotes a separate chapter of the book to each Deep Valley book, including Carney's House Party and Emily of Deep Valley. Particular attention is devoted to the last six books of the Betsy series, from Heaven to Betsy through Betsy's Wedding. Whalen painstakingly compares and contrasts Lovelace's own life with Betsy's for each of the books. She includes maps of Mankato, MN (Deep Valley) during Betsy's time, floor plans and addresses of homes with accompanying pictures, pictures of the Crowd, and pictures of many locations from the books. There is also information on Mr. and Mrs. Hart's lives before they married, as well as information on what happened to the story characters in later life. Much of the information is taken from interviews of Betsy-Tacy family members and others who knew Mankato at that time. The author also makes good use of newspaper articles from the time in her efforts to describe life in Mankato and Minneapolis as clearly as possible. I especially appreciated the attention paid to excerpts of interviews of Lovelace and letters that she wrote. This was made of particular good use in the chapter on Betsy and the Great World, in which Lovelace's letters home served as her travel journal (just as Betsy's did).

I highly recommend this book, and greatly admire the author for so successfully accomplishing a project of such great magnitude. This book is a must-have for any fan of Betsy. It is absolutely fascinating to learn so much about the facts behind these stories, as well as the social customs of the time. The details and pictures make the stories come to life even more so than before. Read this book... you'll be glad you did!

Rating:
Summary: The Ultimate Betsy Tacy Companion
Review: This book is a lot of fun to have around when you're reading or re-reading the Betsy-Tacy series! It tells the stories behind the stories, compares the events in the books to events in Maud's life, and includes wonderful pictures of the real people behind the fictional names.

It is not intended to be a straight-out biography of Maud but rather how her life paralleled Betsy's. The research is detailed and voluminous, and very well done. This kind of a book could have been very tedious and boring, but I didn't find it that way at all. The writing was sprightly and included some humor, and I just really enjoyed paging through it as I re-read the series this summer!

Any Maud or Betsy fan should own this book!

Rating:
Summary: A must-have reference for any Betsy-Tacy Fan!
Review: This book is a lot of fun to have around when you're reading or re-reading the Betsy-Tacy series! It tells the stories behind the stories, compares the events in the books to events in Maud's life, and includes wonderful pictures of the real people behind the fictional names.

It is not intended to be a straight-out biography of Maud but rather how her life paralleled Betsy's. The research is detailed and voluminous, and very well done. This kind of a book could have been very tedious and boring, but I didn't find it that way at all. The writing was sprightly and included some humor, and I just really enjoyed paging through it as I re-read the series this summer!

Any Maud or Betsy fan should own this book!

Rating:
Summary: Eye Candy!
Review: This book represents an incredible effort that can only be described as a labor of love and a gift to all Betsy-Tacy fans. Sharla Scannell Whalen has done an impressive amount of research, interviewing people connected to the characters MHL wrote about, reading correspondence, examining old newspapers and county records, and recreating even the floor plans of old houses.

Probably no biography could ever answer all of the questions of devoted B-T fans like myself. Short of a personal interview with Maud Hart Lovelace, nothing could probably satisfy our curiousity. Whalen's book, in many ways, is less a biography than a corroboration of the Betsy-Tacy books. In itself, that makes it precious to fans of the series. I liked knowing something about the characters' counterparts. Presumably due to the vagaries of historical research, we learn more about some (e.g. Carney/Marney) than others (e.g. Marguerite/Emily). A few of the episodes most important for understanding Betsy's character and growth (and thus, according to Whalen's well-substantiated argument, Maud's), are not verified - for example, the interlude in Betsy's Wedding when Joe's aunt comes to live with them, prompting Betsy to interrogate her own possessiveness and to expand her ideas of family.

I loved this book, but unfortunately I think its appeal will be largely limited to Betsy-Tacy fans and people interested in children's books. I don't know that it would have been feasible for Whalen to do this, given her interest in documenting the similarities between Betsy's and Maud's lives, but I would have liked to see her set the overlapping stories of their lives in a broader social history context. How much richer the book would have been if we could have understood Betsy's and Maud's girlhoods against a larger picture of early 20th century adolescence. How unique was it, for example, that all of Betsy's friends attended high school, and many of them college, in an era when less than 20% of the school-aged population graduated from high school? This suggests important and interesting things about Betsy's/Maud's family and class background, the economy of Deep Valley/Mankato, and the social mores of her Crowd. This book is so readable that, if it had presented the B-T books not only as a window into Maud Hart Lovelace's life but into the lives of young women of a certain racial, social, and class background in the early 20th century, it could be a huge contribution to the field of women's history. In short, the book is long on description and documentation; I would have only liked to see more analysis.

But there is limited use in bemoaning what a book does not do. What this book does is pretty tremendous. It's truly a pleasure to read, and invaluable to anyone who ever wanted to know what happened to Betsy, Tacy, Carney, Tib, Cab, and Tony after the end of the series.