Meet Kit and Ruthie
Kit Kittredge, girl reporter! I’ve been trying to write this entry for over a week, but it’s hard to know where to start when I love so many things that the Kit books choose to be. They were not the beginning of my long love affair with the history of the thirties - that would be Blue Willow (which is awesome and everyone should read it! I heart Janie forever!) - but they were a contributing factor.
Incidentally, when I was researching my American Girl paper I found lesson plans online, using the American Girl books as the cornerstones for lessons in American history. In some ways the books rather invite this treatment: each book ends with a section called “A Peek into the Past,” which talks about some aspect of history related to the story.
(The American Girl books were the first historical fiction books I read on my own. When I went on to other historical fiction books, I was surprised that they didn’t all have historical notes in the back.)
If a child finishes the American Girl books and cries “I want to read All the Things about the Depression!” clearly that’s great - especially if they want to read a Depression Era novel about, you know, robots and hopping trains and ancient Egypt artifacts.
But if not, it seems to me that making the American Girl books part of a formal curriculum will just ruin what’s there. There seems to be a sense that - why let kids just enjoy the books when you could wring every drop of educational value from it?
But I think actually just letting them enjoy the books is the most educational policy, even if they don’t rush out to read all about the Great Depression afterward. They’ll still have a sense of the history and a few tidbits of it, made memorable by the context of the story, and a sense that history can be interesting and exciting, which forcing it into the context of a lesson would kill.
But I’ve wandered rather far afield from Kit Kittredge and friends. In the Kit books, Tripp reprises the sort of tripodal relationship that worked so well for her in the Felicity books: heroine, best friend, friend who is a boy. In the Kit books, the friend-who-is-boy is Stirling. Unlike Ben Davidson in the Felicity books, Stirling does not come equipped with “future love interest!” arrows pointing at his forehead: “penniless boarder” is not nearly as eligible a category as “firebrand apprentice.”
Kit’s best friend Ruthie, however, is even more awesome than Felicity’s best friend Elizabeth. Ruthie loves fairytales! (“Loves fairy tales,” like “steals horses,” is an instant road to my heart.) She has her own companion book, Really Truly Ruthie, in which Ruthie goes on a Quest - a real life fairytale quest! With strangers who help guide her, and a real life sleigh ride! - to find Kit’s aunt, who might have the money to save Kit’s house.
Kit’s father, you see, has lost his job; hence the boarders the family has to take in. Kit is plucky, proud, and prickly, an ardent admirer of Amelia Earhart and Robin Hood, who yearns for a tree house and dreams of being a reporter.
The tightening horizons of Kit’s dreams, now that her family has lost its money, is one of the themes in the books, and the constriction makes Kit peppery, especially with her still-wealthy best friend Ruthie. Another theme: how to help unfortunate friends (in money, in this case, but I imagine the same idea applies in other things) without embarrassing them.
All the books I read as a child had all these great life lessons in them. It’s kind of a pity I didn’t internalize most of them more.
Incidentally, when I was researching my American Girl paper I found lesson plans online, using the American Girl books as the cornerstones for lessons in American history. In some ways the books rather invite this treatment: each book ends with a section called “A Peek into the Past,” which talks about some aspect of history related to the story.
(The American Girl books were the first historical fiction books I read on my own. When I went on to other historical fiction books, I was surprised that they didn’t all have historical notes in the back.)
If a child finishes the American Girl books and cries “I want to read All the Things about the Depression!” clearly that’s great - especially if they want to read a Depression Era novel about, you know, robots and hopping trains and ancient Egypt artifacts.
But if not, it seems to me that making the American Girl books part of a formal curriculum will just ruin what’s there. There seems to be a sense that - why let kids just enjoy the books when you could wring every drop of educational value from it?
But I think actually just letting them enjoy the books is the most educational policy, even if they don’t rush out to read all about the Great Depression afterward. They’ll still have a sense of the history and a few tidbits of it, made memorable by the context of the story, and a sense that history can be interesting and exciting, which forcing it into the context of a lesson would kill.
But I’ve wandered rather far afield from Kit Kittredge and friends. In the Kit books, Tripp reprises the sort of tripodal relationship that worked so well for her in the Felicity books: heroine, best friend, friend who is a boy. In the Kit books, the friend-who-is-boy is Stirling. Unlike Ben Davidson in the Felicity books, Stirling does not come equipped with “future love interest!” arrows pointing at his forehead: “penniless boarder” is not nearly as eligible a category as “firebrand apprentice.”
Kit’s best friend Ruthie, however, is even more awesome than Felicity’s best friend Elizabeth. Ruthie loves fairytales! (“Loves fairy tales,” like “steals horses,” is an instant road to my heart.) She has her own companion book, Really Truly Ruthie, in which Ruthie goes on a Quest - a real life fairytale quest! With strangers who help guide her, and a real life sleigh ride! - to find Kit’s aunt, who might have the money to save Kit’s house.
Kit’s father, you see, has lost his job; hence the boarders the family has to take in. Kit is plucky, proud, and prickly, an ardent admirer of Amelia Earhart and Robin Hood, who yearns for a tree house and dreams of being a reporter.
The tightening horizons of Kit’s dreams, now that her family has lost its money, is one of the themes in the books, and the constriction makes Kit peppery, especially with her still-wealthy best friend Ruthie. Another theme: how to help unfortunate friends (in money, in this case, but I imagine the same idea applies in other things) without embarrassing them.
All the books I read as a child had all these great life lessons in them. It’s kind of a pity I didn’t internalize most of them more.