Understood Betsy

Nine-year-old Elizabeth Ann has been raised in the city by loving but overprotective aunts who speak in disapproving whispers of those horrid Putney cousins. So imagine the child’s shock when she’s forced to move in with the dreaded country kin. They keep pets in the house! They eat in the kitchen and expect her to walk to school by herself! But little by little, as she helps with the chores around the farm and makes new friends, sickly, self-centered Elizabeth Ann is transformed into confident, independent Betsy. Generations of readers have delighted in Betsy’s adventures since the book’s original publication in 1917. Author Dorothy Canfield Fisher introduced Americans to the Montessori Method, an educational approach that’s reflected in her tale of childhood freedom and self-sufficiency. The New York Times Book Review praised Understood Betsy for being as satisfying in its evocation of an earlier, simpler way of life as Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, and psychologically more acute.
AGES: 7 to 11 AUTHOR: Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1879 1958) wrote more than 20 novels and 18 works of nonfiction. Educated at Ohio State University and the Sorbonne, she worked for the Vermont Children’s Aid Society and was the first woman to serve on the state board of education. She was also a trustee of Bennington College and Howard University, and she introduced Americans to the Montessori Method of education.