Nava Atlas's Blog, page 33

Bookstagram for Authors and Book Lovers

Bookstagram is an Instagram account featuring books with pictures dedicated to showcasing everything “bookish.” Bookstagram for authors and book lovers uses a series of hashtags, participates in special book events and themes, and posts images that involve bookshelves, book spaces, and of course, books!

Some of the best Bookstagrammers stick with a central theme. Many of them use props to enhance these themes, while others develop styles unique to their brand. Bookstagram accounts post book reviews and host book giveaway contests, too!

Bookstagram is great for authors looking to build a following and connect with readers and other writers. It’s also an enjoyable use of social media for avid book lovers who wants to connect with others of like minds, showcase what they’re currently reading, or highlight bookish nooks and corners of their homes.

Here are some tips for how to participate in Bookstagram, and how to use the platform.

 

Find a Unique Selling Point (USP)This is important as your USP is what makes your book uniqueAsk yourself what your niche isThe answer to that question is the foundation of your strategy to promote your book on social media
Promotion

The primary objective is to build hype about your book and show people what you have to offer, without giving away all the secrets you wrote in your new book. You can do this by…

Sharing teasers and updates from your book. Start with something small – a fragment of a photo, a corner of the cover – and work up to bigger spoilers. In the last few weeks before the book is released, you can share teasers of the book to show people what’s to come.Keeping a healthy mix of content, from book trailers to newsletters and teasers. You’ll notice that there are a lot of video content online, so you’ll want to mix it up — this is because video content is usually more successful on Facebook and Instagram than static posts.Offering exclusive content to people who sign up for your newsletter, or pre-order the book. Make sure you announce those exclusives on your social media pages, so that everyone knows what they’re missing!Posting timely content, especially around the holidays. Even when a book isn’t directly related to an upcoming holiday, you can stage them in a festive setting to tie into the event and included relevant hashtags in the caption to position your title as a holiday gift.

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Giveaways

Social media giveaways are very easy to set up. It’s as simple as making a post on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube — and then using an app to harvest the comments and pick a winner (there are even multi-network apps that allow you to collect comments from several different social network sites).

The purpose of a giveaway is to get more attention and encourage sales from people who aren’t lucky enough to win a copy of your book for free. You can also use giveaways to learn more about your audience. For example, you’ll get a ton of statistics from the giveaway about which social networks are most active, what time your followers are online, and so on.

How to get the most out of a giveaway:Create a simple, eye-catching graphic that contains the word giveaway with a photo of the prizes (in this case, your book cover).Gather 5-20 fellow Bookstagrammers who will repost your giveaway graphic to spread the word.Post to your Instagram account explaining the giveaway and its rules. Don’t forget to mention whether or not your giveaway is international or country-based.
Some rules for giveaways:The user must be following your Instagram accountThe user must repost your graphic to their page or story (so it will reach their followers)The user must use your giveaway-specific hashtag (so you can find their entries later)Optional: The user must tag people in the comments of your post to receive additional entry points (this helps extend your audience reach and also gives your post a ton of social proof, which boosts you in the Instagram algorithm)

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Photo Courtesy of Ella Jardim: Unsplash.com
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Building a Following

Aim to begin your social media activity early on with the intention of creating a community that will turn into potential book buyers. You can build your community by engaging with your followers by asking questions, responding to comments, running polls, and trying to like your followers’ posts. Posting a few times a week is okay for posts, but you should try to keep your Instagram stories active by posting daily.

You should also aim to create a unique, specific hashtag for your book and encourage your audience to use your hashtag. Over time, that hashtag will become a landing page for users to view everything that is relevant to your book.

Sharing user-generated content (UGC), also shows that you value the dedication of your followers. UGC is otherwise known as content your followers create and tag you in that can be reposted to your own profile. Sharing any kind of UGC will help persuade your potential readers to purchase your book and also encourage them to share their reviews, giving your book more exposure.

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Using Instagram Stories

If you want to take your Instagram strategy one step further, try tying your posts and Instagram Stories together. Instagram stories are a great tool for cross-promoting content.

Prior to your book launch, you can share multiple variants of your book cover and request your followers to vote on their favorite. You can do this by using the polling feature in your Instagram stories.

Other ideas for Instagram stories:Post screenshots of your favorite quotes and snapshots from your bookShare photos of yourself with your favorite booksCreate a story about your writing process and or your book launchShare photos from your initial draft, places you went for inspiration, and so on…

You can also encourage readers to preorder your book with an Instagram story promoting your preorder link. Authors are always asking you to preorder their book titles, and it is because preorders inform booksellers about what new books people are interested in.

 Potential Partnerships

It is worth mentioning that it is crucial to connect with fellow bookstagrammers and gift them a copy of your book, especially if they have a large following. This is because by sharing your book with them, you are essentially garnering free reviews (which are a tremendous help with sales), and they are also indirectly promoting your book at the same time.

Contributed by Anna Fiore: Anna is a 2021 graduate of SUNY-New Paltz, majoring in Communications, with a concentration in Public Relations and a minor in journalism.

More information and sources

How to Start a Bookstagram for Beginners 17 Instagram Book Promotion Ideas from Publishers Instagram Book Marketing: How to Promote Your Book

See more resources for writers on this site.

The post Bookstagram for Authors and Book Lovers appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

How to Use BookTok: A Guide for Authors and Publishers

BookToks are TikTok accounts that are dedicated to books and everything “bookish.” They’re part of a niche platform for short-term video content. BookToks might include content such as videos about literary collections, building at-home libraries, book reviews, and promotions for new releases. Here’s a quick guide on how to use BookTok.

You might notice that many people post content that is awfully similar. These are known as “trends” or challenges, and they can ultimately help widen your page reach.

TikTok started out as a platform mainly used by teenagers, but it has quickly expanded its reach to incorporate influencers, much as Instagram does. Businesses have jumped on the bandwagon to use TikTok as a marketing tool, so it was just a matter of time before BookTok emerged as a marketing tool for publishers. In other cases, young book lovers have become BookTok influencers as an outgrowth of their passion for books and all things bookish, rather than by design.

Here are a few tips for how the book community can use BookTok:

 

The Algorithm

Users consume videos through their “For You” pages, which is an algorithmically programmed feed that delivers content to users based on what they have engaged with in the past. Once a user begins viewing and engaging with a specific type of content, there is a snowball effect in which that user is served more of that type of content.

The most effective TikTok strategy is no different from other social media platforms:

Engage with your followers by liking and replying to their comments (the more comments a video receives, the more the platform recognizes it as “engaging” and will show it to more people)Post regularly — keep people excited for new content and don’t let your page die downUse hashtags to help people discover your videos

 

Hashtags

There is a lot of conflicting information online on the most effective strategy for using hashtags on TikTok. We have found that the best thing to do is to use a combination hashtag strategy.

Meaning, use 4-6 hashtags that represent your brand (#authorsoftiktok, #writertok, etc.) and then add 4-6 hashtags that fit the content of the video. You can also use trending hashtags if you are copying a trend or a challenge.

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Photo Courtesy of Caleb Woods: Unsplash.com

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Content Ideas for Marketing and PromotionPost a book cover revealSummarize your bookPost an unboxing videoShow your audience about your writing process and the pains of editingTell your audience about the publishing processLend writing tips and tricks for aspiring authorsShare quotes and illustrations from your bookEngage with other BookTok-ers and ask them to post a review of your book What not to do

Make sure to mix up your content so that you’re not only self-promoting your book. It would be useful to share other tips and tricks for writers as well as book recommendations. Your followers will get turned off if all you do is self-promote.

 

How to Get Your Videos Trending

The number one factor that will help you boost your page reach is trending sounds. If you see a sound that has over ten thousand videos under it, use it. You can even put it over a video in the background of you talking and it will still boost your views.

Once you spend some time on TikTok for a while, you’ll start to notice that many people post videos that are similar—similar sounds and similar themes. These are known as “trends” or challenges. Look for ways you might be able to take advantage of TikTok trends and hashtag challenges to promote your new book.

Keep in mind however, that TikTok allows 15-second videos. This means that you only have 15 seconds to grab your audience’s attention and persuade them to buy your book.

Contributed by Anna Fiore: Anna is a 2021 graduate of SUNY-New Paltz, majoring in Communications, with a concentration in Public Relations and a minor in journalism.

More information and sources

Using TikTok to Sell Books 19 Ways to Promote Your Book on TikTok 15 TikTok Ideas for Authors to Help Grow Their Audience and Book Sales

See more resources for writers on this site.

The post How to Use BookTok: A Guide for Authors and Publishers appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

All-of-a-Kind-Family by Sydney Taylor — Jewish Joy, Family Ties

All-of-a-Kind-Family by Sidney Taylor (1951) is the first of a series of children’s books about the everyday lives of a tight-knit Jewish family at the turn of the 20th century. Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte, and Gertie are young sisters who live with their parents in the Lower East Side of New York City.

This story and its sequels smooth the rough edges of immigrant life, but the warmth and strength of the family unit sends the message that love and mutual respect can overcome many of life’s challenges. The girls occasional bicker, but their love and loyalty for one another is evident.

The five sisters love to do everything together, whether it’s going to the library to choose each week’s treasured books, interacting with peddlers in Papa’s junk shop on rainy days, or going on the rare outing with wise, patient Mama.

This book is notable for its emphasis on Jewish holidays and traditions, presenting them as joyous occasions without resorting to tired stereotypes. In the few decades following the first of the series in 1951, the All-of-a-Kind Family books were the best known children’s works depicting Jewish life in America.

Sydney Taylor (1904 – 1978) was born Sarah Brenner to Jewish immigrant parents, and like her subjects, grew up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She even used the real names of her sisters in the fictionalized account (though she herself was Sarah in the books and later changed her name to Sydney). 

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From Sarah to Sydney (Yale University Press, 2021)
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Until now, not a lot was known about her despite the popularity the All-of-a-Kind series. That may change thanks to a 2021 biography, from Sarah to Sydney by June Cummins and Alexandra Dumietz. In a presentation titled “Who Was Sydney Taylor?” Cummins wrote: 

“As a grown woman, Sydney remembered the early days of her family’s life on the Lower East Side. Although they were poor, like most Jewish immigrants, they had many happy times. Just like the girls in the books, Sydney and her sisters were ‘five little girls [who] shared one bedroom—and never minded bedtime. Snuggled in our beds we would talk and giggle and plan tomorrow’s fun and mischief.’”

A review in The Nashville Banner (November 16, 1951) by Kay Early Russell, also confirms the series inspiration from the author’s real-life experiences: 

“The author of All-of-a-Kind-Family is also a wife the mother of a teenage daughter, Jo. Jo loved to hear stories of her mother’s youth, and the tales of good times with her four sisters. Inspired by her only daughter’s enthusiasm, Mrs. Taylor set her tales to paper and All-of-a-Kind-Family was born.

The author has a keen insight into situations that appeal to children, and is able to present them in a satisfying way. It’s a happy, warm story of five little girls who live with their parents (of modest means) in a four-room flat on New York’s Lower East Side.”

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All-of-a-Kind Family on Bookshop.org * and Amazon *

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A 1951 review of All-of-a-Kind Family

From the Meriden Record (Meriden, CT), October 26, 1951

The Charles W. Follett award for “worth contributions to children’s literature” has been awarded this year to All-of-a-Kind-Family by Sydney Taylor, a newcomer to the field of children’s books. 

The five little heroines, ranging in age from four to twelve, might be described as the East Side’s prototype of Little Women. 

Ella is the eldest, in the first throes of romantic puppy love; Henrietta, the ten-year-old, is the madcap of the family, able to turn a tragedy like getting lost at Coney Island into an ice cream binged financed by good-natured policemen; Sarah is the conscientious one; and six-year-old Charlotte and little Gertie are at the delicious age when it takes half an hour to select two cents’ worth of penny candy.

Since Papa runs a junk shop and business is only fair-to-middling, there is more love than money in the little apartment. Chores are shared, along with joys and ceremonies of the great procession of Jewish holidays, and descriptions of the special dishes that Mama prepares are enough to make the mouths of both adult and child readers water. 

When work lags, Mama thinks up ingenious games with buttons and bright pennies to make chores go faster. And when a rainy day forces them to stay indoors, what better haven could any little girls find than the crowded junk shop. There, the peddlers sit around the stove and a newly-arrived stash of discarded books yields collections of fairy tales and paper dolls to reward the patient little searchers.

The eight-year-old and up reader for whom this book is intended will find herself completely enamored with its little heroines. Their adventures are natural, funny, and heartwarming, and the family atmosphere that Mrs. Taylor has recreated so well from her own remembered childhood combines the brightness of reality with the glow of love.

The only note of implausibility, but one of which romantic-minded pre-teens will heartily approve, is the romance between Charlie, the handsome misplaced junkman and Miss Allen, the pretty young librarian.

Without being aware of it, young readers will absorb attitudes as well as facts from All-of-a-Kind-Family. Along with a fascinating picture of the East Side food markets in the old days, and some vivid descriptions of Jewish holidays, the child reader will gain an appreciation for children who observe different customs. Altogether, a wholesome experience as well as an enjoyable one.

 

All-of-a-Kind-Family seriesAll-of-a-Kind Family (1951), illustrated by Helen JohnMore All-Of-A-Kind Family (1954), illustrated by Mary StevensAll-of-a-Kind Family Uptown (1958), illustrated by Mary StevensAll-of-a-Kind Family Downtown (1972), illustrated by Beth and Joe KrushElla of All-of-a-Kind Family (1978), illustrated by Gail Owens

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*These are Bookshop Affiliate and Amazon Affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!

The post All-of-a-Kind-Family by Sydney Taylor — Jewish Joy, Family Ties appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Marguerite Henry, Author of Misty of Chincoteague

Marguerite Henry (April 13, 1902 — November 26, 1977), was a beloved American author of animal stories for children. She authored more than fifty children’s books throughout, capturing especially the dreams and fantasies of horse-loving children everywhere.

Many of Marguerite Henry’s books are based on true stories of horses (and occasionally other animals), and have since been translated into twelve languages. Her best-known novels are Misty of Chincoteague  (the basis for the 1961 movie Misty) and its sequels.

King of the Wind (1948) is another of her most popular novels, recognized as “the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children,” by the American Library Association. Both it and Misty of Chincoteague won the highest accolade a children’s book can garner, the Newbery Medal Award; King of the Wind won the Young Reader’s Choice Award in 1951 as well.

 

Early Life

Born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Marguerite was the youngest of the five children of Louis and Anna Breithaupt. She was stricken with rheumatic fever at age six, which kept her bedridden until she was twelve years old.

Marguerite wasn’t allowed to go to school because of her weak state and the fear of spreading her illness to others, and discovered the joy of reading while confined. She read many western adventure stories by Zane Grey and decided at a young age that she wanted to live on a ranch of her own someday, where she could see her own horses run and play.

Shortly after Marguerite discovered the joys of reading, she found a love for writing as well. Her father, a publisher, gifted her a little red desk and some writing supplies one for Christmas. He continued to encourage his daughter’s writing, from the age of seven on, by supplying her with reams of paper and lots of pencils. She always wrote about animals, including dogs, cats, birds, and foxes, but her stories focused primarily on horses. 

In 1913, when Marguerite was eleven years old, she published her first article. Her mother told her about a local magazine that was looking for submissions by children about the earth’s seasons. She wrote a short story about the change of the seasons, “Hide and Seek in Autumn Leaves” which the magazine published. It earned her twelve dollars, a tidy sum at the time.

 Marriage and the Start of a Writing Career

Marguerite studied to become an English school teacher at the Milwaukee State Teacher’s College. One summer, she went on a fishing trip where she met her future husband, Sidney Henry. They were married on May 5, 1923.

After the two were married, Marguerite continued to write articles for magazines. Her husband was supportive of her writing ability, and encouraged her to write for publications such as The Saturday Evening Post and Reader’s Digest. 

In 1939, Marguerite and her husband bought a small farm cottage on two acres of land in Wayne, Illinois, which they named Mole Meadows. It was the farm Henry always dreamed of as a child. 

In 1940, she published her first full-length book, Auno and Tauno: A Story of Finland. This was quickly followed by several other children’s books, including Dilly Dally Sally (1940), Geraldine Belinda (1942), and Their First Igloo on Baffin Island (1943).

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Illustration by Wesley Dennis. Photo: Askart.com
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A Literary Partnership

Marguerite Henry’s first book to earn critical acclaim was her novel, Justin Morgan Had a Horse (1945). After finishing the manuscript for the story, Henry scanned her local library’s children’s book section looking for the perfect illustrator.

She stumbled upon a story called Flip, written and illustrated by Wesley Dennis, and fell in love with the illustrations. She sent Dennis a copy of the manuscript to Justin Morgan Had a Horse, asked him to illustrate the novel. He kindly accepted, and the story became a Newbery Honor Book.

The two went on to produce more than twenty novels together, thus beginning the start of a long and successful partnership.

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Marguerite Henry with the real Misty
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The Legacy of Misty

Misty of Chincoteague (1947) became one of Marguerite Henry and Wesley Dennis’ most popular and enduring works. Like most of her books, this children’s novel was based on a true story. Marguerite valued historical authenticity, and spent many months meticulously researching each of her books before writing them.

In 1945, she had heard the tale of ponies who survived the shipwreck of a Spanish galleon hundreds of years before. They supposedly swam to shore and live on an island off the coast of Virginia and Maryland. Intrigued, Marguerite and Wesley Dennis went to observe Pony Penning Day, when the ponies swim from Assateague to Chincoteague Island.

Misty was a real filly that Marguerite spotted at the auction on Pony Penning Day in Chincoteague. “The first time I saw Misty, my heart bumped up into my throat until I thought I’d choke,” she wrote in A Pictorial Life Story of Misty. “It was a moment to laugh and cry and pray over, especially if all your childhood you wanted a pony and couldn’t have one on account of your rheumatic fever.”

Misty lived with Marguerite for several years while she worked on her book. As usual, Wesley Dennis illustrated it. Rand McNally published the novel in 1947, when it was met with great success. After the publication of the book, Misty became an instant celebrity and was even invited to an ALA conference!

Henry’s work has captivated generations of children and young adults and won many honors and awards. In 1961, Misty of Chincoteague won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award and was named a Newberry Honor Book.

Misty became the subject of a 1961 motion picture film, as did Brighty in 1967. Justin Morgan Had a Horse was filmed by Walt Disney Productions in 1972, and the King of the Wind came to the big screen in 1990.

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A review of Misty of Chincoteague
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Final wishes

Marguerite Henry finished her last novel, Brown Sunshine of Sawdust Valley (1996) just before her death in 1997. She died at the age of 95 in her home in Rancho Santa Fe, California after a series of strokes.

Married for sixty-four years, Marguerite and Sidney Henry had no children, but they did have many animals that inspired some of her stories throughout her career. It was her dying wish that her ashes be scattered in the Pacific Ocean, as were her husband’s (he had died a decade earlier). A niece and nephew of Marguerite and Sidney Henry did the honors.

To this day, Marguerite Henry remains one of the classic voices of animal stories written for children. A great many of her books remain in print and continue to be read; her legacy of heartwarming stories lives on.

Contributed by Anna Fiore: Anna is a 2021 graduate of SUNY-New Paltz, majoring in Communications, with a concentration in Public Relations and a minor in journalism.

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Marguerite Henry books on Bookshop.org* and Amazon*

More about Marguerite Henry

Major works

Auno and Tauno: A Story of Finland (1940)Dilly Dally Sally (1940)Birds at Home (1942)Geraldine Belinda (1942)Their First Igloo on Baffin Island (1943)A Boy and a Dog (1944)Justin Morgan Had a Horse (1945)The Little Fellow (1945)Robert Fulton, Boy Craftsman (1945)Always Reddy (1947); also published as Shamrock QueenBenjamin West and His Cat Grimalkin (1947)Misty of Chincoteague (1947)King of the Wind: the Story of the Godolphin Arabian (1948)Little-or-Nothing from Nottingham (1949)Sea Star, Orphan of Chincoteague (1949)Born To Trot (1950)Album of Horses (1951)Brighty of the Grand Canyon (1953)Wagging Tails: Album of Dogs (1955)Cinnabar, the One O’Clock Fox (1956)Misty, the Wonder Pony, by Misty, Herself (1956)Black Gold (1957)Muley-Ears, Nobody’s Dog (1959)Gaudenzia, Pride of the Palio (1960); also published as The Wildest Horse Race in the WorldAll About Horses (1962)Five O’Clock Charlie (1962)Stormy, Misty’s Foal (1963)Portfolio of Horse Paintings (1964)White Stallion of Lipizza (1964)Mustang, Wild Spirit of the West (1966)Dear Readers and Riders (1969); also published as Dear Marguerite HenryStories from Around the World (1971)San Domingo, the Medicine Hat Stallion (1972)A Pictorial Life Story of Misty (1976)Our First Pony (1984)Misty’s Twilight  (1992)Album of Horses: a pop-up book (1993)Brown Sunshine of Sawdust Valley  (1996)My Misty Diary (1997)

Selected film adaptations

Misty (1961)Brighty (1967)Justin Morgan Had a Horse (1972)King of the Wind  (1990)

More information and sources

Wikipedia Reader discussion of Marguerite Henry’s books on GoodReads Marguerite Henry biography Marguerite Henry: Forever Young  Washington Post: ‘Misty’ Author Marguerite Henry Dies at Age 95

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*Thesea are Bookshop Affiliate and Amazon Affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!

The post Marguerite Henry, Author of Misty of Chincoteague appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

The White Girl by Vera Caspary, Forgotten Contemporary of Nella Larsen’s Passing

Passing by Nella Larsen (1929) has staked an important place as a classic fictional work of race, class, sexuality, and identity. Thematically similar,The White Girl  by Vera Caspary, a white Jewish novelist and screenwriter, was published earlier that same year and is all but forgotten. This analysis of how this now-obscure novel relates to Nella Larsen’s enduring classic is excerpted from the forthcoming A Girl named Vera Can Never Tell a Lie: The Novels of Vera Caspary by Francis Booth.

In a career spanning 1929 to 1979, prolific novelist and screenwriter Vera Caspary wrote a series of compelling strong and amoral women. Her two most famous titular anti-heroines – Laura and Bedelia – were turned into successful Hollywood films of the noir genre in the 1940s.

 

Enthusiastic reception for The White Girl

The heroine of Caspary’s first, semi-autobiographical novel is neither strong nor amoral. The White Girl came out in January 1929 to very enthusiastic reviews and had run into a sixth edition by March of the same year, the month in which Nella Larsen published Passing to much more tepid reviews and poor sales.

As Caspary says in her autobiography (The Secrets of Grown-Ups), “there was a rumor that I was a Black girl who had written an autobiography.” She wasn’t. Despite the many strongly autobiographical elements in The White Girl, its heroine Solaria Cox is not Jewish like her author but is transposed to a light-skinned young Black woman, her “camellia-toned skin” pale enough to allow her to pass as white, which she does, as did many young Black women in Chicago and New York, the settings for both The White Girl and Passing.

In Larsen’s novel, Clare, whose father is a janitor like Solaria’s, passes as white so successfully that her white husband never suspects she is Black until later on when she reunites with an old friend who is involved in the (fictional) Negro Welfare League. When he finds out, the husband accuses Clare of being a “damned dirty n–!” Clare falls out of the window and dies, though it is not clear whether she was pushed or if she has killed herself rather than carry on with her life after her true racial heritage has been revealed.

 

Caspary’s Solaria and Larsen’s Clare

In The White Girl, Solaria has a Black family, and is striking and attractive to men of all races; like Clare, she “passes” successfully.

“She was a tall girl with a languorous fine figure, small hips, exquisite breasts and a narrow head carried high on a sensitive neck. Her wide-set dark eyes were dusky mirrors, mysterious, hardly alive. Her nose was straight and arrogant, set bravely above a short upper lip. With her fine black hair and white face, she looked as if she might be a Spanish aristocrat.”

In Larsen’s Passing, Clare’s friend Irene has a similar Hispanic look. ‘They always took her for an Italian, a Spaniard, a Mexican, or a Gypsy. Never, when she was alone, had they even remotely seemed to suspect that she was a Negro.”

Like Clare, their mutual friend Gertrude has married a white man. Irene reflects, “’Though it couldn’t be truthfully said that she was ‘passing.’ Her husband—what was his name? — had been in school with her and had been quite well aware, as had his family and most of his friends, that she was a Negro. It hadn’t, Irene knew, seemed to matter to him then. Did it now, she wondered.”

Irene does not herself consciously try to “pass” but she is curious about Clare and ‘this hazardous business of “passing,” this breaking away from all that was familiar and friendly to take one’s chance in another environment, not entirely strange, perhaps, but certainly not entirely friendly.’ When Clare asks Irene if she herself never thought of passing, Irene answers quickly “No. Why should I?”

For her own part, Irene finds that her annoyance at women who try to pass “arose from a feeling of being outnumbered, a sense of aloneness, in her adherence to her own class and kind; not merely in the great thing of marriage, but in the whole pattern of her life as well.” Irene feels that she is betraying her race by helping Clare hide her origin from her husband but is also reluctant to betray her friend in support of her race:

“… she shrank away from the idea of telling that man, Clare Kendry’s white husband, anything that would lead him to suspect that his wife was a Negro. Nor could she write it, or telephone it, or tell it to someone else who would tell him. She was caught between two allegiances, different, yet the same. Herself. Her race. Race! The thing that bound and suffocated her. Whatever steps she took, or if she took none at all, something would be crushed. A person or the race. Clare, herself, or the race. Or, it might be, all three.”

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Nella Larsen’s Passing is now widely read and studied;
while Caspary’s The White Girl has fallen into obscurity
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“The hazardous business” of passing

Vera Caspary’s ironically-titled The White Girl is also about the “hazardous business” of passing, and though it was published three months earlier than Larsen’s Passing and written several years earlier than that, it could be read as a long form of answer to Irene’s questions.

Of course, unlike Larsen (who was mixed race), Caspary wasn’t Black at all, but felt she had at least some credentials. The milieu in which The White Girl was written came at a time when Caspary was assistant editor of Dance Lovers magazine in New York, socializing outside work with a circle of Black male dancers, who unreservedly welcomed her into their bosom with no hint of prejudice. (In Passing, Irene says, “you’ve got to admit that the average colored man is a better dancer than the average white man.”) In her autobiography, Caspary says:

“In the face of their warm and generous friendship I was self-conscious with these new friends. In the beginning I found it harder to carry on a conversation with them than with foreigners who knew only a few English words. In high school I had never spoken to black kids and now I felt that my new friends could look through my pale flesh and see guilt.  

A word that hinted of flesh tints set me so on edge that I’d change the subject at once. They spoke easily of blacks and white people. One evening I sat with Pierce and a couple of his friends, telling jokes and speaking of many things, and suddenly he said, ‘Why, Miss Caspary, I forgot that you were white.’”

Despite, or perhaps because of deep-seated Jewish guilt, largely drawn from her mother, Caspary envisages a novel based on a girl she had known at school and whom she recalls many years later.

“One day I had read in a newspaper an item about a black girl passing as white. The idea touched a vulnerable spot: guilt, unconscious until then, suddenly become an irritation. In my class at high school there had been a girl so lovely that I could never forget her, a quiet beauty with flesh as white and opaque as a camellia, flawless features and eyes like sparkling jet. I had admired but never talked to her, never walked with her along the school corridor.

Why? Why the aloofness, the pretense of blindness, the deaf ear to black classmates?  . . . Why was I still self-conscious with such good friends as Billy Pierce and Buddy Bradley? Even more perplexing the question of how she felt about us, the whites who shunned her just as she shunned the blacks in the school. So she became the heroine of my story.  

Our experiences and characters were woven together. I knew her loneliness, her fears, hopes and shame; she shared my early jobs. I endured the snubs and insults of white people who believed themselves superior. When I walked on a crowded street or rode on the subway I was a black girl passing as white. She suffered and rejoiced as I had in love. I shed her childhood tears.”

 

Parallels with the Jewish experience

Like Caspary’s real-life Jewish family, Solaria’s family inhabits, both socially and geographically, the fluid borderline between Chicago’s Black and white communities, between the genteel, aspirational white lower-middle-class and the equally aspirational Black families who work in the twilight of the service economy, invisible to those they serve.

The Coxes live on a row of “three-story gray stone houses in Chicago, the longest standing family there apart from the family of Judge Nixon,” who owns them. Her father Desborough is “a gentleman who did janitor work” being caretaker to Judge Nixon’s row of houses. Her brother Lincoln is a lawyer but “hadn’t enough law business to support his wife and baby, so at nights he ran an elevator in the building where he shared an office with two other coloured lawyers.”

Substituting Caspary’s own liberal, non-observant Jewish background for the environment of a pale-skinned, educated, aspirational Black family, Solaria’s is the identical situation, both in terms of location and race relations, to Caspary’s own Chicago youth, though Caspary’s father seems to have been a much stronger character than Solaria’s – the opposite to what one might expect from a semi-autobiographical first novel. In her actual autobiography Caspary says:

“The street where I was born, Rhodes Avenue, later became the center of Chicago’s Black Belt. The first Blacks who came there rented the other half of our double house. There was an outcry by neighbors; petitions were circulated, indignant letters sent to the property-owners.

Papa led a small faction against the protestors—he had grown up as an Abolitionist in Wisconsin. It was his contention that our neighborhood was honored by the presence of Judge Barnett and his wife, Ida B. Wells Barnett, a lawyer and leader of social causes. What right had the neighbors to consider themselves superior? A judge and a woman lawyer could look down on merchants, salesmen, shopkeepers.”

 

Solaria’s aspirations

Solaria’s mother provides a warning to her as to the way she may end up. “Francia Cox was a shrill woman, bulky, aggressive. She was like Solaria, grown fat, grown wrinkled, grown into a machine for keeping a home clean and a family respectable.”

That is not the future Solaria wants for herself, she has far greater aspirations than marriage and motherhood, especially than marriage to a family friend, the brilliant young Black pianist called Eggers Benedict, a lover of Beethoven who aspires to be a composer and has interest from a music publisher. Eggers wants to marry Solaria and take her to New York with him, but she is not having it.

“’I’m going to be a great man, Solaria, a great composer.’ Solaria is not impressed. “You could have been a lawyer,” she says to him. “Even if you’re Beethoven I don’t want you.” Solaria is not going to marry a Black man, however cultured, however much he tells her “you’re the most beautiful woman alive.” Her outright racism comes as a profound shock.

At the start of the novel, Solaria is working for a Jewish dress manufacturer, a very select one – “Winkelberg’s was one of the fanciest wholesale dress houses in Chicago.” Solaria manages the stock room but has higher aspirations; she is “tired of the stock room. She had been there almost two years now and she was almost twenty. It was a shame for a girl to be a stock clerk at twenty – a girl who had gone through high school and could run a typewriter.”

Solaria aspires to be a secretary and gets an unexpected opportunity; one day she takes a letter while her boss’s secretary is at lunch and afterward stays seated at the secretary’s desk, “imagining herself in that exalted position.” But then another opportunity arises after one of the dress models is fired for insulting a Jewish customer. Blonde, arrogant, Aryan model Kathleen is virulently anti-Semitic.

“She could say anything about anybody. She had everything in the world but money, but a girl doesn’t need money to talk proud.”  Solaria “felt sorry for all people who had to bear the proud talk of Kathleen and her sort.” After Kathleen has left, Solaria is offered a chance to model the dresses. In her internalized racial and social hierarchy Solaria is transported to an entirely different world.

 

Segue into the Black world

But nothing comes of either the modeling or the secretarial opportunities and her boss’s secretary becomes even more distrustful of Solaria. She wants to leave but her father is ill, and the family need her earnings. When her father dies after his second heart attack, the tragedy seems to bring out the Black in her mother.

Her father’s death has the opposite effect on Solaria. ‘The funeral, with its ecstatic moaning and singing was too noisy to comfort Solaria. She knew that white people sneered at the negro’s violent, showy grief.”

The father leaves a surprising amount of money, which Solaria and her mother need, for they have to move out to make room for the judge’s new janitor. Solaria “did not want to live among colored people,” but they cannot afford the rents in the white areas. “If Solaria went apartment hunting alone in her neat dark mourning clothes, she was treated with great respect by the most Nordic of renting agents, “but as soon as her mother appears apartments have mysteriously been ‘rented an hour earlier.”

They end up moving to “a home among negroes,” which was what her mother preferred all along. Their new street had previously been grand but “now it was shabby and dilapidated. Second-hand tire stores, dirty lunchrooms, pool parlours, fly-specked candy shops … Prairie Avenue was a down-at-the-heel prostitute who had once been genteel.”

 

A move to New York City; becoming a white girl

After Mr. Winkleberg tries to kiss her, Solaria leaves Chicago and her mother to move to New York, where she takes a job as a typist and lives as a boarder in the apartment of a white woman in a grand building that even has an elevator, something that Solaria revels in. The Solaria who arrives in New York is not the same Solaria who left Chicago. She is now definitely passing.

“Solaria Cox was a white girl now. There had been no difficulty making the change. No one questioned her right to ride in a Pullman, to register at a downtown hotel, to take a room in a white woman’s house, to hold a job as a typist in a big office where only white girls worked. No one asked questions about a girl’s race or the complexion of her parents. Solaria was taken for an American girl with a Scotch family name and a queer given name, perhaps of the same Latin origin as her dark hair and eyes.”

In New York Solaria is “as lonely during the day when she sat among the noisy typewriters as at night when she sat alone in her bedroom.” Her only companion is her mature landlady, who lives “in an old lady’s world. All she knew was the physical and the small. For her life consisted of petty dangers and comforts, of small preferences and prejudices.”

Over the next eighteen months, Solaria finds a place for herself in the Big Apple. She takes up modeling for clothes catalogues, which is far less boring than typing, but only pays intermittently. And she is pursued relentlessly by her landlady’s son Oscar, who is married and lives in Cleveland but visits his mother occasionally. After many months of an on/off relationship, when they are finally alone, she lets Oscar kiss her but refuses to go any further.

“She was aching with regret at having yielded to his first kiss and she was filled with self-reproach for having encouraged him without intending to yield completely. Solaria was twenty-two now. And for many months she had been dancing with men to tantalizing music, she had been fighting with men over their kisses, she had been discussing and re-discussing the right and wrong of this ceaseless lovemaking.  

Her body ached with eagerness. But she would not acknowledge her need for a man. To yield meant to give a valuable reward to a man for his love. Solaria would not bestow such favor on any man who was not her husband. It was not a matter of abstract morality but a question of pride. If a man did not love Solaria Cox enough to make her his wife, he did not deserve the sacrifice of her chastity.”

Solaria is alone and constantly in debt, wondering why she did not marry the rich Black man in Chicago who wanted her so badly. “For the life of her she could not see what she had gained by passing.”

Solaria meets and moves in with two other models, the beautiful and sympathetic Dell and the spiteful Rita. There are jealousies, rows over men and in one bitterly blazing argument, Rita tells Solaria that Oscar has told her about Solaria’s race. In tones reminiscent of Clare’s husband in Nella Larsen’s Passing, Rita spits, ‘You’ve got n– blood in your veins; that’s what’s biting you, Solaria Cox … I never intended to tell you, but now, well, now it’s too good a joke to keep back. And you deserve it, you dirty n–.”

 

Falling for David from Scarsdale

After reaching a new emotional and financial low when the female household breaks up so acrimoniously, Solaria meets and falls in love with a moderately wealthy white man called David whose family is from snobby, ultra-white Scarsdale in Westchester County. She is constantly worried about her secret being uncovered, of having it revealed by Rita or Dell.

‘The intensity of her fear magnified every danger and as she walked through the quiet, unfriendly neighborhood, she felt the eyes of the passers-by studying her face as if they knew she was a Negro passing as a white girl.” David asks her to marry him and she is reconciled with Dell, now married to a wealthy, older Jewish businessman and just back from a trip to Europe with him.

Dell’s husband soon catches her in flagrante with a lover, and she moves in with Solaria. She is now a heroin addict and drains Solaria of all her money, even pawning her clothes and jewelery without contributing anything to the household. Worse, she introduces David to the heroin habit.

Solaria’s fear of her secret coming out comes to the surface when David wants to take her to a concert of the music of Eggers Benedict, the Black composer and family friend who wanted to marry her years earlier. He is now celebrated as a Gershwin-style American composer on the New York music scene. Solaria clearly does not want to go, fearing she might be recognized.

. . . . . . . . . 

Physical copies of The White Girl are quite rare and very costly.
You can read it in full on Hathitrust
. . . . . . . . . 

Does David know?

One of Solaria’s fears is of having children, lest they born with dark skin. But she cannot say this. David raises the subject: “Not that we’d have to worry about kids,” he says. Does he mean what Solaria thinks he means? Does he know? “We just can’t have kids. It wouldn’t be fair, you know, to the kids. I mean it wouldn’t be right, Solaria, to have them without giving them the right start. You know why, Solaria.”

She cries all the way home. “In her mind lived one thought. David knew. David knew she was a Negro.” But why has he deceived her? Because “he wanted to rule and dominate every minute of her life, to own every inch of her body … He had liked her ignorance; it had pleased him to make her feel conscious of her inferiority … Married to David she would have been no better than his mistress.”

She realizes that “in the world of white men and women there was no place for Solaria Cox. She must go back, go back at once to her mother and Lincoln and Emily; go back to the old way of living.” Solaria resolves “to confess herself a Negro again. She would live in Harlem and work as a Negro. She would find the right work for a good colored girl.”

She will not be able to work as a model, will never be able to learn the same amount of money. “It would not be possible for her to make fifty and sixty and seventy-five dollars a week as a colored girl.” But she cannot do it: the world of Black people is no longer home, any more than the world of white people now is.

“If she became a colored girl again she would have to give up everything she had attained, her work, her reputation, her friendships, her manner of living among white people, her freedom in going where she chose. It was not a willing sacrifice. She wanted to be a white woman and share the sweetness of the white woman’s world. But she knew she had failed. Her masquerade had been in vain.”

It later turns out that David did not mean what she thought he meant when he talked about the not having children – he was simply worried that his father’s insanity might be passed on. But by now it is too late: David has seen her with her brother, who is obviously not white.

Nella Larsen’s novel ends with tragedy as a result of Clare’s passing. Caspary had originally written an ending with what she called “a note of wry honesty.” The heroine, who had deceived and lost her lover had, like all working girls, to keep on with her job. But Caspary’s publisher didn’t like it and “wanted the story to end sensationally. Publishers and editors, I thought, must certainly be wiser than a young writer. I changed the ending.”

. . . . . . . . . .

Contributed by Francis Booth,* the author of several books on twentieth-century culture:

Amongst Those Left: The British Experimental Novel 1940-1960 (published by Dalkey Archive); Everybody I Can Think of Ever: Meetings That Made the Avant-Garde;  Girls in Bloom: Coming of Age in the Mid-Twentieth Century Woman’s Novel; Text Acts: Twentieth Century Literary Eroticism; and Comrades in Art: Revolutionary Art in America 1926-1938

Francis has also published several novels: The Code 17 series, set in the Swinging London of the 1960s and featuring aristocratic spy Lady Laura Summers; Young adult fantasy series The Watchers; and  Young adult fantasy novel Mirror Mirror. Francis lives on the South Coast of England. He is currently working on High Collars and Monocles: Interwar Novels by Female Couples.

. . . . . . . . . .

*This is an Amazon Affiliate link. If a product is purchased by linking through, Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!

The post The White Girl by Vera Caspary, Forgotten Contemporary of Nella Larsen’s Passing appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry (1947)

Marguerite Henry (1902–1997) was an American children’s book author who wrote fifty-nine novels based on true stories about horses and other animals. Her famous novel, Misty of Chincoteague (1947) was the first in a series of six stories centered around a wild palomino pony, named Misty.

Set in the island town of Chincoteague, Virginia, Henry’s novel is centered on Misty, her mother (Phantom), Paul Beebe, and Maureen Beebe. While the book is a work of fiction, the story is based on real people and ponies from Chincoteague Island.

In 1948, Henry’s novel received the Newbery Honor Award and went on to become a children’s classic, second only to Black Beauty. The book is a best-seller and has been reprinted over twenty times in hardcover. In 1897, Joan Nichols adapted the story into a series of children’s picture books.

 

A brief introduction

Misty of Chincoteague tells the story of Paul Beebe and his sister, Maureen, who live with their grandparents, Clarence and Ida Beebe, on Chincoteague Island. Paul and Maureen work on their grandfather’s farm to help him train and breed ponies while always dreaming of having a pony of their own someday.

Finally, after working numerous jobs, Paul and Maureen earn enough money to purchase a pony at the Pony Penning auction. The mare they purchase is named Phantom, and she has escaped the roundup men on Pony Penning Day for two years. Much to everyone’s surprise, Paul captures Phantom and her newborn foal Misty on the roundup.

Paul and Maureen decide to purchase Phantom and Misty at the auction. They spend the next year training Phantom to ride and keeping Misty out of trouble. The following year, Paul rides Phantom in the main race on Pony Penning Day. Phantom wins, but she becomes upset when she sees the herd she used to belong to being released to swim back to Assateague Island. She is released by Paul and gallops to join the herd as they return to their ancestral island in search of freedom, while Misty stays behind with Paul and Maureen.

. . . . . . . . . 

Marguerite Henry with the real Misty
. . . . . . . . .

Original 1947 review of Misty of Chincoteague

From the Chicago Tribune, November 16, 1947: “A wild, ringing neigh shrilled up from the hold of the Spanish galleon,” and we’re off to a fine start in this beautiful horse story from the talented author-artist combination who gave us Justin Morgan Had a Horse. The neigh came from one of a band of Moor ponies sent to Peru long years ago and shipwrecked off the Virginia coast. Legend has it that the wild ponies who, alone, inhabit Assateague Island today, are their descendants.

This is the story of two children, Paul and Maureen, who lived on their grandpa’s pony ranch on the nearby island of Chincoteague, and whose great desire was to own and tame one of these ponies, a mysterious wild mare names the Phantom, who had never been captured in the annual roundup. By a miracle it fell to Paul this year, on his first roundup ride, to help bring in not only the Phantom but her little colt, which he and Maureen named Misty because in the woods she had seemed like a bit of “white mist with the sun on it.”

The story tells how, after working hard to earn the money to buy both ponies, they almost lost them; how they cared for and trained them to the islanders’ amazement; and how Phantom won a race and was given her freedom. It all makes a fine tale for seven to fourteen-year-olds.

Based on true incidents and people on little-known Chincoteague, stories and pictures race along as light and as free as the wild ponies themselves, and the characters—with a special bow to Grandpa Beebe—are as salty and as real as the island life they lead and the sea air they breathe.”

The real Misty’s hoofprints. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
. . . . . . . . . . .

The Real Misty of Chincoteague

Marguerite Henry’s inspiration for the novel, Misty of Chincoteague, came from her personal travels to Chincoteague Island to see the annual Pony Roundup and Swim.

Misty was a twelve-hand palomino pinto pony owned by Clarence and Ida Beebe when Henry first met her. At first, Clarence denied Henry’s request to buy Misty from him and take her back home as the model for her new book. After Henry promised Clarence that she would include his grandkids, Paul and Maureen, in her manuscript, Misty was sold for $150 and delivered to Henry after being weaned from Phantom.

Misty remained with Henry for several years and appeared with her at numerous events for fans at schools, museums, and horse shows. Misty passed away in her sleep on October 16, 1972, at age twenty-six. As of 2015, there are two hundred known descendants of Misty.

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

1961 Film Adaptation

Misty, the first and only cinematic adaptation of Henry’s novel, was released on June 4, 1961. The film was directed by James Clark and written by Ted Sherdeman. Actors David Ladd, Arthur O’Connell, and Pam Smith starred in the film.

With a budget of $705,000, this 20th Century Fox film remains the same family classic it was in 1961 when it was one of the highest-grossing non-Disney family films of the year. On Rotten Tomatoes, 63 percent of audience members awarded it a 3.7 out of 5 rating, while a top critic called it a “faithful adaptation of the iconic children’s book.”

The majority of the movie was shot on the islands of Chincoteague and Assateague. While the events of Misty of Chincoteague are depicted in the film, Misty herself was not in the film, as she was too old to play the role of a young foal.

Misty did, however, make an appearance at the Island Theater in Chincoteague, VA, where she left her front hoofprints in cement in front of the theater’s entrance when the film initially premiered. Her hoofprints are still visible on the sidewalk today, where Henry inscribed Misty’s name in the cement beneath them.

. . . . . . . . . .

Miss Molly’s Inn at Chincoteague. Photo: Mistysheaven.com
. . . . . . . . . . .

Remembering Misty

After their deaths, Misty and her foal Stormy were taxidermized and put on display at the Museum of Chincoteague Island. They are the centerpieces of the display on Misty, which also includes artifacts and memorabilia from the Beebe Ranch.

Each year, there is still a Pony Penning Day and an auction in Chincoteague, VA. It takes place in July and attracts approximately 50,000 visitors who come to watch the ponies swim across the channel and parade down the street to the pony pens. You can even stay at Miss Molly’s Inn in Chincoteague, VA, where Henry penned part of her novel.

The time capsule buried alongside Misty’s statue at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky, will be opened on the 100th anniversary of her birth in 2046.

. . . . . . . . . . 

Misty of Chincoteague on Bookshop.org* and Amazon*
. . . . . . . . . .

Quotes from Misty of Chincoteague

Here is a brief selection of quotes from Marguerite Henry’s classic horse novel, Misty of Chincoteague:

“The ponies were exhausted, and their coats were heavy with water, but they were free, free, free!”

. . . . . . . . . .

“‘If you look close,’ he whispered, ‘you can see that wild critters have ‘No Trespassing’ signs tacked up on every pine tree.’”

. . . . . . . . . .

“Facts are fine, far as they go… but they’re like water bugs skittering atop the water. Legends, now — they go deep down and bring up the heart of a story.”

. . . . . . . . . .

“With Phantom and Misty things happened the other way around. Misty accepted human beings right from the start. Their hands felt good to her.”

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

“The roundup, the discovery of Misty, the swim across the channel-they all melted into this. The moments rushed on. The storm quieted.”

. . . . . . . . . .

“Maureen saw Misty stretched out at her mother’s feet. Her heart warmed at the sight of them.”

. . . . . . . . . .

“When they could eat no more, they pawed shallow wells with their hooves for drinking water. Then they rolled in the wiry grass, letting out great whinnies of happiness. They seemed unable to believe that the island was all their own. Not a human anywhere. Only grass. And sea. And the wind.”

. . . . . . . . . .

“This was it! This was the exciting smell that had urged them on. With wild snorts of happiness, they buried their noses in the long grass. They bit and tore great mouthfuls- frantically, as if they were afraid it might not last. Oh, the salty goodness of it! Not bitter at all, but juicy-sweet with rain.”

. . . . . . . . . .

Contributed by Anna Fiore: Anna is a 2021 graduate of SUNY-New Paltz, majoring in Communications, with a concentration in Public Relations and a minor in journalism.

. . . . . . . . . .

More about Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry:

Wikipedia Misty of Chincoteague History of Misty of Chincoteague Visit the Island Home of Misty of Chincoteague

. . . . . . . . . .

These are Bookshop Affiliate and Amazon Affiliate links. If a product is purchased by linking through, The Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!

The post Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry (1947) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Misty of Chincoteague (1947)

Marguerite Henry (1902–1997) was an American children’s book author who wrote fifty-nine novels based on true stories about horses and other animals. Her famous novel, Misty of Chincoteague (1947) was the first in a series of six stories centered around a wild palomino pony, named Misty.

Set in the island town of Chincoteague, Virginia, Henry’s novel is centered on Misty, her mother (Phantom), Paul Beebe, and Maureen Beebe. While the book is a work of fiction, the story is based on real people and ponies from Chincoteague Island.

In 1948, Henry’s novel received the Newbery Honor Award and went on to become a children’s classic, second only to Black Beauty. The book is a best-seller and has been reprinted over twenty times in hardcover. In 1897, Joan Nichols adapted the story into a series of children’s picture books.

 

A brief introduction

Misty of Chincoteague tells the story of Paul Beebe and his sister, Maureen, who live with their grandparents, Clarence and Ida Beebe, on Chincoteague Island. Paul and Maureen work on their grandfather’s farm to help him train and breed ponies while always dreaming of having a pony of their own someday.

Finally, after working numerous jobs, Paul and Maureen earn enough money to purchase a pony at the Pony Penning auction. The mare they purchase is named Phantom, and she has escaped the roundup men on Pony Penning Day for two years. Much to everyone’s surprise, Paul captures Phantom and her newborn foal Misty on the roundup.

Paul and Maureen decide to purchase Phantom and Misty at the auction. They spend the next year training Phantom to ride and keeping Misty out of trouble. The following year, Paul rides Phantom in the main race on Pony Penning Day. Phantom wins, but she becomes upset when she sees the herd she used to belong to being released to swim back to Assateague Island. She is released by Paul and gallops to join the herd as they return to their ancestral island in search of freedom, while Misty stays behind with Paul and Maureen.

. . . . . . . . . 

Marguerite Henry with the real Misty
. . . . . . . . .

Original 1947 review of Misty of Chincoteague

From the Chicago Tribune, November 16, 1947: “A wild, ringing neigh shrilled up from the hold of the Spanish galleon,” and we’re off to a fine start in this beautiful horse story from the talented author-artist combination who gave us Justin Morgan Had a Horse. The neigh came from one of a band of Moor ponies sent to Peru long years ago and shipwrecked off the Virginia coast. Legend has it that the wild ponies who, alone, inhabit Assateague Island today, are their descendants.

This is the story of two children, Paul and Maureen, who lived on their grandpa’s pony ranch on the nearby island of Chincoteague, and whose great desire was to own and tame one of these ponies, a mysterious wild mare names the Phantom, who had never been captured in the annual roundup. By a miracle it fell to Paul this year, on his first roundup ride, to help bring in not only the Phantom but her little colt, which he and Maureen named Misty because in the woods she had seemed like a bit of “white mist with the sun on it.”

The story tells how, after working hard to earn the money to buy both ponies, they almost lost them; how they cared for and trained them to the islanders’ amazement; and how Phantom won a race and was given her freedom. It all makes a fine tale for seven to fourteen-year-olds.

Based on true incidents and people on little-known Chincoteague, stories and pictures race along as light and as free as the wild ponies themselves, and the characters—with a special bow to Grandpa Beebe—are as salty and as real as the island life they lead and the sea air they breathe.”

The real Misty’s hoofprints. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
. . . . . . . . . . .

The Real Misty of Chincoteague

Marguerite Henry’s inspiration for the novel, Misty of Chincoteague, came from her personal travels to Chincoteague Island to see the annual Pony Roundup and Swim.

Misty was a twelve-hand palomino pinto pony owned by Clarence and Ida Beebe when Henry first met her. At first, Clarence denied Henry’s request to buy Misty from him and take her back home as the model for her new book. After Henry promised Clarence that she would include his grandkids, Paul and Maureen, in her manuscript, Misty was sold for $150 and delivered to Henry after being weaned from Phantom.

Misty remained with Henry for several years and appeared with her at numerous events for fans at schools, museums, and horse shows. Misty passed away in her sleep on October 16, 1972, at age twenty-six. As of 2015, there are two hundred known descendants of Misty.

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . .

1961 Film Adaptation

Misty, the first and only cinematic adaptation of Henry’s novel, was released on June 4, 1961. The film was directed by James Clark and written by Ted Sherdeman. Actors David Ladd, Arthur O’Connell, and Pam Smith starred in the film.

With a budget of $705,000, this 20th Century Fox film remains the same family classic it was in 1961 when it was one of the highest-grossing non-Disney family films of the year. On Rotten Tomatoes, 63 percent of audience members awarded it a 3.7 out of 5 rating, while a top critic called it a “faithful adaptation of the iconic children’s book.”

The majority of the movie was shot on the islands of Chincoteague and Assateague. While the events of Misty of Chincoteague are depicted in the film, Misty herself was not in the film, as she was too old to play the role of a young foal.

Misty did, however, make an appearance at the Island Theater in Chincoteague, VA, where she left her front hoofprints in cement in front of the theater’s entrance when the film initially premiered. Her hoofprints are still visible on the sidewalk today, where Henry inscribed Misty’s name in the cement beneath them.

. . . . . . . . . .

Miss Molly’s Inn at Chincoteague. Photo: Mistysheaven.com
. . . . . . . . . . .

Remembering Misty

After their deaths, Misty and her foal Stormy were taxidermized and put on display at the Museum of Chincoteague Island. They are the centerpieces of the display on Misty, which also includes artifacts and memorabilia from the Beebe Ranch.

Each year, there is still a Pony Penning Day and an auction in Chincoteague, VA. It takes place in July and attracts approximately 50,000 visitors who come to watch the ponies swim across the channel and parade down the street to the pony pens. You can even stay at Miss Molly’s Inn in Chincoteague, VA, where Henry penned part of her novel.

The time capsule buried alongside Misty’s statue at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky, will be opened on the 100th anniversary of her birth in 2046.

. . . . . . . . . . 

Misty of Chincoteague on Bookshop.org* and Amazon*
. . . . . . . . . .

Quotes from Misty of Chincoteague

Here is a brief selection of quotes from Marguerite Henry’s classic horse novel, Misty of Chincoteague:

“The ponies were exhausted, and their coats were heavy with water, but they were free, free, free!”

. . . . . . . . . .

“‘If you look close,’ he whispered, ‘you can see that wild critters have ‘No Trespassing’ signs tacked up on every pine tree.’”

. . . . . . . . . .

“Facts are fine, far as they go… but they’re like water bugs skittering atop the water. Legends, now — they go deep down and bring up the heart of a story.”

. . . . . . . . . .

“With Phantom and Misty things happened the other way around. Misty accepted human beings right from the start. Their hands felt good to her.”

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“The roundup, the discovery of Misty, the swim across the channel-they all melted into this. The moments rushed on. The storm quieted.”

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“Maureen saw Misty stretched out at her mother’s feet. Her heart warmed at the sight of them.”

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“When they could eat no more, they pawed shallow wells with their hooves for drinking water. Then they rolled in the wiry grass, letting out great whinnies of happiness. They seemed unable to believe that the island was all their own. Not a human anywhere. Only grass. And sea. And the wind.”

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“This was it! This was the exciting smell that had urged them on. With wild snorts of happiness, they buried their noses in the long grass. They bit and tore great mouthfuls- frantically, as if they were afraid it might not last. Oh, the salty goodness of it! Not bitter at all, but juicy-sweet with rain.”

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Contributed by Anna Fiore: Anna is a 2021 graduate of SUNY-New Paltz, majoring in Communications, with a concentration in Public Relations and a minor in journalism.

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More about Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry:

Wikipedia Misty of Chincoteague History of Misty of Chincoteague Visit the Island Home of Misty of Chincoteague

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Jan Morris, Travel Writer and Historian — an Introduction

Jan Morris (October 2, 1926 – November 20, 2020), the historian and travel writer, was born and mostly raised in England, but identified as Welsh. Renowned for the Pax Britannica trilogy, a history of the British Empire, she was also esteemed for her intimate and insightful portraits of several great cities of the world. 

Jan published under her birth name, James, before completing her transition to female in 1972. She was one of the first public figures to come out openly as transgender, making her a pioneer to the generations of trans writers (and others) who came after her. 

This introduction to the ideas and accomplishments of Jan Morris is excerpted from Mightier Than the Sword; Rebels, Reformers, and Revolutionaries Who Changed the World Through Writing by Rochelle Melander, illustrated by Melina Ontiveros. Copyright © 2021 Beaming Books. Reproduced by permission.

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Illustration of Jan Morris (and the others in this post)
by Melina Ontiveros
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While Mightier Than the Sword is intended for middle grade, its forty capsule biographies can be enjoyed by readers of any age, in tandem with the lively color illustrations. The book highlights how powerful writing can lead to positive change, encouraging young readers to pick up their own pens and use their voices. Learn more about this book following the excerpt, which starts here:

As a young child, Jan Morris experienced a conundrum. Assigned male and called James at birth, she remembered sitting under the piano while her mother played: “I was three or perhaps four years old when I realized that I had been born into the wrong body, and should really be a girl.” Jan “cherished this as a secret” for twenty years.

Jan felt different from other children. When her two older brothers left for school, she spent hours by herself wandering the hills around her house, watching ships through her telescope. She wrote:

“The instrument played an important part in my fancies and conjectures, perhaps because it seemed to give me a private insight into distant worlds, and when at the age of eight or nine I wrote the first pages of a book, I called it Travels with a Telescope, not a bad title at that.”

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Mightier Than the Sword is available on Bookshop.org*, Amazon*,
and wherever books are sold
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In her late teens, Jan joined the 9th Queens Royal Lancers and worked as a spy. She never felt at home in the army, thinking of herself as a “stranger and imposter.” But the experience gave her the opportunity to learn how to examine the world around her:

“For myself, I think I learnt my trade largely in the 9th Lancers, for I developed in that regiment an almost anthropological interest in the forms and attitudes of its society; and sitting there undetected, so to speak, I evolved the techniques of analysis and observation that I would later adapt to the writer’s craft.”

After the army, Jan delved into reporting. In 1953, The Times assigned her to cover Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay as they attempted to be the first to summit Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain. Jan climbed thousands of feet above base camp so that when the explorers reached the top, she could race to the bottom and phone in the scoop. 

In 1956, Jan received a fellowship to travel and write. She visited every state in the United States and wrote the book, Coast to Coast. She went on to write about many more places, including The World of Venice (1960) and The Presence of Spain (1965). Jan became known for portraying the personality of places, describing their characteristics with rich language. 

As Jan tackled one of her biggest professional projects, a three-volume history of the British Empire, she also explored her lifelong conundrum. Because how she felt on the inside (her gender identity) didn’t match the sex she was assigned at birth, Jan’s feeling of being born in the wrong body never left her. 

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More Jan Morris quotes and wisdom

She described gender as being “the essentialness of oneself.” And as long as she lived as a man, she felt out of sync with herself. At this time, Jan began transitioning from male to female. She chronicled this process in her book, Conundrum: 

“To myself I had been a woman all along, and I was not going to change the truth of me, only discard the falsity. … I embarked upon it only with a sense of thankfulness, like a lost traveler finding the right road at last.”

Jan wrote for the rest of her life, publishing more than 40 books. She answered all of her mail and penned encouraging notes to aspiring writers: “Don’t worry about rejection slips, everyone gets them. Experience everything.”

Contributed by Rochelle Melander: Rochelle is a speaker, a professional certified coach, and the founder of Dream Keepers, a writing workshop that encourages young people to write about their lives and dreams for the future. Rochelle wrote her first book at seven and has published eleven books for adults. Mightier Than the Sword is her debut book for children. She lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Visit her at Write Now Coach.

 

Other trans writers who came after Jan Morris

Lisa Bunker

Kacen Callendar

Raquel Willis 
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More about Mightier Than the Sword

Throughout history, people have picked up their pens and wielded their words—transforming their lives, their communities, and beyond. Now it’s your turn! Representing a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences, Mightier Than the Sword connects over forty inspiring biographies with life-changing writing activities and tips, showing readers just how much their own words can make a difference. 

Readers will explore nature with Rachel Carson, experience the beginning of the Reformation with Martin Luther, champion women’s rights with Sojourner Truth, and many more. 

These richly illustrated stories of inspiring speechmakers, scientists, explorers, authors, poets, activists, and even other kids and young adults will engage and encourage young people to pay attention to their world, to honor their own ideas and dreams, and to embrace the transformative power of words to bring good to the world.

Sources and more information

Conundrum by Jan Morris (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974) “Experience Everything” by Simon Winchester (American Scholar, December 5, 2020)“Jan Morris: The Art of the Essay, No. 2” (The Paris Review, Issue 143, Summer 1997)

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See more fascinating literary musings on this site.

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All This, and Heaven Too by Rachel Field (1938)

All This, and Heaven Too is the evocative title of Rachel Field’s 1938 historical novel, based on the life of her great-aunt Henriette Deluzy Desportes. Though she passed away prematurely, Field manage to produce a prodigious array of works in several genres, including children’s books (notably the award-winning Hitty: Her First Hundred Years), poetry, plays, and novels.

If the title seems familiar, it may be in part thanks to the widely praised 1940 film of the same name starring Bette Davis in the role of the novel’s heroine. 

Originally published by the Macmillan Company, The Chicago Review Press republished the book in 2003, some years after it had fallen into relative obscurity. Here’s a brief description  from the later edition:

“This number-one bestselling novel is based on the true story of one of the most notorious murder cases in French history. The heroine, Henriette Deluzy-Desportes, governess to the children of the Duc de Praslin, found herself strangely drawn to her employer; when the Duc murdered his wife in the most savage fashion, she had to plead her own case before the Chancellor of France in a sensational murder trial that helped bring down the French king. 

After winning her freedom, Henriette took refuge in America, where she hosted a salon visited by all the socialites of New York and New England. This thrilling historical romance, full of passion, mystery, and intrigue, has laid claim to the hearts and minds of readers for generations.”

The first portion of the novel takes place in France and details the years that Henriette spent in the Praslin household as the beloved governess of the younger of the Duc and Duchess’s nine children. In exquisitely wrought prose, it richly imagines life in the upper echelons of early 19th-century Paris. Henriette grows accustomed to the comforts of such a life, even as an employee, but never forgets the straitened circumstances from which she rose.

After the Duc murders his wife and takes his own life, Henriette’s fall from grace is complete, but she never loses her dignity and devotion to the truth. What makes the novel all the more remarkable is that Field recreated real-life events with such skill and managed to maintain suspense in the retelling of a historical event  A quick peek at the Duc of Praslin’s Wikipedia page confirms the story’s basis in real life events. Even Henriette Deluzy Desportes merits her own Wikipedia page, because the sensational case led, indirectly, to the second French Revolution of 1948.

Henriette was fortunate enough to gain passage to the U.S. as a way to escape her notoriety (though it couldn’t help but follow her). The devoted Henry Martyn Field, some ten years Henriette’s junior (they never had children of their own), was a scion of an established family from Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Both Henriette and Rachel Field, the great-niece who authored this book, are laid to rest there. 

The first two-thirds or so of All This, and Heaven Too, read like a great 19th-century novel. The narrative offers rich detail and drama, without being overwrought. The final third, however, once she and Mr. Field are happily married and ensconced in Stockbridge, I found to be incredibly anticlimactic. This is unsurprising, since the climax and denouement happen before Henriette leaves France. I would have preferred the last one hundred fifty or so of the nearly six hundred pages to have been condensed into an epilogue. 

Still, this is a book worthy of a place as a mid-twentieth century classic, with a nod to its author, Rachel Field, who deserves to be read and remembered much more than she is today. All This, and Heaven Too received nearly universal praise when it was published in 1938; here are two typical reviews from the period.

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More about Rachel Field in this biography/memoir by Robin Clifford Wood
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Fascinating Woman Is Heroine of This Novel

From the original review in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (St. Louis, Missouri) sat, Oct 22, 1938: The adage that truth is stranger than fiction dares to be is strikingly illustrated in Rachel Field’s new novel. The historical basis of her story is the notorious Praslin murder in France in 1847, a crime which not only filled the newspapers of both continents at the time and inspired several books, but which had repercussions on the throne of France.

However, the cold skeleton of historical truth alone does not make a great novel. It must be imbued with the warm, glowing flesh of life, and in doing this Miss Field presents the portrait of’ a remarkable woman—Henriette Deluzy Desportes. Henriette is impressive, both in fiction and in real life. 

She was the great-aunt of the author by marriage, and this is the story of her life. She was a woman of warm personal charm and she possessed the quiet courage and the serenity of character to survive the “transplanting of a life uprooted from obscurity by an avalanche of passion and violence and class hatred.”

Henriette’s story, like her life, is divided into two parts. The first, and by far, the most dramatic, is the story of Mademoiselle Deluzy, the governess in the ill-fated household of the Duc and Duchesse de Praslin. Through no fault of her own she is drawn into the web of scandal which culminates in the slaying of the Duchesse and the nightmare of inquisition and prejudice which followed.

To give reality and contemporaneousness to the past is not an easy task, add it is a tribute to Miss Field’s skill that the reader never has the impression of merely listening to a story, but shares with Henriette her thoughts and emotions during those trying years.

The second half of the story tells of Henriette’s flight to America to escape the notoriety which beat about her ears in France, and of her adjustment to a new and strange world. Before she left France she met Henry Field, a young minister and the brother of Cyrus Field, who laid the Atlantic cable. After a year of teaching in a New York girls’ school, she married him. 

Miss Field reveals with sympathetic insight the love story of this unusual Frenchwoman and her New England husband who was ten years her junior. In the years that follow we meet many of the well-known figure of that period, William Cullen Bryant, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Fanny Kemble, Peter Cooper, and Rachel, the noted French tragedienne. The story carries Henriette’s life down to shortly before her death in 1875.

All This, and Heaven, Too is in many respects Miss Field’s best work. It is projected on a much broader canvas than Time Out of Mind and tells a far more dramatic story. Its only weakness is

that the climax comes in the middle of the book, but this doesn’t break the continuity of the story. It has the same sense of intimacy of her previous work and reveals in even more impressive fashion her skill in character delineation. 

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All This, and Heaven Too on Amazon*
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Miss Field’s Remarkable Great-Aunt

From The Kansas City Star, October 22, 1938: Rachel Field’s great-aunt Henriette Desportes was a favorite of the men during her eventful life. She had much less success winning feminine sympathy in her Victorian period. Now preserved brilliantly in print, she undoubtedly will command admiring attention from both men and women. She deserves a place up front among the 19th-century heroines in American fiction. 

Her story makes one of the best novels of 1938, a book that contains all the ingredients required of a bestseller, yet one that possesses genuine literary merit.

Henriette Desportes was a real person, a figure in a great scandal that shook the French empire in 1847. After that, she came to the United States and was married to Henry M. Field, a New England minister who was editor of a religious periodical in New York. In her later years, Henriette was a figure in literary New York.

Painstaking historical research went into the making of this book. In choosing to cast Henriette’s story in the form of a novel, the author created large difficulties for herself — problems of plot, structural organization, continuity, and characterization. She has mastered them all, producing a vivid period piece, an arresting character study, and a narrative that maintains suspense and sustained interest. 

The scandal in which Henriette was involved is the tragedy of the Duc and Duchesse of Praslin. The story begins as Henriette is hired as governess of the younger children of the unhappy couple, in their lavish home. Did the Doc finally kill his jealous, mentally unbalanced wife? Though he has concocted an alibi, he also poisons himself and slowly dies. 

Henriette, whose name has been linked with that of the Duc in malicious gossip, is arrested as an instigator of the crime. The case becomes one of the most talked-about national scandals in the agitated days before the second French Revolution of 1848.

The sensational murder inquiry, in which Henriette wins her freedom through her courage and eloquence, is a dramatic high point that serves as the climax of this unusual woman’s life in France. It is the stormy prelude to the richly serene years of Henriette’s life in the United States. Seeking refuge in obscurity, she comes to this country as a teacher and finds a useful place for herself as the wife of Henry M. Field, an American minister who had first met her on a visit to Paris.

Miss Field has told each of the two contrasting parts of Henriette’s story with equal facility. The first part is a detailed, intimate account of the maturing of a young woman cast in a strange situation. Tempted by the love of a charming nobleman whose home she has become indispensable, threatened by the jealousy of the Duc’s wife, she is a warmhearted and steadfast figure. 

In the last part of the book, she is a sensitive yet sensible woman making a success of life with Henry Field, the man she loves, taking part in the intellectual growth of the country. Both parts of the portrait fit together, showing the fair face of courage, self-reliance, dignity, warm human feeling, and joy in the good things of life.

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Stream the 1940 film adaptation on Amazon*
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Remembering the What Katy Did Series by Susan Coolidge

There are some books from one’s schoolgirl years that stay with you, and the What Katy Did series by Susan Coolidge (1835–1905) certainly falls into that category for me. I read and re-read those books through many vacations. Before realizing it, the actions of favorite characters begin to have an effect on me, as the reader. 

The American author of the What Katy Did series (five books in all) was born Sarah Chauncey Woolsey but gained fame with her pen name, Susan Coolidge. The first book of her Katy Did series was published in 1872. 

What Katy Did deals with the adventures of twelve-year-old Katy Carr, who lives with her Aunt Izzie (after having lost her mother at the age of five), her father, Dr. Carr (a hardworking doctor, who is away from home for long spells), three sisters, and two brothers. Her friend, Cecy, also plays an important role in the first novel. 

A typical gangly and gauche tomboy

Many twelve-year-olds would most likely identify with Katy at that age — a gangly tomboy who manages to tear her dresses regularly and resents the very idea of being told to be “a good little girl,” by Aunt Izzie when she is actually dreaming about doing “something grand.” 

Of course, she is also full of self-doubt about being gauche in appearance and feeling unloved. This preoccupation with not looking good is probably part of growing pains but when you think back, you wonder whether the regular descriptions about people’s looks could be internalized by preteens.

To the despair of Aunt Izzie, Katy is always tearing about the place and getting into fights with her siblings or her friend, Cecy, even as she cooks up wild games for them all to play. All this undergoes a change when Katy falls off a swing and suffers a spinal injury, with the possibility of being laid up in bed for the rest of her life.

 

Enter Cousin Helen

Here’s where my favorite character, Katy’s Cousin Helen, enters the picture and turns out to be a great emotional bulwark. Herself an invalid who uses a wheelchair, Cousin Helen is the embodiment of kindness and good cheer and helps Katy negotiate her condition and come to terms with it by attending the “School of Pain.” 

There is a transference of Cousin Helen’s sweetness to Katy, and much as one might identify with the naughty Katy, even as a young reader, it’s natural to feel admiration for Cousin Helen’s goodness in the face of adversity. This could well be the dichotomy of human nature, which wants to break free of constraints and expectations, and at the same time embrace altruism and goodness. 

Fortunately, Katy recovers from her injury, and towards the end of this book becomes all that Aunt Izzie wishes her to be. The fire of imagination hasn’t left her, but she is no longer at loggerheads with her siblings. She is a calmer person, more capable around the house. A nineteenth-century writer of stories for young girls can’t be faulted for ending a story on a note of conformity, because that was the expected outcome for those times. 

 

What Katy Did at School

The second of the series, What Katy Did at School (1873), follows the still high-spirited Katy through her time at a New England boarding school. There, she and her sister, Clover, get used to making a slew of new friends, participating in schoolgirl capers, and confronting issues of ethics. Katy has to face unjust accusations and learn how to deal with them. 

The letters from home and constant reference to their large family help Katy and Clover handle some rough times. Moral lessons come into play, but are handled in a way that holds the attention of young adults. The story moves forward with notions of what young women of those times were expected to be, but the author manages to hold the interest of later generations of readers nevertheless.

 

What Katy Did Next

The final book in the series, What Katy Did Next (1886) becomes a lot more exciting, as a widowed friend of the family, Mrs. Polly Ashe, invites Katy to join her for a vacation to Europe as a traveling companion for herself and her daughter, Little Polly. 

Reluctant at first to leave her large family behind, Katy, now twenty-one, is persuaded by her father to make the trip, and Dr. Carr gives her three hundred dollars for her travel expenses. Before her travels, Katy makes a stop at Boston where all the girls from the school at Hillsover have a grand reunion. Soon after, it’s time for departure to England, accompanied by a bout of seasickness.

The sights and sounds of Europe make for interesting reading, as also the discovery that “good weather” in England means the absence of rain and that the muffins that sound so scrumptious in the Dickens’ novels are disappointing when actually tasted. 

This is the book in which Katy discovers the true love of her life, Mrs. Ashe’s brother. He must have been a memorable character, as I was surprised that so many years after reading the book, I could still recall his name, Ned Worthington. 

Supposedly, the Katy Did series was modeled on Coolidge’s own (Woolsey) family, with Katy inspired by Susan herself, lending the stories their magic. The Little Carrs were based on the characters of her four siblings. The family house in Cleveland, Ohio, is said to have provided the setting for the home of the Carrs in the first book.

Many readers have identified with Katy Carr, perhaps explaining why this series may still be attracting the attention of an international audience of young readers. 

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The complete Katy series on bookshop.org* and Amazon*
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Contributed by Melanie P. Kumar: Melanie is a Bangalore, India-based independent writer who has always been fascinated with the magic of words. Links to some of her pieces can be found at gonewiththewindwithmelanie.wordpress.com.

More about the What Katy Did series

Two related books about Katy’s younger siblings followed the trilogy of What Katy Did books. These were Clover and In the High Valley.

Ongoing book, film, and television adaptations have kept this series before readers’ (and viewers’) eyes, long after the original books were published. The first adaptation for media was the 8-part UK series aired in 1962. Katy (1972) was the first feature film adaptation, made and released in the UK as well. What Katy Did was a 1999 American film starring the versatile actress Alison Pill.

Katy by Jacqueline Wilson (2015) is a contemporary retelling in book form. This, in turn, became a British television adaptation that aired in 2017.

Susan Chauncey Woolsey, writing as Susan Coolidge, is by far best remembered for the What Katy Did series. But she was an incredibly prolific author of works for children, including novels, short stories, and poems. Here is a complete listing of her works.

Wikipedia Full text of What Katy Did at Project Gutenberg Reader discussion on Goodreads Listen to What Katy Did on Librivox

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