Does Anybody Care About Lou Emma Miller?

Miller Girls #3

by Alberta Wilson Constant

A 15-year-old makes several discoveries about human nature while helping the local suffragettes elect the first woman mayor of Gloriosa, Kansas.

Genres: Middle Grade

Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Katie Fitzgerald · Rating 4 out of 5]

My big Christmas surprise from my husband this year was a used (and signed) copy of this hard-to-find sequel to Those Miller Girls! (This is the third book. I have yet to read the second.) Lou Emma is now fifteen, and she and her sister, Maddy, age fourteen, live with their father, their stepmother, Miss Kate, and a three-year-old half-brother, Barney. The buzz around their adopted hometown of Gloriosa, Kansas is that for the first time a woman, Mrs. Lavinia Biddle, is running for mayor. All of the Millers support her candidacy wholeheartedly, and Lou Emma even has an idea for a cause that Mrs. Biddle can incorporate into her campaign platform. Unfortunately, though, Mrs. Biddle is not interested in Lou Emma's idea of opening a public library, and Lou Emma must take matters into her own hands in order to get the idea noticed.

Like the later Betsy-Tacy books, this is a novel with more teen concerns than childish ones. Lou Emma has all the self-confidence issues that often plague adolescence and they influence everything from her relationships with her dad, her sister, and her stepmom, to her budding romance with Tommy Biddle and her rivalry with obnoxious schoolmate Zetta Colby. Through the course of the book, though, Lou Emma begins to find her voice and come of age, but in a very organic and wholesome way. There is some teen rebelliousness in this book (mostly on Zetta's part), and even a bit of a catfight but nothing to scandalize a younger reader very much. I would consider it a "clean" teen read.

This book lacks some of the appeal of the first book of the series. Because Lou Emma is older and struggling to understand her parents at times, there isn't as much light-hearted family repartee in this book, and Mr. Miller seems to fade into the background a bit now that the family is larger. But there is some very realistic tension between Lou Emma and Maddy and a wonderful friendship with an ornery algebra teacher that pick up the slack. The book also imparts a lot of information about women's suffrage and early feminism (the only kind I can even try to tolerate) and gives some interesting insight into how libraries got started back in the beginning of the 20th century.

I'm really curious about that second book, The Motoring Millers, and I hope I will find it someday so that I can see how all three work together as a trilogy. But I am pleased to have read the last book of the Millers' adventures, and I'm planning to save the book for my own girls to enjoy when they are young teens.

This review also appears on my blog, Read-at-Home Mom.

[Michael Fitzgerald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surprisingly well done sequel. I haven't been able to read the second in the series, but this maintained the high standard established by the first book. Set in the early twentieth century, it manages to connect with modern readers without seeming anachronistic, as do so many recent attempts at historical fiction. There is a lot in here that feels very much like the direct antecedent of The Penderwicks, but this is much better written and it (thankfully) lacks the moral ambiguity of that series.

The idea of a community library plays an important ongoing part in this book, and a number of specific titles are mentioned:

The Pilgrim's Progress (1678)
Swiss Family Robinson (1812, though certainly in a later English translation)
Two Years Before the Mast (1840)
The Song of Hiawatha (1855)
Les Misérables (1862)
St. Elmo (1866)
The Moonstone (1868)
Little Women (1869)
Little Men (1871)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
Treasure Island (1883)
The Black Arrow (1888)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)
The Poetry of Robert Burns (1896)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
Billy Whiskers: The Autobiography of a Goat (1902)
The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1908)
A Girl of the Limberlost (1909)
Tom Swift (1910 - specific volume not named)

also an unnamed "seven-pound dictionary".

A 20-volume set of the Young People's Library is specified, although it seems the smallest set was still 23 volumes in its first format from 1895.

Julius Caesar's Gallic War and Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire are mentioned too. The only fictional title named is Professor Miller's own A Look at Early Roman History.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

This third book of the Miller Girls trilogy is really quite good, but I'm giving it 3 stars because I don't like it quite as much as the other two. Lou Emma's anxiety over whether Tommy Biddle likes her is rather tedious, and the mayoral election that takes up much of the plot doesn't really interest me. It also bothers me slightly (probably more than it would other people), when an author doesn't seem to care much about keeping track of the time frame of the books in a series. In this case, at one point Lou Emma reflects that it's been three years since the family road trip to Colorado, when clearly it's been four (because her little half brother Barney is three and a half, and Kate was pregnant on the trip, but not yet visibly so) . Since we were specifically told it was 1909 in the first book that means it was 1910 in the second, and thus this one takes *really* takes place in the fall of 1914, so WWI should have been mentioned, however briefly in passing, but I suppose the author was vaguely thinking it was 1913, if she thought about the year at all. Now that I've gotten that off my chest, the book does get bonus points for Lou Emma's quest to start a library for her small town, her rereading of a beloved copy of Little Women, and the blossoming of her unexpected alliance with her cranky elderly algebra teacher.

[Leslie Cernosek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another re-read from junior high and I still love Lou Emma. Set over 100 years ago and written over 30 years ago, Lou Emma’s feelings are still relatable and I loved her desire to have a library. I never knew this was part of a trilogy, but it looks like I’ll never get my hands on the other books!

[Tirzah · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice finish to The Miller Girls series.

There were two pages that bothered me - Lou Emma looks at her pillow during one of her dramatic moments and wonders if she could smother herself with it. The other page I could not find when I went back to get details, but it is something along the lines of her looking down at a bridge and thinking her problem would be gone if she jumped. I realize this is all part of Lou Emma's developing and learning to get through trying times and in no way is the book condoning these actions. Yet with the way society is today and teen mental affliction on the rise, I wanted to make readers aware of those two pages.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of my favorite books of all time was "The Motoring Millers", but I don't even remember this one. I got it recently because it was by the same author and didn't realize it was about the same family. It is a good one, with a good heart, and a good lesson in standing up for women.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

A realistic story about growing up, school and crushes.

[Kristi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was cleaning out my basement and came upon my time worn copy of this book that I had loved as a child. A lovely story for young girls-- and for me, a reminder of how far women have come in the last century.