Betsy's Up-And-Down Year

Latsch Valley Farm #5

by Anne Pellowski, Wendy Watson (Illustrator)

Betsy, who lives on a Wisconsin farm with her parents and nine brothers and sisters, learns to cope with braces, family conflict, and the death of her grandfather

160 pages, Paperback

First published October 28, 1983

Reviews

[Allison]

Pure comfort read, nothing exciting or scandalous. Just a cozy, sweet story.

[Tirzah]

That's the end of this lovely series. Ms. Pellowski is still traveling and storytelling; maybe someday I will have the opportunity to listen to her. If not, I am still glad to have read her books!

Recommend to approx. 2nd grade+ and family/classroom read alouds.

[Cheryl]

I read (and enjoyed) the author's other books about Polish families, but kept passing this up because the title and cover are...well...pretty preschoolish. I'm glad I gave it a try. It's another fun book about a very large Polish family in the US seen through the eyes of one of the girls. I tossed my notion about it being too kiddy a few dozen pages into reading. The author didn't dumb down the vocabulary for young readers. Those first pages included the words exasperation, susceptible, inquisitive, inevitable, and an explanation of sibling rivalry as well as a mention of Pandora's box.