Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy by Anna Boyd Rioux

MEG, JO, BETH, AMY by Anna Boyd Rioux offers a fascinating look at the history and characters from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women as that book approaches its sesquicentennial. This is a scholarly work where Rioux, a professor at the University of New Orleans, provides helpful background on Alcott’s life and outlines some of the origins for and the parallels with characters in her classic novel. Providing ample examples and analyses, Rioux encourages readers to question whether Little Woman is a “rebellious tale of one young woman’s resistance to the restrictions of her era, or a dispiriting portrait of her capitulation to the status quo.” Rioux definitely laments the idea that Alcott’s novel is rarely taught in schools today; in fact, she subtitles her study “The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters” and describes Alcott’s book as “a fable of growing up female.” The potentially controversial feminist interpretation, preference for contemporary texts and concerns about a crisis in boys’ reading are all reasons that Rioux cites for fewer classroom lessons on Little Women.

Rioux calls Little Women “the most widely beloved story of girlhood” and says “what appears to be a sweet, light story of four girls growing up is also very much about how hard it was (and is) to come of age in a culture that prizes a woman’s appearance over her substance.” Additional perspective on MEG, JO, BETH, AMY is provided by Wall Street Journal reviewer Meghan Cox Gurdon whose own book, The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction will be available early next year. Both Booklist and Library Journal gave Rioux’s MEG, JO, BETH, AMY starred reviews.