The ending of Betsy and Joe, for instance, circles back to the beginning of Heaven to Betsy, as Betsy’s two journeys to Butternut Center mirror each other in heartwarming precision. I still tend to think of the four high school books as one cohesive volume that tells a single story from beginning to end. Suffering from a nasty cold, I read all four high school books in a matter of days, spirinting through each one so quickly that they began to blur together in a cozy whirlwind of brass bowls, Rhetoricals, green stationery, essay contests, and Okto Deltas. Nevertheless, I picked up Heaven to Betsy again the spring I turned fifteen. I went back to rereading the first familiar four. But it was quite a shock to find that so many changes had taken place-moving to High Street! No more yellow cottage! Tib in Milwaukee! Betsy struggling to adapt to a new neighborhood! It was not to be borne. When I was thirteen, I endeavored to read Heaven to Betsy-the first of the series that depicts Betsy’s experiences in high school. As a child, I spent countless hours copying the Lois Lenski illustrations in painstaking pencil, acting out the scenes with my dolls, and writing endless fan fiction on an old computer. I grew up reading and rereading the first four books in this classic series of an imaginative girl growing up in the early 1900s, which were published in the 1940s and ‘50s. In fact, I can’t even remember a time when I didn’t count Betsy Ray and Tacy Kelly among my best book friends. I discovered the work of Maud Hart Lovelace at a very young age.

Betsy tacy series