Sophomore year:Īt year’s end, conflicts develop. And here the plot thickens: By amazing coincidence, the owner of the farm knows Julia’s Uncle Jervis-“Master Jervie” to her-from way back.
Daddy-Long-Legs arranges for her to stay on a farm. ( Spoiler: She passes.) And, unlike Harry Potter, she is not dumped back in the orphanage each summer.
She does make the basketball team-Julia, neener-neener, doesn’t-but she also fails two classes, and has to retake her exams. One of Judy’s most appealing traits is that she’s not perfect. An indoor arena meant the young ladies wouldn’t get wet or muddy-and if they built up an unbecoming glow, you could always lock out everyone but close friends and relatives. (“I’m little of course, but terribly quick and wiry and tough.”) Did you know that girls in 1911 played basketball? They sure did in fact the sport was tailor-made for them. Judy goes out for the freshman basketball team. So there’s your two Potential Men, right off the bat. They both have their uses, though, as Sallie has a nice brother at Princeton named Jimmie, while Julia has a nice uncle named Jervis. We meet Judy’s roommates: Sallie McBride who is nice, and Julia Pendleton who is stuck-up. The moment she arrives at college, she informs everyone that her name is now Judy. ( Spoiler: She never did.) But Jerusha Abbott is another story. I once read a 20th-century novel whose heroine was named Beulah, and kept waiting for the author to jump out and say Haha, just kidding, it’s really Betty. Everything from his end is relayed through a secretary.ĭo you dread the prospect of, well, Jerusha? I feel your pain. In fact he never writes back it’s a strictly one-sided correspondence. One of her first letters includes the impassioned query “ ARE YOU BALD?” No reply. He refuses to give any information about himself, asking her to call him Mr. Our heroine gives her benefactor the name “Daddy-Long-Legs” because all she has ever seen of him is a tall shadow. Her letters-with wonderfully crude stick-figure illustrations-make up the rest of the book. The only condition: She must write to him regularly. In fact he is so amused, he arranges for Jerusha to go to college to be educated as a writer. The management are Not Amused … but one of the trustees is. It is not that kind of book.) In her last year of high school she writes an essay about “Blue Wednesday”, the day the orphanage’s trustees come to visit. ( Spoiler alert: We never learn who she “really” is. Jerusha Abbott was raised in an orphanage. Therefore, do not look at it with modern eyes. If you look at it with modern eyes, you may find something creepy and even stalkerish in the way the love story plays out. Trigger warning: Daddy-Long-Legs came out in 1911. She died relatively young Daddy-Long-Legs is her best-known book. Jean Webster-Alice Jane Chandler Webster (1876-1916) if you want to be stuffy about it-was a grandniece of Mark Twain, and it shows. If you’d like to submit your reasons for loving and keeping a particular book for Squee from the Keeper Shelf, please email Sarah! Despite flaws, despite changes in age and perspective, despite the passage of time, we love particular books beyond reason, and the only thing better than re-reading them is telling other people about them. Squee from the Keeper Shelf is a feature wherein we share why we love the books we love, specifically the stories which are permanent residents of our Keeper shelves.
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