The following post includes affiliate links. More details here.  As you’re doing your Amazon shopping, we’d be ever so grateful if you’d use our affiliate link to do so as it helps pay the bills around here!

Today’s post is not going to run like a typical Thursday book review and opinion piece. This is the Thursday that we’re fitting in the several modern versions/retellings of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott that we’ve read or put on our TBR, including novels about the Alcott family. Regardless of our ability to read all the books, we can not wait for you to join us TOMORROW for Virtual Book Club where we will be discussing the original in all its literary and cinematic glory. As Amy March would say, we’ll start precipitously at 7:30 p.m. CST on Friday December 11th for those who sign up here. 

Most readers of Little Women in the United States realize that the book they read is rather large, between 500 – 600 printed pages, and that the book is broken up into two volumes, Little Women and Good Wives. The reasoning behind that is that in the United Kingdom when Volume Two was produced the publisher wanted a title and they published it under the title Good Wives. Alcott had nothing to do with that decision, and in 1880 both volumes were published together in the United States as the Little Women story we know and love today. However, Little Women and Good Wives are still being published separately in the United Kingdom and Canada. (What’s up with that, eh?!) Thankfully, Alcott did write two official sequels to Little Women, Little Men and Jo’s Boys.

Little Men, or Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys was published in 1871, two years after the second volume of Little Women was published. It follows the students of Professor Friedrich Bhaer and Mrs. Jo Bhaer, their children, and their family at their boarding school of Plumfield. I read this book during elementary school and have never re-visited the characters like I have the March sisters at Orchard House. By following the twelve boys at school, we are taught how they are growing their characters despite their scrapes and disagreements. Alcott was able to comment on the concept of home schooling where students are treated and taught as individuals rather than as a group. I feel like it would be a great way to re-imagine the way we homeschool in the pandemic life of 2020.

Jo’s Boys and How They Turned Out, a Sequel to Little Men was published in 1886, is the final book in the unofficial Little Women trilogy, and follows Jo’s children, nieces and nephew, and students as they embark on life as adults. I also read this book as a child but have never revisited it. I think the collection of characters and how the plots of their life stories didn’t intersect except for their connection to Plumfield disappointed me, but I’m not opposed to revisiting the title in the future. All I have to say is that between Little Men and Jo’s Boys, Nikki will have all the epilogue she could possibly handle. [Nikki here: I think this is Ashley either challenging me or shoulding me, as I’ve not read either.  So much side eye to her!]

My two favorite re-imaginings of the March family story will get the attention they deserve in the following two Thursdays, but I wanted to make sure that you, our dear readers, receive the gifts of my internet research and deep dive reading. Here are some very honorable mentions:

We’re already scheduled to bring you a Monday post about the life and lasting influence of the prolific author Louisa May Alcott, but I wanted to leave you with a list of some interesting deep dives, novelizations about the lives of the Alcotts themselves! 

• The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O’Connor McNees was a find for me at McKay Used Bookstore many years ago. I read it and it’s been on my shelf ever since. I even invested $2 of an Amazon gift card for the Kindle version at the beginning of this year with the intention of re-reading about twenty-two year old Louisa’s adventures in life and love in the summer of 1855. This is a fictionalized telling based on research of Alcott’s life. I obviously highly recommend.
• The Other Alcott by Elise Hooper is her 2017 debut novel that follows the life and artistic career of the youngest Alcott sister, Abigail May Alcott. I have downloaded it twice from the Overdrive Library and have yet to make time to read it. From the internet searches about May Alcott, and the descriptions of this novel, I feel like Florence Pugh’s interpretation of the character of Amy March in the recent Greta Gerwig movie is a respectful nod to the woman who inspired the often-overlooked March sister.
• The Revelation of Louisa May by Michaela MacColl was an inexpensive Kindle book purchase in late 2019 that has been sitting on my TBR. The teenaged Louisa is left in charge of the Alcott household while her mother travels over the summer to make income for the family and she is left to juggle her father, a traveler on the Underground Railroad, the murder of a slave catcher, and the possibility of love all on her own. There’s only 28 reviews for the book on Amazon, but the 4.3 average stars gives me hope for a solid “meets expectations” read.

And, because I would feel remiss in my duties to you if I didn’t place these titles on your radar, here is a list of adaptations that might make you smile…

• Little Vampire Women by Lynn Messina
• Little Women and Werewolves by Porter Grand

Are you like me and take your love of a title to an unhealthy level of obsession?

~Ashley

PLEASE SUPPORT US WHEN YOU SHOP BY FIRST CLICKING ON THE IMAGES BELOW: