I love the way she depicted the sisters quarreling because that is so accurate to that age! And writing to the King of Spain actually happened, so that was super cool to read about!

Betsy, Tacy, and Tib participate in a School Entertainment.

Still enjoyable.
4 Stars, family read-aloud, #betsytacy2019, VT 2019 Reading Challenge: a book for children or teens

2012 - Read aloud with E age 4.
2020 - read aloud with E age 12 and W age 5.

The more I am reading in this series the more I am loving these books. The way Lovelace addresses immigrants in the early 1900's and the priviledge of being an American is remarkable. I am continuously in awe of how she is addresses such profound topics on a child's level and how impactful it is.

I really enjoyed this sweet book. The first two books were more like short stories with each chapter telling an incident. This book read more like a novel with each chapter telling part of a longer story. I especially liked the author’s attitude toward the new Americans. The characters are developing, learning, and growing. I may find myself reading the whole series. Wish I’d read them as a child!

I am so enjoying this series. This is the third book and possibly my favorite so far, and I liked the second book more than the first, but that's hard to say because they're all so good. I have the fourth one to read before I get to the (middle) two in the series which are the only two that I think I read as a girl; I'll remember when I read them if I did. I'm glad that this time I'm reading them in order from start to finish.

Maud Hart Lovelace is a talented storyteller and she has a vivid recollection of her childhood. I love reading about this more innocent time. Betsy and her friends turn ten in this book and it takes place in 1902. She gets the experience of being a child exactly right and doesn't talk down at all to kids, which I really appreciate.

I really loved the American immigrant sub-plot in this book, and the book ends with a 4th of July event, and I finished reading it on 7/3 so that was fun.

This edition has some wonderful childhood photos of Maud and her friends, family, neighbors, and notes so that the reader can see how much these books are based on Maud’s life.

How on earth did I not read all of these books when I was young?! I’m always kidding my friends what deprived childhoods they had because they missed reading some of my favorite children’s books, but now I feel I’m the deprived one to have missed reading these books.

Of the first three in Maud Hart Lovelace’s series, I prefer Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill indeed! When one of my students looked over my shoulder, he said the illustrations looked like a 1940s graphic novel. But the moral of this story is not to judge a book by its cover! General stereotypes are shattered through personal relationships. We develop empathy through making connections.

When Betsy, Tacy, and Tib embark on an epic quarrel for queendom with Betsy and Tacy’s older sisters, their father suggests the most democratic of solutions: the girls vye for the vote. As a 21st century reader, I was concerned that Lovelace would reinforce the white savior complex when the three white friends rescue their “strange dark” friend from bullying and that they would exploit the Syrians for their signatures.

They are first described by their stereotype: “a colony of Syrians, strange dark people who spoke broken English and came to Hill Street sometimes peddling garden stuff and laces and embroidered cloths.” However, Betsy, Tacy and Tib discover “It was…delicious, to knock at the doors of houses whose outsides they had known for years but whose insides were unknown and mysterious…They had been in every one of those thirteen little houses and had met with nothing but gaiety and kindness. They had not seen a sign of Old Bushara and his knife.”

“Foreign people shouldn’t be treated like that. American is made up of foreign people. Both of Tib’s grandmothers came from the other side. Perhaps when they got off the boat, they looked a little strange, too.” Instead of seeing strangers, however, they become friends when the girls visit their village and learn their names. To their surprise and delight, Naifi is a Syrian princess who they crown the true American queen in the story’s climax: the marriage of cultures. Lovelace was a pro-immigration, anti-racist advocate before her time, and Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill is a must-read, indeed!

The third book is this cute series. It was fun to ready about the innocence of an era gone by.

Delightful! These keep getting funnier. I read this aloud to my 6yo, who literally rolled around laughing her head off during the last chapter... and if I hadn't been so tired I may have rolled around with her! I started my search for hardback copies of these books tonight. I imagine she will return to them again and again.

The fun continues in this third installment of Maud Hart Lovelace's wonderful Betsy-Tacy series, which follows the adventures of three young girls - Betsy (Elizabeth) Ray, Tacy (Anastacia) Kelly, and Tib (Thelma) Muller - as they grow up in early twentieth-century Minnesota. In Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill, the three friends celebrate their tenth birthdays, fall in love (all together) with the young King of Spain, and visit Little Syria - the colony of Lebanese immigrants just outside of Deep Valley.

Lovelace's prose is deceptively simple, and the events she chronicles are rarely earth-shattering, but somehow the narrative she creates - of friends and family, of school-life and childhood play - is as compelling as it is heartwarming. I was particularly struck by the sub-plot involving Naifa and her family, who are so determined to be good Americans, and - given the autobiographical nature of the series - wondered if the author had a young Lebanese friend as a girl.

All in all, I find that the more I read of Betsy, Tacy and Tib, the more I want to read! My only complaint thus far is that each story ends far too quickly!

Oh that was wonderful!! A ton happens in this but mainly Betsy, Tacy and Tib turn ten and feel like they’ve got to go all sorts of grown-up things like say ‘indeed’, have a crush on a Spanish Prince, throw a Princess coronation and explore the town.

This was a lovely book, the girls meet a Syrian family in this and they learn about their history, customs and traditions. It’s handled with surprising care. There’s also a surprise birthday party and lovely details like dresses and a layer cake with lemon frosting.

What a lovely, lovely series!