"B" Is for Betsy

This is a Children's Literature Classic set in the 1930s. Betsy is worried about starting school and so takes her stuffed rabbit to school with her each day and finds a friend. Very sweet.

This is a perfectly simple and easy book for young children. Nothing special, but a solid school-and-everyday-life story.

I just have one problem with it, and that's chapter four, where they learn about How The Indians Lived.

Now, before I go further, I think I'll address some of the usual complaints here. No, I don't believe the author intended to be inaccurate or offensive. No, I don't believe you're a bad person if this is a beloved book from your childhood and you read it with your kids in the same way that your grandmother used to read it to you when you were sick. Yes, I am aware that this book was written in a different time.

However, we're not reading this book to children 60 years ago, we're reading it to children today. And even though the author probably didn't intend to say anything rude, she actually did.

Now, I'll give credit where it's due. Carolyn Haywood was careful to have the students in her book learn that the Native Americans were not one monolithic group that all live the same way. We're told that they learn that "some lived" in this sort of home and others lived in that sort of home and others still lived in a third sort of home.

This is all well and good. However, this emphasis on the past is the sort of thing that gives children the impression that the Native Americans all generously went away in the past and there aren't any left... or that there ARE some left, still living the way they did 500 years ago. If it were just this one book, that wouldn't matter, but virtually every time children see Native Americans in the media that's the message they get, and that's a problem. (I've even heard people relate anecdotes where somebody else told them they thought that "Indians" were just made up entirely!)

Also of note is the fact that the children are explicitly taught that the appropriate term for a Native American woman is "squaw" and their babies are "papooses". This, we're told, is the "Indian word".

Well, "squaw" is now (and possibly even then, my limited research is unclear on this) considered an offensive term in English, and papoose may or may not be. Personally, I find it unnecessarily dehumanizing to use a special term to refer to people of another race instead of just using the normal English word we use for everybody else.

So what are you going to do about it? Well, that probably depends on how you're using this book. If you're using it in the classroom, I suggest you just stop. Among other things, you cannot assume that your students are all the same as you. Either you're miseducating them or, worse, you have a Native American student in your class who may not appreciate this sort of stereotyping and language, no matter how unintentional. This is a nice little book, but it's not really one of the classics of children's literature that every child must read. You might make the argument for Little House on the Prairie, but this book isn't nearly so interesting or useful.

If you still want to read it - perhaps it's your favorite book from your own childhood, I can see that - and you're reading it aloud, you might just skip that chapter. It's not crucial to the story. Or you could skim over the relevant passages. Alternatively (and this would work if your child is reading the book to themselves) you might just give a warning before the fourth chapter that what you're saying is VERY old-fashioned and NOW we know it's inaccurate and impolite. This isn't ideal, but it's better than letting it stand uncommented upon.

All that aside, as I said before, it's really only an okay book. There are plenty of others at the same level of quality or better that have drifted out of print, and I'm not sure why this series is so beloved as to still be in print decades after it was first written. Unless this is, as said before, a dear and cherished book from your own childhood, you might want to pass it by. It's nothing special.

Pretty dated

This may have been the first book I read all to myself.
I adored it, had a koala, plaid bag, the whole deal.

Reading it aloud captivated my preschooler, who was going to a new school.

Fears abated. Listened very seriously. Chapter by chapter, night by night.

We talk about being a good friend, playing on the playground, eating lunch away from home, the tea set.

This is now. The time is 3 years old.

I love what I have always called "the Betsy books." I read these in the 60's and 70's more than once, but this one will forever be my all time favorite in the series! I love Betsy's and Officer Kilpatrick's relationship.

A sweet, gentle book full of childhood adventures recommended to me by a friend who remembers it from her childhood.

My mom read them to me and now I'm reading them to my kids. They are the most wholesome books that I can think of. Perfect length of chapters for reading aloud. All-American 1940's and 50's kids in a small town.

A sweet innocent book. Set in the "olden days" without modern dangers. (A little girl walks by herself to school, a little girl follows a stranger into his house to see his new puppies, for example) No high stakes in the book. My kids enjoyed listening to it. Although simple, it was not boring.