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Learning to Fly

During a one-month period when they are not allowed to play on the Big Hill (a punishment for having begged for food at the Ekstrom house atop the hill!), Betsy, Tacy, and Tib decide that they will learn how to fly. They begin by leaping off of relatively low-lying structures — a horse hitching block, a porch railing — while waving their arms in the air. “It feels just like jumping,” Tib comments, with trademark practicality. But the game gets scary and a lot more real when they size up the big maple in Betsy’s backyard and prepare to leap off its lofty lowest branch.

Tib and Tacy go first, with some trepidation, but when it is Betsy’s turn and she sees how far the branch is from the ground, she hesitates. Rather than jump, she begins to tell a story about three little girls who turned into birds. She spins one of her most charming tales, naming the birds Tibbin, Tacin, and Betsin, sending them flying through Deep Valley trees, hills, and clouds. When the birds’ mothers and siblings begin to weep with worry, the birds decide to change back into girls, which Betsy demonstrates by climbing down from the tree.

In a gorgeous book called The Woman Who Turned Children Into Birds, written by David Almond, illustrated by Laura Carlin, published in 2022, a magical woman transforms the children in town into all types of birds. The children experience the joys and freedom of flight. As in Betsy’s story, the parents are initially, and understandably, terrified. But as they begin to question their fears, they transcend them, and join their children in flight. For flight, it turns out, requires freedom from limitations that are often self imposed. And the sky above the town becomes a festival of color and song.

Later, Tib notes that in the course of telling the story, Betsy had forgotten to fly from the tree! Tacy, however, knows that it was no oversight. Betsy had been afraid to jump off of the branch and had invented the story as a distraction device, while Tacy and Tib had gamely taken the leap. As Tib makes a joke about Betsy having forgotten to take her turn to fly, Betsy looks over at Tacy, warily. But Tacy refuses to meet Betsy’s glance. She “was looking the other way hard” (p. 27, Harper Trophy paperback edition, 1993).

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Source: Almond, D. 2022. The Woman Who Turned Children Into Birds. Penguin. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/716077/the-woman-who-turned-children-into-birds-by-david-almond-illustrated-by-laura-carlin/

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Growing Up, Overnight

This is the book in which Betsy, Tacy, and Tib all turn ten, with two numbers in their age, and therefore, according to them, have officially grown up. Their birthdays don’t actually count, they inform anyone who will listen, until all three of them turn ten. So Tacy and Tib wait until Betsy celebrates her birthday in April, and then they all officially declare themselves grownups.

They try using fancy words like “indeed” and “prefer” (which Tib doesn’t know the meaning of), begin referring to one another by their longer given names Elizabeth, Thelma, and Anastacia (which sends them into peals of laughter), and practice drinking tea with a raised pinky flourish. (They discard these affectations just as quickly.) They venture further across the Big Hill than they ever have before, coming upon the community of Little Syria, which they have only ever seen while out buggy riding with their parents. They even fall in love, simultaneously, with the sixteen-year-old King of Spain.

In the modern digital age, ten remains a milestone birthday, often marking a bit of a break with childish games and toys. Now considered the beginning of the “tween” years, children often receive their own smartphones at this age, or they will in a year or two, and may even be introduced to social media. The age of onset of puberty for girls has dropped steadily over the years, from 16.6 in 1860 to 14.6 in 1920, and now hovers around ten. The world is not only different for ten-year olds, they are different, too. And yet, in so many ways, they are much the same as their early-twentieth-century counterparts.

Betsy’s sensitivity to the process and meaning of growing older is one of her defining qualities throughout the series, and is a hallmark of these tween years, even today. She actively explores the meaning of life, growth, and maturity in ways that both Tacy and Tib are still more inclined to take for granted. As she “lay very still in the bed she shared with Julia and thought about growing up” on the eve of her birthday, she wonders whether maybe “it’s not so nice growing up. Maybe it’s more fun being a child” (p. 12, Harper Trophy paperback edition, 1993). This will become an ongoing internal debate for Betsy, as it is for so many, now as then.

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Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/oct/21/puberty-adolescence-childhood-onset
https://www.securedatarecovery.com/blog/states-where-kids-get-smartphones-earliest
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Writing to the King of Spain

Now ten years old, Betsy, Tacy, and Tib develop a crush on King Alphonso, the teenage King of Spain. This is their first crush as individuals, let alone collectively, so they are not quite sure how to think about it or handle it. But they decide that they must do something about it, together. So they write and send him a letter (with Mrs. Ekstrom’s help), proclaiming their love and suggesting Tib as a suitable future queen, for she owns a white accordion-pleated dress.

In the digital age, it is not uncommon for ten-year-old young girls to create social media accounts and use them to communicate with the outside world. According to the Atlantic Health System, in 2024, 40% of ten-year-olds had their own smartphone, and nearly one in five children between the ages of 9 and 12 used social media every day. Many follow and “like” the posts of celebrities. A modern teenage monarch would very likely have an active social media presence via which a young fan could express admiration, and the young king or queen could conceiveably send a response!

Happily, Betsy, Tacy, and Tib receive a response to their letter, too! It seemed to come from the king’s secretary, said Betsy’s mother, who read aloud the short note thanking the girls for their letter and sentiments. Still, it was wildly thrilling — just as it might be today to receive a “like” or a comment on a social media post sent to a well-known actor, singer, or star.

While sometimes (and incorrectly) dismissed as “only parasocial” and therefore not real, messages exchanged between fans and celebrities can absolutely have real meaning for all involved. They enable the sharing of visibility, affection, and emotionality, often across great physical and social distances. They are real and consequential, and so might more accurately be termed “sociomental,” for they are enable a unique form of sociality that exists in a shared cognitive space. And they most certainly can result in genuine feelings of connectedness, just as we saw in the earliest days of the 20th century, when a trio of young girls reached out to someone who lived a completely different life halfway across the world, and received attention and affirmation in return.

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On children’s smartphone use, see: https://ahs.atlantichealth.org/about-us/stay-connected/news/content-central/2024/10-facts-about-kids-and-teens-on-social-media.html#:~:text=By%20age%2010%2C%20approximately%2040,years%20old%20to%20use%20them.

On parasocial/sociomental relationships, see: Mary Chayko. 2021. Superconnected: The Internet, Digital Media, and Techno-Social Life (3rd Edition, SAGE Publications) https://collegepublishing.sagepub.com/products/superconnected-the-internet-digital-media-and-techno-social-life-3-259314

and

Mary Chayko. 2002. Connecting: How We Form Social Bonds and Communities in the Internet Age (SUNY Press). https://sunypress.edu/Books/C/Connecting

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The Horseless Carriage

Modern technology comes to the Betsy-Tacy universe as Mr. and Mrs. Poppy, “city people” transplanted from Minneapolis to Deep Valley, stun the small town with their acquisition of an early model automobile; a “horseless carriage.” Driven proudly (and bravely, some say) by Mr. Poppy, the horseless carriage draws a crowd wherever it goes.

Betsy, Tacy, and Tib had heard rumors of, and seen pictures of, such a vehicle, but had never really expected that one would come to their town. Betsy and Tacy are simultaneously afraid of, confused, and awestruck by the technology. “If there isn’t a horse to say ‘whoa’ to, how do you stop the thing?” Tacy wonders, sensibly (p. 17, Harper Trophy paperback edition, 1993). Tib, however, is unafraid. She angles to be the first child to ride in it (even though classmate Winona Root, daughter of the town’s newspaper editor, generally gets to do the coolest things first via her father’s connections, and has decided to add getting the first ride to her list).

Automobiles were invented in the 1890s, with the 1901 Mercedes considered the first modern motorcar. It could go 53 miles per hour, but was far too expensive for all but the wealthiest consumers. In 1908, Henry Ford’s Model T, and the General Motors company founded by William Durant, disrupted the industry, producing more cars at a lower price point. In the 1910s, “modern” mass production techniques such as the moving assembly line, brought prices down even further, and by 1925, three-quarters of new cars were bought on credit. Starting in the 1920s, the purchasing of expensive goods on credit became established as a middle-class American habit. Of course, cars are now a mainstay of transportation as the technology continually advances. Self-driving cars are the next automobile frontier in the digital age!

While new iterations of cars will continue to figure prominently in the Betsy-Tacy books, this first appearance of the horseless carriage may be the most memorable. Not only do we get to see a brand new technology through the eyes of an amazed crowd of Deep Valley citizens in real time, we are provided a fascinating profile of those early adopters, the Poppys. And we get to see Tib’s bravado shine. Tib boldly asks for a ride, to Winona’s chagrin, and to Betsy and Tacy’s astonishment. Permission granted, she jumps in with the Poppys and rides through town waving to all triumphantly, rather like the queen of summer that she had sought to be a few years prior. The crowd is thrilled. Betsy and Tacy are beside themselves with excitement.

Later, Tib describes in detail the miraculous experience of riding in a carriage pulled not by a horse, but by nothing at all. Julia’s boyfriend Jerry dashes off madly to see it. Betsy’s father tosses his hat in the air, looking rather like a young boy, Betsy notes. A game-changing technological moment had arrived in Deep Valley.

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For photos of automobiles from this era, see: https://www.supercars.net/blog/cars-by-decade/1900s-cars/. From Lois Lenski’s illustration in the book, it seems like the 1906 Cadillac Model M might be a close match to the Poppys’ car.

On the history of the automobile, see: https://www.history.com/articles/automobiles

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First Visit to Carnegie Library

Upon discovering that Betsy has been reading the dime novels belonging to the family’s “hired girl” Rena, Betsy’s parents develop a plan to ensure that she can more easily access, and hopefully be inspired by, quality literature. They permit Betsy to visit the Carnegie Library and to take herself out to lunch — a first-ever solo expedition downtown that will be repeated bi-weekly. When Mr. Ray presents the plan to Betsy, she is thrilled. Her sisters (Julia and Margaret), Tacy, and Tib are just as excited for her.

On her first visit, Betsy is enchanted by the beautiful new library and its “orderly forest of bookcases, tall and dark” (p. 83, Harper Trophy paperback edition, 1993). She and the young librarian, Miss Sparrow, strike up a friendship that will last through high school. Miss Sparrow recommends some classics for Betsy to read, including Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales and the soon-to-be-classic (Miss Sparrow predicts) Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

Betsy digs in and becomes immediately, joyfully, immersed. A broad smile remains on her face throughout her noon lunch break at Bierbauer’s Bakery. She realizes, correctly, that she is experiencing nothing less than a sojourn into adulthood.

The earliest American libraries were generally private or academic collections of books. In 1731, Benjamin Frankin and some of his Philadelphia associates invented the subscription library, purchasing books that would be available to all members. Other subscription libraries followed. Andrew Carnegie funded almost 1700 library buildings between 1886 and 1919, essentially forcing those towns to fund and supply the books and library operations that the buildings had been built for. Betsy frequented one of these. The U.S. library system continued to expand.

Today, there are nearly 125,000 libraries of various types across the United States, in municipalities, schools and colleges, government, the armed forces, and other settings. Libraries provide all kinds of essential services in addition to loaning books, periodicals, and other media. Increasingly, many library services are offered digitally, and are networked together to share resources. Libraries ensure that access to knowledge can be available to all, regardless of wealth. The physical spaces of libraries remain critical in the digital age; they are essential hubs of a community.

The relationship that Betsy forms with the Carnegie Library proves transformative for her. It becomes a source of comfort, friendship, intellectual stimulation, freedom, and belonging. Many of us have been similarly influenced by the libraries that have been part of our lives. While accessing library materials and services digitally is extraordinarily efficient, and has become indispensable for modern researchers and readers, there remains something special and serendipitious about browsing through stacks of books in physical libraries, about working and relaxing in a space filled with their brilliance and beauty. The physical environment of a library is just as meaningful in a digital age as in Betsy and Tacy’s pre-digital world. Maybe more.

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On the early history of libraries, see: https://www.lapl.org/collections-resources/blogs/lapl/library-america

On modern libraries, see: https://libguides.ala.org/c.php?g=751692&p=9132142

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Betsy Meets Joe

Now fourteen, Betsy is growing up. She is tall, slender, and conscious of her looks, putting curlers (Magic Wavers) in her hair and applying face cream nightly. She spends two weeks at the Taggarts’ farm the summer before she starts high school. She is desperately homesick, but too stubborn to ask to return.

On the train trip home, during a layover at Butternut Center, Betsy wanders into Willard’s Emporium, the town’s general store, and Betsy meets the boy who would become the love of her life. Joe Willard emerges in the Betsy-Tacy universe fully conceived: he is handsome, proud, witty, curious, and kind, with a keen interest in literature (he is reading The Three Musketeers for the sixth time when Betsy first sees him) that matches Betsy’s own. As he helps Betsy shop for presents for her family, they joke and banter like old friends.

When it is time to say goodbye, Betsy does not know how to further the encounter. She hasn’t started going out with boys, and, unlike her sister Julia, doesn’t know how to flirt or encourage him to call on her. She manages a few words of thanks, though, and Joe tosses off one last joke. She re-boards the train feeling reasonably satisfied and more than a little independent.

American courtship customs were in an emergent state in the very early 1900s. Courting or “calling on” someone was not yet called “dating” (as it would be starting in the 1920s or so), but the prior system of arranged marriages was giving way to one that was love-based. Couples generally spent time together under parental or organizational supervision, were not allowed to go out together alone, and did not ordinarily have romantic physical contact except in the most serious of relationships, generally those headed toward marriage.

Dating norms have changed tremendously over the years, of course. They are often spurred forward by technologies, such as the automobile, which provided couples with privacy and a means to escape the family home, and the internet, which permitted dating to be initiated and even conducted online. Still, the feelings and desires that underlie the romantic adventures of Betsy and her friends throughout the rest of the books in the series, including Betsy’s uncertainty as to how to perpetuate her flirtation with Joe, are exactly as they might be experienced today. Lovelace’s depictions of romantic attraction, intrigue, confusion, jealousy, and heartbreak in the Betsy-Tacy series are vivid, universal, and identical across time, space, and any other imaginable dimension.

Joe will not become Betsy’s paramour for some time to come, but the seeds for their eventual partnership are sown in their effortless give-and-take as she shops for the gifts:

Joe: “Cheese for your father. Sharp or mild?”

Betsy: “Sharp.”

Joe: “If you brought home mild cheese, he wouldn’t let you in, I’ll bet.”

Betsy: “He’d use it for the mousetrap.”

(p. 15, Harper Trophy paperback edition, 1994)

Playful romantic chemistry: delicious in every era.

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On the history of courtship and dating, see: https://bashcub.com/features/2023/12/07/the-history-of-dating-and-how-it-has-changed-in-the-last-century/

See also this classic sociological account of the transformation of courtship, dating, and marriage over time: Stephanie Coontz. 2006. Marriage: A History. Penguin Random House. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/291184/marriage-a-history-by-stephanie-coontz/

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New House, New School, New Friends: Processing Change

The Rays surprise Betsy by moving from Hill Street to a big house on High Street while she is away visiting the Taggart farm. The new house has all the modern conveniences: a gas stove, a furnace, a bathroom! The girls each have their own bedroom.

Betsy feigns happiness, but is miserable. She had loved their small house with its hitching post, proximity to the Big Hill, and, especially, living across the street from Tacy. She had actually loved the coziness of bathing in the kitchen and sleeping in the same bed as Julia. And even Tib has left town; her family has moved back to Milwaukee.

No sooner do the Rays get settled in than Betsy must start high school, which is just two blocks from the new house. She and Tacy begin to familiarize themselves with the school clubs (Zetamathians and Philomathians), customs (back corner assembly seats are the best!) and classes (Latin, algebra, ancient history, composition). New “hired girl” Anna moves in, too, replete with fantastical stories about her prior (possibly fictional?) employers, the McCloskeys. This whirlwind of activity distracts Betsy from her sorrow.

Winona, Carney, Bonnie, Cab, Irma, Larry, Herbert, Tony, and Tom (when he is not away at his military school Cox Military) join Betsy and Tacy in a bustling social group that will become known as “the Crowd.” Their parties and antics will circumscribe Betsy’s life in the high school books, even as the group expands, contracts, and changes over the years. Betsy is excited to see that Joe Willard also goes to her high school. But he doesn’t seem to socialize or to want to join a Crowd; it turns out that he is an orphan, has a job after school, and needs the money. And after their chemistry-filled meet-cute at his family’s store at the end of summer, he’s now barely acknowledging Betsy.

Personal and societal change is a historical constant, of course, in which technology has always played a large part. Many aspects of life in the digital age, from work to play to love and leisure, are marked by rapid, disruptive, ever-accelerating technological change. Every social institution has been transformed by technology, from the family to education to religion to the government. And the Betsy-Tacy series demonstrates that this has always been the case. In Heaven to Betsy we see the impact of technological change on one small group of Midwesterners, and one young woman in particular, as more modern conveniences (telephones, gas stoves, automobiles, better hair curlers!) become a part of her everyday life, and she feels her life expand in previously unimaginable ways.

Betsy must process some of life’s many upheavals in this book. While she resists new things and new ways at first, she will soon come to realize their value. She will make some strikingly bold moves of her own in the years to come, including changing her religion, dropping out of college, and traveling the world, largely on her own. The theme of coping with change will be a recurrent one in the series. As the epigraph to Heaven to Betsy, a quote from Henry W. Longfellow, poignantly states, “All things must change. To something new, to something strange.”

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On the varied impacts of digitality and technological change on community, society, and self, see: Mary Chayko. 2021. Superconnected: The Internet, Digital Media, and Techno-Social Life. (3rd edition, SAGE) https://collegepublishing.sagepub.com/products/superconnected-the-internet-digital-media-and-techno-social-life-3-259314

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Betsy Travels to Milwaukee

In Betsy in Spite of Herself, Betsy experiences a growing sense of dissatisfaction with herself. She wishes she were more popular with boys in a romantic sense (though they flock to her house for food, song, and fun). She wishes she were more like Julia, an effortless flirt with whom boys regularly fall in love. When she confesses this to Tacy, Tacy is displeased, for she doesn’t like to see Betsy criticized, “even by Betsy herself” (p. 96, Harper Trophy paperback edition, 1994).

Betsy has become attracted to Phil Brandish, a wealthy newcomer in town who doesn’t seem to know that she exists. If she could were fascinating and exotic, she figures, maybe he would notice her. It seems to Betsy that the best way to accomplish this would be to go out of town for a while and return different, with a fascinating new look and personality. As luck would have it, she is invited by the Mullers to visit Tib in Milwaukee for two weeks over the Christmas holiday, and Betsy eagerly accepts, even though it means spending Christmas away from her family.

Betsy travels from Deep Valley to Milwaukee by train, and is delighted by the experience. The early 1900s were a peak period for train travel in America; it was the primary means of transportation across great distances. Trains were dependable, comfortable, and fast, able to attain speeds of up to 100 miles per hour, and could offer amenities like the fancy dining car with white linen tablecloths that Betsy enjoyed. Throughout the 1900s, the rise of the automobile and airplane decentered the train as a means of transportation. Many train lines were discontinued and many others fell into disrepair. The rise of Amtrak, beginning in the 1970s, ushered in the current period of the standardization and reinvention of train travel.

Betsy opens a letter from Tacy on the train in which Tacy expresses her joy that Betsy is on such an exciting adventure and will soon see Tib. Betsy has the sudden realization that while Tacy’s large family cannot provide the same kind of experiences for their children as the Rays can, Tacy is never envious of Betsy’s good fortune. She is, quite simply, a wonderful person. This was the first time that the maturing Betsy “had ever consciously estimated her friend” (p. 115, Harper Trophy paperback edition, 1994).

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On the history of train travel, see: https://history.howstuffworks.com/american-history/early-twentieth-century-railroads.htm

On the more recent history of train travel and Amtrak, see: https://history.howstuffworks.com/american-history/decline-of-railroads.htm

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Betsy Reinvents Herself

Betsy and Tib are joyfully reunited in Milwaukee. Two weeks in Christmas with Tib’s family is a perfect time for her to reinvent herself, Betsy decides. She wants to return to Deep Valley different somehow. Perhaps she can become more worldly and sophisticated, and maybe even attract the interest of Phil Brandish.

Most of the trip flies by before Betsy gets started on her reinvention. She enjoys becoming immersed in German-American culture: roving groups of singers and musicians, a visit to Grosspapa and Grossmama’s, the arrival of the Christkindel, the painting of the seven dwarf statues. Between the customs and all the parties, she hasn’t had the time, and isn’t particularly inclined, to execute a dramatic life change; in fact, she realizes that she is being more like herself than ever! New Year’s Eve, though, proves the perfect time and opportunity, and Tib agrees to stay up all night assisting with the project.

In the digital age, social media is often used as a means of self-expression and experimentation. Some people “try on” different personas for different spaces and audiences online, although it is common to do this offline as well. Digital technology makes it relatively easy to visually hide, and to play around with identity. Of course, this is not always a playful endeavor. Our modern digital age has seen a dramatic increase in technology-assisted identity theft, deception, stalking, scams, and other dangerous acts.

Betsy and Tib approach her experiment jovially but with an element of seriousness as well. When Betsy plans something, she expects results. She selects a new target personality (Dramatic and Mysterious, as opposed to Ethereal and Intellectual), hairstyle (pompadour), perfume (Jockey Club), color (green), walk (a stoop), and voice (low and sultry) to go along with it. She even changes the spelling of her name from Betsy to Betsye. She and Tib plan how she to introduce the new Betsye upon her return home. Tib reveals the possibility that her family may move back to Deep Valley someday, and the girls devise a silly persona for Tib as well.

Unsurprisingly, Betsy will find it difficult to pull off this transformation. She tries valiantly, and attracts Phil Brandish’s attention, but tends to slip back into her own ways when in the comfortable company of her family and friends. “Betsye” will complicate her burgeoning relationship with Phil, and teach her a thing or two about authenticity in relationships and in life.

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On the transformation of identity in digital spaces, and some of the dangers inherent in digital communication, see: Mary Chayko. 2021. Superconnected: The Internet, Digital Media, and Techno-Social Life (3rd Edition, SAGE) https://collegepublishing.sagepub.com/products/superconnected-the-internet-digital-media-and-techno-social-life-3-259314

and

Mary Chayko, 2018. Portable Communities: The Social Dynamics of Online and Mobile Connectedness. (SUNY Press) https://sunypress.edu/Books/P/Portable-Communities2

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The Saga of Okto Delta

Julia has started college at the state university in Minneapolis, and her most cherished goal is to be accepted into the Epsilon Iota sorority. Though only a small fraction of the student body belongs to sororities, and Mr. Ray is unimpressed with them, Julia becomes obsessed with joining one. She shares the glories of sororities with the family: parties, living in the sorority house, sisterhood. She makes sorority life sound so exciting and full of fun that it gives Betsy an idea. She and the girls in the Crowd will start their own Deep Valley High School sorority.

This becomes the primary social preoccupation of Betsy’s junior year in high school, mostly because Joe Willard begun courting Phyllis Brandish. Betsy had planned to go with Joe this year, and is stunned by the news that he is unavailable. A sorority is the perfect antidote, so she, Tacy, and Tib plan rituals and activities to transform the girls in the Crowd into a sorority that they will call Okto Delta (Eight Devils).

Sororities and fraternities developed in the mid-1800s as a way for college students to learn together about a wider range of topics than could be studied in the classroom. Initiation rites were modeled after classic communal groups including the ancient Greeks and Romans. Now called Greek life, many sorority members can live together in chapter houses and their operations include a full slate of philanthropic, social, and recreational activities. Modern sororities use social media and technology to assist with recruitment, share word of their events, and raise money.

Okto Delta inspires the boys in Betsy’s high school Crowd to develop a companion fraternity, Omega Delta, although Tony refuses to join and becomes sidelined a bit from the Crowd this year (taking up with some of his wilder friends and even a “perfectly awful girl” – p. 229, Harper Trophy paperback edition, 1995). The two groups enjoy a full slate of gatherings during the year until it becomes apparent that other high schoolers besides Tony are finding the groups to be exclusionary and a bit snobbish as well. Their members miss out on social invitations and key school committee assignments and Betsy is not asked to compete in the year-end Essay Contest. Lesson learned, everyone is rather relieved when the groups disband.

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On the history of sororities and fraternities, see: https://fsl.appstate.edu/history-of-greek-life