This favorite book for children, based on the author’s own youthful experiences, describes the life of the March family in a small New England community in the 1800s.
Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March are raised in genteel poverty by their loving mother while their father serves as chaplain during the American Civil War. Jo at fifteen is ungainly, unconventional, and enterprising, with an ambition to be an author. Meg, a year older, is pretty and wishes to be a lady. Beth is a delicate child of thirteen with a taste for music. Amy is a blonde beauty of twelve.
The story explores their domestic adventures, their attempts to increase the family’s small income, their friendship with the neighboring Laurence family, and their later love affairs and destinies as women.
Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Educated by her father until she was sixteen, she also studied under Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Theodore Parker. A prolific writer, her most famous work was Little Women, a timeless American classic.
C. M. Hébert is an Earphones Award winner and Audie Award nominee. She is the recording studio director for the Talking Books Program at the Library of Congress’ National Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her husband, daughter, cat, and assorted fish.