Piccole donne

The four are wonderfully distinct. Jo is restless and tomboyish, forever scribbling and longing to do something great. Meg is drawn to comfort and pretty things, and must learn what she truly values. Beth is shy and music-loving, the family's tender center. Amy is the vain, artistic youngest, still growing into grace. Over them all is Marmee, who cares far more that her girls be happy and good than ever rich.

Next door, in the grand Laurence house, a lonely boy named Laurie waits to be befriended — and is, when Jo slips into a side room to escape a dance and finds him hiding there too. Between the two houses run picnics and confidences, secret stories, the gift of a piano, and a first proposal that tilts the family's careful world.

Alcott tells it in playful, theatrical dialogue and letters in each sister's own voice, moving easily from banter to quiet grief. But the pull is simpler than that: you are taken into a family where money is short and feelings run high, and the small business of growing up is made to matter. Readers return to Little Women to grow up again alongside Jo and her sisters, and to find their own restlessness and tenderness on the page.