By Jean Webster
Publication Date: (first published 1912) June 11th, 2011 (Puffin) (first published 1912)
Paperback, 208 pages
Genre: Classics; Romance; Childrens
Source: purchased at an indie bookstore
DESCRIPTION:
A trustee of the John Grier orphanage has offered to send Judy Abbott to college. The only requirements are that she must write to him every month, and that she can never know who he is. Judy's life at college is a whirlwind of friends, classes, parties, and a growing friendship with the handsome Jervis Pendleton. With so much happening in her life, Judy can scarcely stop writing to the mysterious "Daddy-Long-Legs"!
—from goodreads.com
REVIEW:
Daddy-Long-Legs was okay, pretty uneventful. It's an epistolary story, meaning that it is completely made up by letters. Judy is seventeen at the beginning of the book, and twenty-one/twenty-two by the end, but her vocabulary was that of a ten-year-old. The excuse that she's an orphan can't be used because her orphanage made sure they educated her well past the grade level they normally educated orphans.
However, I was completely infatuated by two of the elements in the book:
1) The little snippets of the 1900s given to you through Daddy-Long-Legs are utterly charming. Apparently, as decreed by English grammar, a person can't feel nostalgic about something they never knew (it's used incorrectly very often). I beg to differ! I may not know that "pie-plant" is rhubarb, that "junket" is a pudding-like dessert, or that "paper chase" (also called "hare and hound") was an "outdoor game in which certain players, the hares, start off in advance on a long run, scattering small pieces of paper, called the scent, with the other players, the hounds, following the trail so marked in an effort to catch the hares before they reach a designated point" (definition from dictionary.com) (I'm totally rounding up some friends and playing). I may not know any of those things, but I can be nostalgic about it, can't I?
2) There are pictures in this book! Hand-drawn by main character, Jerusha Abbot. Quelle adorable! For example, here's one of my favorite ones:
It's cute, no? I don't know. I really like it and found it entertaining. There was another hand-drawn picture of what Judy called a "fish," but was really a picture of a turtle. I laughed out-loud at that one, and a good friend of mine who was also reading quirked an eyebrow at me. I showed her the picture and she didn't find it even remotely entertaining. :( Guess my sense of humor is a little off.
RATING:
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