About this item
Betsy, Tacy, and Tib cant wait to be ten. After all, getting two numbers in your age is the beginning of growing up - exciting things are bound to happen. And they do! The girls fall in love with the King of Spain, perform in the School Entertainment, and for the first time, go all the way over the Big Hill to Little Syria by themselves. There Betsy, Tacy, and Tib make new friends and learn a thing or two. They learn that new Americans are sometimes the best Americans. And they learn that they themselves wouldnt want to be anything else. Ever since their first publication in the 1940s, the Betsy-Tacy stories have been loved by each generation of young readers.
About the Author
Maud Hart Lovelace was born on April 25, 1892, in Mankato, Minnesota. She was the middle of three children born to Thomas and Stella (Palmer) Hart. Her sister, Kathleen, was three years older, and her other sister, Helen, was six years younger. "That dear family" was the model for the fictional Ray family. Maud's birthplace was a small house on a hilly residential street several blocks above Mankato's center business district. The street, Center Street, dead-ended at one of the town's many hills. When Maud was a few months old, the Hart family moved two blocks up the street to 333 Center. Shortly before Maud's fifth birthday a "large merry Irish family" moved into the house directly across the street. Among its many children was a girl Maud's age, Frances, nicknamed Bick, who was to be Maud's best friend and the model for Tacy Kelly. Tib's character was based on another playmate, Marjorie (Midge) Gerlach, who lived nearby in a large house designed by her architect father. Maud, Bick, and Midge became lifelong friends. Maud once stated that the three couldn't have been closer if they'd been sisters.
