Little Women and Me

An English assignment to find something to change in a well-loved novel becomes a catalyst for a trip into a fictional world. When insecure high school freshman Emily March isn’t obsessively trying to turn herself into someone boys will like better than her sisters, she enjoys reading. She knows exactly what she would change about her beloved Little Women: Beth would not die, and Jo, not Amy, would marry Laurie, the boy next door. Her idealizations of the March girls change, however, when she gets sucked into their world, becoming—once again—the middle March sister and competing with her sisters (especially her idol Jo) for a boy’s attention. As Emily adjusts to the lack of modern conveniences (“How I missed Facebook!”), she tries to discern her purpose for entering the novel. Baratz-Logsted (The Education of Bet) fully embraces the corniness of her fish-out-of-water premise (“Talk about being sucked into a book”; “[T]alk about getting lost in a good book”), but those upset over the fates of certain characters in the original will find reason to rejoice in this retelling. Ages 12–up. (Nov.)