
Little Men (1871) continues Louisa May Alcott's story of the March family. It picks up from Little Women and Good Wives to follow tomboy Jo into her married life. Jo and her husband, Prof. Bhaer, have opened a school for boys. Jo takes charge, but she retains a "merry sort of face," and the boys call her jolly. The school takes in troubled cases including homeless "little chap," Nat, and rowdy run-away Dan. Alcott pictures the kind of boyhood that the recent bestseller, The Dangerous Book for Boys, hopes to rekindle. Alcott's boys climb trees and sneak off to light their first (choke ) cigars, but each lad has the makings of a good man -- qualities that Jo intends to bring out. The language might sound as quaint as "thunder turtles " and "hoydens" (grrrls), but the drama is the same now as always. Jo's concern for her boys is every teacher's -- every right parent's -- hope for every child. The story concludes with Jo's Boys: And How They Turned Out.
Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29, 1832. She and her three sisters, Anna, Elizabeth, and May, were educated by their father, philosopher and teacher Bronson Alcott, and raised on the practical Christianity of their mother, Abigail May. Louisa spent her childhood in Boston and in Concord, Massachusetts, where her days were enlightened by visits to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s library, excursions into nature with Henry David Thoreau, and theatricals in the barn at "Hillside". Like her character, "Jo March" in Little Women, young Louisa was a tomboy. "No boy could be my friend till I had beaten him in a race," she claimed, "and no girl if she refused to climb trees, leap fences ..." For Louisa, writing was an early passion. She had a rich imagination and often her stories became melodramas that she and her sisters would act out for friends. Louisa preferred to play the "lurid" parts in these plays --"the villains, ghosts, bandits, and disdainful queens." At age 15, troubled by the poverty that plagued her family, she vowed: "I will do something by and by. Don’t care what, teach, sew, act, write -- anything to help the family; and I’ll be rich and famous and happy before I die, see if I won’t!"

Little Men (1871) continues Louisa May Alcott's story of the March family. It picks up from Little Women and Good Wives to follow tomboy Jo into her married life. Jo and her husband, Prof. Bhaer, have opened a school for boys. Jo takes charge, but she retains a "merry sort of face," and the boys call her jolly. The school takes in troubled cases including homeless "little chap," Nat, and rowdy run-away Dan. Alcott pictures the kind of boyhood that the recent bestseller, The Dangerous Book for Boys, hopes to rekindle. Alcott's boys climb trees and sneak off to light their first (choke ) cigars, but each lad has the makings of a good man -- qualities that Jo intends to bring out. The language might sound as quaint as "thunder turtles " and "hoydens" (grrrls), but the drama is the same now as always. Jo's concern for her boys is every teacher's -- every right parent's -- hope for every child. The story concludes with Jo's Boys: And How They Turned Out.
Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29, 1832. She and her three sisters, Anna, Elizabeth, and May, were educated by their father, philosopher and teacher Bronson Alcott, and raised on the practical Christianity of their mother, Abigail May. Louisa spent her childhood in Boston and in Concord, Massachusetts, where her days were enlightened by visits to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s library, excursions into nature with Henry David Thoreau, and theatricals in the barn at "Hillside". Like her character, "Jo March" in Little Women, young Louisa was a tomboy. "No boy could be my friend till I had beaten him in a race," she claimed, "and no girl if she refused to climb trees, leap fences ..." For Louisa, writing was an early passion. She had a rich imagination and often her stories became melodramas that she and her sisters would act out for friends. Louisa preferred to play the "lurid" parts in these plays --"the villains, ghosts, bandits, and disdainful queens." At age 15, troubled by the poverty that plagued her family, she vowed: "I will do something by and by. Don’t care what, teach, sew, act, write -- anything to help the family; and I’ll be rich and famous and happy before I die, see if I won’t!"