As they walked they were very busy talking.
“We’ve got a piano box we play in,” Betsy said.
“And Betsy’s got a baby sister,” Tacy said.
“We play paper dolls,” said Betsy.
“And store,” said Tacy.
“We dress up and go calling.”
“And Betsy makes up games.”
Tib held their hands tightly. She sighed deeply with content.
“I’m glad I came here,” she said. “I like this better than Milwaukee.”
Betsy and Tacy stopped still. They looked at each other, their eyes as round as Tib’s. She liked Hill Street better than Milwaukee! Well, they had always known it was nice.
After a silent moment they went slowly on toward the bench on the hill.
“We’ll have lots of fun,” said Betsy. “You and me and Tacy. Lots of things will happen.”
And so they did.
THE END
Maud Hart Lovelace and Her World
Maud Palmer Hart circa 1906
Collection of Sharla Scannell Whalen
MAUD HART LOVELACE was born on April 25, 1892, in Mankato, Minnesota. Like Betsy, Maud followed her mother around the house at age five asking questions such as “How do you spell ‘going down the street’?” for the stories she had already begun to write. Soon she was writing poems and plays. When Maud was ten, a booklet of her poems was printed; and by age eighteen, she had sold her first short story.
The Hart family left Mankato shortly after Maud’s high school graduation in 1910 and settled in Minneapolis, where Maud attended the University of Minnesota. In 1917, she married Delos W. Lovelace, a newspaper reporter who later became a popular writer of short stories.
The Lovelaces’ daughter, Merian, was born in 1931. Maud would tell her daughter bedtime stories about her childhood, and it was these stories that gave her the idea of writing the Betsy-Tacy books. Maud did not intend to write an entire series when Betsy-Tacy, the first book, was published in 1940, but readers asked for more stories. So Maud took Betsy through high school and beyond college to the “great world” and marriage. The final book in the series, Betsy’s Wedding, was published in 1955.
The Betsy-Tacy books are based very closely on Maud’s own life. “I could make it all up, but in these Betsy-Tacy stories, I love to work from real incidents,” Maud wrote. “The Ray family is a true portrayal of the Hart family. Mr. Ray is like Tom Hart; Mrs. Ray like Stella Palmer Hart; Julia like Kathleen; Margaret like Helen; and Betsy is like me, except that, of course, I glamorized her to make her a proper heroine.” Tacy and Tib are based on Maud’s real-life best friends, Frances “Bick” Kenney and Marjorie “Midge” Gerlach, and Deep Valley is based on Mankato.
In fact, so much in the books was taken from real life that it is sometimes difficult to draw the line between fact and fiction. And through the years, Maud received a great deal of fan mail from readers who were fascinated by the question—what is true, and what is made up?
About Betsy-Tacy
IN THE SPRING OF 1897, Maud Hart and Frances “Bick” Kenney met at Maud’s fifth birthday party and became lifelong friends—just like Betsy and Tacy. As Maud wrote to Bick Kenney’s granddaughter in 1960, when she was sixty-eight years old, “Tacy certainly is your red-haired grandmother and has been my dearest friend ever since my fifth birthday.”
In the story, Betsy thinks Tacy is calling names when she first introduces herself because her name is so unusual. (Maud first discovered the name “Tacy” in a colonial newspaper when she was doing research for another book.) We don’t know if this happened in real life, but it’s possible that a similar misunderstanding resulted when Bick told Maud her name, which is also a bit unusual. Bick Kenney’s niece explained the origin of the nickname: “Frances Kenney had very red hair as a child and was called ‘Brick.’ Not being old enough to pronounce it properly, she called herself ‘Bick.’” And Bick is the name she used throughout her life.
All three portraits from the collection of Susan Ryder
Maud’s straight hair was curled for these photographs, taken for the occasion of her fifth birthday.
Lois Lenski probably referred to the photos when she drew Betsy in her special party dress.
Maud seemed to recall the occasion of her fifth birthday very vividly, and much of the description of the party in the book was based on her memories. For example, she remembered that she wore a “checked silk [dress] in tan, rose, and cream,” like Betsy’s. And Bick really did bring Maud a little glass pitcher as a birthday gift. Although its gold-painted rim has now worn away, the pitcher can be seen today in the Maud Hart Lovelace wing of the Minnesota Valley Regional Library in Mankato, Minnesota.
In fact, Betsy and Tacy’s adventures throughout the book are based on Maud’s real childhood experiences. In an interview, Maud described some of the games she and Bick used to play, which will sound very familiar: “We used to color sand and put it in bottles and have sand stores and sell it. We cut our paper dolls out of the magazines. We dressed up in our mothers’ long skirts. We went on picnics.”
In 1897, there really was a bench on the hill at the top of the street where Maud and Bick ate their suppers, although it was gone by 1906 or 1907. But readers may be pleased to know that a memorial bench was placed there in 1989, and it is still there today—a testimony to the powerful effect of Maud’s writing, and in commemoration of a very special friendship.
Maud Hart Lovelace Archive
Maud (right) and Bick (left) were lifelong friends—here they are at age ten.
Collection of Sharla Scannell Whalen
The glass pitcher that Bick gave to Maud for her fifth birthday is now on display at the public library in Mankato.
Collection of Sharla Scannell Whalen
Maud lived with her family in this little house at 333 Center Street.
The Ray house, at 333 Hill Street, closely resembles Maud’s.
Maud Hart Lovelace Archive
Maud’s mother, Stella Palmer Hart, was a schoolteacher before her marriage to Tom Hart.
Maud Hart Lovelace Archive
In this photo, Kathleen Hart, Maud’s older sister and the model for Julia Ray, is about eight years old.
Blue Earth County Historical Society
Maud and her friends attended Pleasant Grove School, a redbrick building that was built in 1871.
Lois Lenski’s drawing of the schoolhouse.
Maud once spoke of “the fresh exciting world in which children live” and said, “I do think I remember that better than most grown-ups.” Many generations of Betsy-Tacy fans would certainly agree!
Maud Hart Lovelace died on March 11, 1980. But her legacy lives on in the beloved series she created and in her legions of fans, many of whom are members of the Betsy-Tacy Society and the Maud Hart Lovelace Society. For more information, write to:
The Betsy-Tacy Society
P.O. Box 94
Mankato, MN 56002-0094
(507) 345-9777
www.betsy-tacysociety.org
The Maud Hart Lovelace Society
Fifty 94th Circle NW, # 201
Minneapolis, MN 55448
Adapted from The Betsy-Tacy Companion: A Biography of Maud Hart Lovelace by Sharla Scannell Whalen
This map of the Hill Street neighborhood by Lois Lenski was printed on the endpapers of early editions of the first four Betsy-Tacy books.
About the Author
Maud Hart Lovelace was born in Mankato, Minnesota, and based the Betsy-Tacy books on her own childhood. She once wrote, “I lived the happiest childhood a child could possibly know,” and it is this joy that comes through in her books.
You can visit the Betsy-Tacy Society online at www.betsy-tacysociety.org.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Credits
Cover art © 2000 by Michael Koelsch
Cover design by Larissa Lawrynenko
Cop
yright
BETSY-TACY. Copyright © 1940 by Maud Hart Lovelace. Copyright renewed 1968 by Maud Hart Lovelace. Author note from Minnesota Writes and reproduced with permission. Copyright © 1961 by Instructional Fair • TS Denison “Maud Hart Lovelace and Her World” (adapted from The Betsy-Tacy Companion: A Biography of Maud Hart Lovelace by Sharla Scannell Whalen). Copyright © 2000 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress catalog card number: 40-30965
ISBN 978-0-06-440096-1
First published in hardcover by Thomas Y. Crowell Company in 1940
First Harper Trophy edition, 1979
Revised Harper Trophy edition, 2007
EPub Edition © November 2009 ISBN: 978-0-06-199830-0
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Maud Hart Lovelace, Betsy-Tacy
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