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Jean Little, Spring Begins in March

Page history last edited by Lisa Gordis 13 years, 3 months ago

 

Bibliographical information:

Little, Jean. Spring Begins in March. 1966. Toronto: Puffin Books, 1996.

Sequel to Mine for Keeps

 

Brief summary:

This sequel to Mine for Keeps focuses on Meg, the youngest child in the Copeland family. When the novel opens, Meg has been told that she'll have her own room beginning on her birthday, in part because she is struggling in school and her parents think it might help to have her own desk. This plan falls apart when the marriage of Meg's aunt leads to Grandma coming to live with the Copeland family. Meg wrestles with her disappointment and her hostility to her grandmother, along with her problems at school, where she has enough trouble concentrating that her teacher warns that she may not be promoted. But Grandma turns out to be more complicated than Meg realizes, and with help from Sal and Elsje, Meg makes some progress at school.

 

Comments:

For readers who love Mine for Keeps, it's great to have another book about the Copelands. The family remains appealing, and the story is warm and funny. But the forty-year interval has dated Meg's difficulties more than it dated Sal's. Some of Meg's struggles in school sound a lot like ADD, but the teacher and family are at a loss to understand why Meg is having so much trouble. Meg is helped by sustained tutoring and practice with Elsje and Sal and by jigsaw puzzle work with her grandmother. The account of Meg's difficulties is sympathetic, but the solution involves Meg and two teenagers setting their minds to the problem, which seems a bit optimistic. It's not completely unrealistic, in that Meg's sessions with Sal, Elsje, and Grandma help her work without making her problems vanish. There's also an implied parallel between Meg's difficulties and Sal's disability, so that the book seems dated in some ways and in others seems ahead of its time.

 

Grade/Age level:

Grades 3-6

 

Cautions:

As noted in the comments, this is a sensitive account of ADD and learning disabilities that shows its age. For a child wrestling with these issues, Little's account of Meg's frustration will seem sympathetic, and it might be interesting to see how much our understanding of these issues has changed. But it would probably be important for a parent to be prepared to discuss the book with a young reader.

 

--Lisa Gordis

 

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