Fact from Fiction

Today my daughter asked, " Where is Louisa May Alcott's house? Have we ever seen it?" I wasn't all that surprised that she asked; she had recently read an abridged version of Little Women. I told her that we've driven by it many times and asked if she'd like to see it since we were going that way anyway. She said yes, she'd like to see where it was.

It turned out that what had prompted her to ask was an Alvin Ho book, based on a second-grade protagonist who is afraid of everything and obsesses on dead authors, one of whom is Louisa May Alcott.

She was momentarily impressed, though, when I told her that the house in Little Women is based very closely on Orchard House, the home of Louisa May Alcott. I don't think she'd made that connection before. She wasn't all that impressed, however, when we drove by it and I stopped to let her take a look. "Oh. That place. Huh. Okay, let's go home now."

The whole way home she talked about Alvin Ho and his fictional shenanigans in the Alcott house. I asked her if she'd like to visit and go inside the house one day and see where Little Women took place. "No, I know all about it from Alvin Ho," she said.

I think the reading of the full version of Little Women is in order.