But there’s also a sense that as children’s series go, they have flown below the radar, never quite developing the recognition of “Little Women,” “Anne of Green Gables” and the “Little House” books.

Like similar evocations of an earlier age and more “innocent” comings-of-age, the Betsy-Tacy books engender an almost fanatical devotion. All tell the story of an idyllic Midwestern girlhood, but also reflect the approach of the new century, from the first horseless carriages to the strutting soldiers at Betsy’s boardinghouse in Munich. The first book, “Betsy-Tacy,” begins in 1897, when Betsy is about to turn 5, and the series continues through “Betsy’s Wedding” in 1917, with the world at war. In my preparatory rereading before our third Mankato trip together, Josephine delicately suggested, I might pay particular attention to the series’s nuptial and homemaking details.ĭeep Valley was the name Maud Hart Lovelace gave her hometown, Mankato, in the 10 Betsy-Tacy books she published between 19 but set much earlier, during the period of her own childhood. This year, at the 2012 convention - “or, as I like to think of it,” the mistress of ceremonies declared, “the 102nd reunion of the Deep Valley High School Class of 1910!” - I would make no such mistake. The cake was in fact decorated with a dove the bell, it will be recalled, was hanging decoratively in the living room.

In front of my daughter, Josephine, then 7 years old, and several hundred similarly dedicated “Betsy-Tacy” fans, I answered the question “What was the decoration on Betsy Ray’s wedding cake?” with the very wrong answer: a bell.

At the Betsy-Tacy Convention in Mankato, Minn., in 1997, I disgraced myself at the trivia contest.

Betsy tacy novel