Daddy-Long-Legs

Jean Webster's Daddy-Long-Legs is a rather famous little children's book that I had never heard of before reading it about it on various blogs recently; Jenny's review at Shelf Love is the one that finally made me decide to read it.

It took me a pleasant hour to get through the whole thing. Although I'm not the sort of person who tries to guess "who done it" when reading a mystery novel, I did guess who the title character is about halfway through--but that certainly didn't spoil my enjoyment of the rest.

The story is about an anonymous benefactor (Daddy-Long-Legs) who pays to put an orphan girl (Jerusha, later nicknamed Judy) through college with the expressed aim of educating her to become a writer. The only thing she has to do in return is write him a letter every month. So the book consists entirely of Judy's letters to her anonymous benefactor, and she speaks her mind in a way that charms both the reader and the recipient of the letters.

There are so many clever little turns of phrase in this book that it's difficult to pick only a few and offer them up as favorites; you'll find your own favorites if you read the book, which you should.

On a personal level, I quite enjoyed what Judy says about coming from an orphanage to a place (college) where everyone else has a more privileged background:
"...when the girls talk about things that I never heard of, I just keep still and look them up in the encyclopedia."
I've done this all my life. In fact, I had to do it in the very next line, when she mentions Maurice Maeterlinck--I didn't know that he won the Nobel prize the year before this book was first published, in 1912.

On a less personal level, I enjoyed Judy's indignation at not being among the intended (privileged) audience for some of the remarks she is subjected to while at college:
We had a bishop this morning, and what do you think he said?
'The most beneficent promise made us in the Bible is this, "The poor ye have always with you." They were put here in order to keep us charitable.'
The poor, please observe, being a sort of useful domestic animal.
The day after I read about Judy's indignation, I read this piece on what it is to be privileged over at Whatever.

Another of my favorite things that Judy says has to do with reading, of course:
"I think that the most necessary quality for any person to have is imagination. It makes people able to put themselves in other people's places. It makes them kind and sympathetic and understanding. It ought to be cultivated in children."

I was not as charmed as others have been with the illustrations to this book, but perhaps I'd have appreciated them more if I'd read it at a younger age.

My most favorite thing is Judy's summary of the litany of woes she faced one day:
"Did you ever hear of such a discouraging series of events? It isn't the big troubles in life that require character. Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh--I really think that requires spirit.

Isn't that the truth? How many of you have you been able to meet the "petty hazards of the day" with a laugh recently?