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American and Canadian girls' fiction

edited December 2006 in - Reading

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  • I've been taking part in a discussion on another website about children's books.  Lots of people were recommending the Katy stories by Susan Coolidge, and the Little House on  the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, the Little Women series by Louisa May Alcott and the Anne of Green Gables books by LM Montgomery.

    Now all of these authors wrote from the mid 19thC to the early 20thC, and I started thinking - what happened after that?  Where, and who, were the authors who followed on from these four?
    Or did girls' fiction in the US and Canada descend into mediocrity when these authors died?

    Does anyone know?
  • Angela Brazil was popular when I was at school in the 40s - 50s

    Also there was a series of hospital/nurse books that we queued up for in the library but I can't recall the author
  • But Angela was not, according to Wikipedia, American or Canadian. Polyanna too long ago? Hmmm. Perhaps I should Wiki my own suggestions! I've no idea who wrote it. Have you tried Googling?
  • Probably her follow-up to Polyfilla. Sorry, it should have been Pollyanna, by Eleanor Porter, an American, written in 1913 (assuming Wiki correct).
  • Betsie - When I read your comment about the nurse books, out of the blue I thought of a name. I looked it up on Google and there it was. Were you thinking of Sue Barton?

    I put Sue Barton, Student Nurse into a Google search and this is from the first website:

    "Sue Barton evolves from uncertain student nurse to self-confident doctor's wife, mother of four, and part-time nurse. 

    She has a loving, supportive family. At age eighteen, she travels by train from her small-town home to study nursing in a big-city hospital. She almost immediately becomes the leader of an inseparable trio of friends. She works as a Visiting Nurse in New York City and then as a rural public health nurse.

    No, she's not Cherry Ames; she's Sue Barton, the engaging heroine of Helen Dore Boylston's seven-book series."

    Although I don't remember the books being set in the US, these must be the right ones. There couldn't have been two Sue Bartons who were nurses!

    I'm just astonished that the name suddenly occurred to me after such a long time!!
  • I'd forgotten Sue Barton, but you're right, Jenny.  They were well written books.

    And Angela Brazil was very definitely English!
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