Jack and Jill: A Village Story

By Louisa May Alcott

When best friends, Jack and Jill, tumble off their sled, their injuries cause them to be bedridden for many months. Their parents fill their days with the joys of Christmas preparations, a theatrical production and many other imaginative events.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Start Classics
• Release date: Jun 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781633553934

Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott was a 19th-century American novelist best known for her novel, Little Women, as well as its well-loved sequels, Little Men and Jo's Boys. Little Women is renowned as one of the very first classics of children’s literature, and remains a popular masterpiece today.

Reviews for Jack and Jill

[griffin22 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I have always loved Alcott's Little Women series and I also like the Rose in Blood duology, so I was very excited to find this never-heard-of novel in a second hand bookshop. But it was disappointing. So preachy! I mean, all her books are, but they generally have a good story too. Sort of. This one was just boring preachiness. I know it was set a long time ago, but conversations in particular seemed very stilted and unrealistic.

[sueincyprus · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A nice enough story about some teenagers in the USA, written 130 years ago and, given its age, surprisingly up-to-date in some ways. Jack and Jill are close friends despite vastly different social circumstances, and early in the book have a nasty accident while sledging. The book follows them and their friends over the next year, as they convalesce.

Subtitled 'a village story', it's mostly gentle, with a fair amount of authorial intrusion, some of it rather preachy, at least to modern ears, and a bit much even given the date and genre. Unlikely to appeal to most modern children or teenagers, it's nonetheless a pleasant piece of social history, and I'd recommend it in a low-key sort of way to anyone who enjoys books such as Louisa M Alcott's better-known 'Little Women' series.

[m.belljackson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Written with many, many lessons for both children and adults, this tells the story of how a sledding accident affects the lives of Jack and Janey (Jill).Too good to be true Sentimentality, baby talk, and heavy handed Temperance at all costs sometimes gets in the way of enjoying the high spirits, joy of making dangerous choices, and sheer fun of friendships.Lovely gems, like "...found it easier to feel love and gratitude than to put them into verse" make for good introspective reading.Death gets tossed in as yet another lesson.

[lucybrown_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this when I was 12 or 13 and loved it, though it was quite old-fashion by my friends' reading standards. But I was an old-fashion girl with whom the modern mores never set quite easily.

[jjmcgaffey · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Cute, sentimental, rather preachy. There are some excellent bits - a lot of what the kids get up to is great, and the funeral is amazing on multiple levels, _despite_ the preachy bits in it. She does spend an awful lot of time talking to the reader about how kids should be good and compassionate and keep their promises (even if it's silly - Jack and the money, yes (though poorly handled), Jack and the boat just silly) and how religion and temperance are wonderful things and and and. I don't disagree with most of what she says, but I kept having to remind myself of that when her sententious tones rubbed me the wrong way. It's possible that if I had first read this as a child, as I did Eight Cousins, I would love it and disregard the preachiness; reading it for the first time now, it's only tolerable. I doubt I'll reread.

[jenneb_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I just read an article about this novel ("Missionary Positions: Taming the Savage Girl in Louisa May Alcott's Jack and Jill" by M. Hines), so I wanted to reread the book.

It was definitely more full of those glurgey Victorianisms (wholesome and pure!) than I remember, but when I was younger I just read these books pretty much at face value and didn't really think about the imperialist subtext and what have you.

I still can't quite tell if she's being serious with some of the moralizing. I want to think she wrote books like this to pay the rent and actually preferred the "sensational" stories that were supposedly shameful. However, I can't really be bothered to read a bunch of scholarship on the subject.

[auntieknickers · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When Jack and Jill are injured in a sliding accident, their friends rally round to keep them company. A charming story and as a bonus, you also learn a lot about the treatment of injuries in the 19th century!

[breadcrumbreads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My rating here is in memory of what I thought of this book as a child. I loved it and read it through about two or three times. Looking back now, I'm not sure I would give it a four-star rating...I might. It was a slow moving book, detailing the life of a little girl called Jill. It's very much along the lines of Little Women, but a lot more domesticated.