Louisa May Alcott Summer Reading Challenge Review

Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy: A Graphic Novel: A Modern Retelling of Little Women by Rey Terciero and Bre Indigo

The March sisters live in contemporary Brooklyn with their mother, a nurse, in a five-floor walk-up apartment. Their dad is away from home with the army in the Middle East and all the girls miss him terribly. Money is tight and eldest girl Meg dreams of marrying a rich man so she can quit her job; Jo wants to read every Pulitzer Prize winning novel and write one herself; sweet, shy Beth has a passion for music but can't bring herself to perform in public, while youngest sister Amy is fabulous the way she is but would love to be an artist or play video games for a living. The girls navigate friendships and the opposite sex. face challenges in school, at work, fight with each other at home as all girls do. When a real crisis arises, the sisters have to look at what is important in their lives and come together as a family to survive the challenges life throws at them.

I am not the target audience for this book and I know and love the original too much to have enjoyed this adaptation of Little Women.

What I did not like

• The girls were SO mean to each other! 
• Jo is incredibly snarky and while I WOULD speak to my sisters they way she does, I would never ever dream of speaking to my aunt to her face the things Jo says to her. In the original novel, Jo knows she has to put up with Aunt March if they want any of Aunt March's money. She needs the job and if she sasses Aunt March, Jo won't have a job. 
•  Meg is super whiny and a bit too obsessed with the "someday my prince will come" attitude for a modern young woman. 
• Amy is absolutely horrid! She acts really immature for her age. Her overconfidence is astounding and her sassiness is downright rude. The original Amy may have be bratty at times but she wants to be a fine lady and has manners. This modern Amy has absolutely zero manners. Her mother and sisters let her get away with the most appalling behavior.

The graphic novel format just doesn't do justice to the story. 

• Mom has to force the girls to go to a soup kitchen on Christmas instead of asking them to give up their breakfast. 
• There are no lovely speeches from Marmee, no advice on controlling one's temper and hardly any loving Marmee at all. She works a lot. 
• I didn't get much of the development of Laurie's storyline. Why does he want to kiss Jo all of a sudden when it seems more like he's friends with all the girls? He isn't a poor little rich boy. His grandfather loves him a lot and they live in the same building as the Marches.
•  Jo's reason for not wanting to kiss Laurie does not correspond to the original or Louisa's. Jo's feelings of not wanting to grow up and change are part of what makes her an enduring heroine. The relationship doesn't develop well. 
•  Meg and Brookes don't make sense. The original is so lovely with John helping to care for Father and bringing Father home, then going off to prove himself fighting in the Civil War. (I did like parts of the relationship stories which I shall get to in a moment).
• Amy is being bullied in school. I did not like the mean girl plot and found the mean girl SHOCKING and APPALLING! You mean to tell me all through elementary school Amy has been bullied like this and not ONE adult has stepped in? This does not correspond to the pickled limes chapter.
• Aunt Cath. What bug crawled up her butt? She acts completely awful in the first half of the book. Then she does a 180 and becomes a nicer person.

I missed the cozy charm of the little old farmhouse in Concord and the simplicity of life in the 19th century, even though women lacked choices and opportunities, as Jo nicely points out.

I'm not a crazy fan of the art work either. The people don't look realistic at all. Amy looks like a toddler and I kept confusing Meg with an adult. Mom looks like a mom though.

What I did like

• The modern setting of Brooklyn allows the illustrators to make the Marches and their neighbors a diverse cast of characters. Meg and Jo are not biological siblings but they act like sisters anyway. Jo and her mom are white and Meg and her dad are black while Beth and Amy are biracial and brown skinned. Laurie and his grandfather are brown Latinos and other characters reflect the diversity of modern life.
• Meg's choice. It's not 1868 anymore, as Jo points out. In 1868 a girl was limited to her home, her family and maybe 2-3 eligible men in the area. She made the best of whatever man she chose to marry and that was it. Today girls of 17 are not expected to marry and don't have to marry for money.
• Jo's secret isn't much of a surprise but it also doesn't correspond to Jo or Louisa herself. I was expecting something a little different but similar. I did appreciate her coming to terms with it and preaching about tolerance. Her speeches got rather corny at the end but obviously this is geared for 12-year-olds and not adults.
• Beth!!!!!!!!!!!!! A million stars for Beth! I just adore her so much and want to hug her sweet little nerdy self. Adorable Beth is not as shy as her original counterpart. In fact she's not that shy expect for her music. She has a passion for music and thinks it sounds better on vinyl. She loves Disney movies and not scary horror movies and is generally the sweetest and best of her sisters, without being a do-gooder or nauseating Victorian angel. She is content to be a nerd. Beth does dream of growing up and her illness corresponds very well to the original scarlet fever. What the sisters do for her during her illness is wonderful and more true to the spirit of the original novel.
• The e-mails to Dad. Dad sounds like an amazing man! I can see why Mom fell in love with him. I don't feel the same way about her but maybe that was deliberate on behalf of the writers. Here it is Dad who is the big influence on the girls and teaches them important lessons. The e-mails are very sweet and really develop the characters' personalities.

Honorable mentions for minor things I liked

• Kennedy. Kennedy is supposed to correspond to Sallie Moffatt. She does not thankfully. I was pleasantly surprised by her.

• The blink and you miss it Jane Austen Easter Egg. Look at Aunt Cath's ring.

Final verdict
Read the original.
If you have young girls in your life unable to get through the original just yet, give them
The Penderwicks
The Sisters Club
Littler Women: A Modern Retelling

If you're an adult looking for a good modern retelling try The Little Women Letters