Felicity Learns a Lesson: A School Story

About to start the American Girls podcast, so I'm rereading my AG books before I listen to the episodes.

I really enjoyed this one. For some reason, I remembered the opening scene of the book before I even read it again. I remember really liking Elizabeth and I still do. The “lesson” Felicity learns is well done, Mother is wonderful, and the book brings more of the Revolutionary themes into the stories.

(My mom made me Felicity's school dress for fifth grade colonial days and it was basically the best thing ever.)

I'm not going to give Felicity's books to my own children because of the profoundly troubling way the stories deal with slavery.

Felicity's parents and grandfather are slaveowners, and at no point does Felicity have any internal conflict or unease about this. These books depict Virginia as if abolitionists did not exist (they did) and as if slavery was not something talked about (it was).

There are ways to write a setting where slavery is normalized, and the narrative makes it clear that it's not morally neutral. This book wasn't that. It felt really icky to read.