Love Always, Blue

by Mary Pope Osborne

The summer after her parents' separation, fifteen-year-old Blue looks forward to visiting her playwright father, who is trying to get his play produced in New York City.

Genres: Young Adult

183 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1983

About the author

Mary Pope Osborne is an American author of children's books and audiobook narrator. She is best known as the author of the Magic Tree House series, which as of 2017 sold more than 134 million copies worldwide. Both the series and Osborne have won awards, including for Osborne's charitable efforts at promoting children's literacy. One of four children, Osborne moved around in her childhood before attending the University of North Carolina. Following college, Osborne traveled before moving to New York City. She somewhat spontaneously began to write, and her first book was published in 1982. She went on to write a variety of other children's and young adult books before starting the Magic Tree House series in 1992. Osborne's sister Natalie Pope Boyce has written several compendium books to the Magic Tree House series, sometimes with Osborne's husband Will Osborne.

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book with my grandmother at a yard sale. It's a really old book. The first book I ever re-read. I don't know why but I re-read it all the time. Will do a better review on it in the future.

[Nora · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Magic Tree House books were never my thing, but any 1980’s book that has a girl moodily holding a pay phone receiver is made for me. Blue is very unhappy living in her boring Southern town with her conventional mom who loves the country club and a bunch of cloddish kids who don’t care about art and literature the way Blue does. Most of all, she misses her aspiring playwright dad who lives in Greenwich Village now that her parents have separated. As an adult reader, it’s easy to see that her dad is not really emotionally available for her and could never be a real caregiver, but Blue wants to go live with him. I was sure this story was going to be about Blue running away from home, but surprisingly, Blue’s mom lets her go visit her dad in NYC for two weeks. In NYC, Blue meets a dreamy boy and also gets a more realistic picture of her dad. There are a lot of interesting details I won’t give away, but I was happy that the book ended with Blue and her dad still having a positive and caring relationship even though she couldn’t keep him on a pedestal.

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is a quick read about a girl who turns 15 and wants to visit her father, who left her and her mother in South Carolina four months before to try to be a playwright in New York.

The first half of the book is Blue and her mother arguing. Their relationship felt by turns believable and stilted (in that 80s dialogue kind of way). The trip to New York comes about halfway through the book, and Blue and her father's relationship is similarly a little disjointed, though that's also to do with his character. We get a little glimpse of 1980s New York in Washington Square Park when Blue goes there with a boy she meets.

Overall, the story takes place over only a few weeks, and is a bit of a downer in the end. But it's interesting to see what the author of the Magic Treehouse books was up to before she became famous with the elementary school audience.