New Horizons

Janie Marshall #4

by Dorothy Simpson, Dorothy Bayley Morse (Illustrator)

Janie, an island girl and a lobsterman's daughter, makes her first voyage to the mainland of Maine where she will board in town and attend high school. But adjusting to town life and school isn't as easy as she hopes.

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

Aleda Dorothy Knowlton (Dot) Simpson, born June 28, 1905, grew up on Criehaven Island off the coast of Maine. Later in life, she lived on Gay's Island off Friendship and Cushing with her longtime companion and well-known Maine author, Elizabeth Ogilvie.

After Simpson's death on December 19, 1998 her niece, also named Dorothy Simpson, published The Island's True Child: A Memoir of Growing Up on Criehaven (2003), based on Simpson's unpublished journals dating to 1930.

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Reviews

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

This fourth book in the Janie Marshall series set in Maine makes a big jump forward in time, and at last she has left her island to attend high school on the mainland! Yay! And happily Janie at 14 is a little wiser than the constantly self-sabotaging 12 year-old of the earlier books. We are also finally told what year it is (1924), something I'd been wondering while reading the earlier books, which adds to the evidence that this series is at least partially autobiographical. The difficulties Janie faces when encountering city and high school life for the first time are realistically depicted, and are a little tough to read about, but that just made her eventual (and still quite believable) adjustment more satisfying.

[Marya DeVoto · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting slice of life about the Maine coast, a little grittier than I was expecting from the "rural girl adjusts to town life" genre.