A Gift for Amy

Portraits of Little Women

by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Amy pursues the interest of a wealthy young boy to enhance her social position, yet when he buys her an expensive gift, she must make her true feelings known

Genres: Middle Grade, Historical Fiction

112 pages, Hardcover

First published June 8, 1999

About the author

Susan Beth Pfeffer was an American author best known for young adult and science fiction. After writing for 35 years, she received wider notice for her series of post-apocalyptic novels, officially titled "The Life as We Knew It Series", but often called "The Last Survivors" or "Moon Crash" series, some of which appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Reviews

[My Hidden Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amy has always wanted the finer things in life and can seem like a bit of a pain in some of this books, but it stems a lot of the times from her being younger and not sure of the world yet. That becomes very clear in this book as she lets everyone influence her, tell her what she wants to her (in some cases) and never stops to think that what she could be doing is wrong. When there finally is a confrontation, she finally realizes that she did in fact do something wrong and she should have told her mother the truth.

A good lesson is in this book as well and it was an enjoyable book. I do think a woman calling a ten year old a hussy was a bit much, but I reminded myself that this was a different time period and that's probably how situations were regarded back then regardless of whether or not it was fair.

[Angie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first of this series that Lizzie has read so far, but she was excited to dive in after reading Little Women last year and enjoying it so much. This book was good enough for her to look forward to reading the rest of them.

[Stasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really thought that this was going to have a different ending than what happened... But it was still really good. I love how these little stories capture the feel of the characters.