A Gift for Jo

Portraits of Little Women

by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Anger threatens to divide the March family when Jo's beautiful gift journal, in which she collects her most secret and personal thoughts, is read by her sisters.

Genres: Middle Grade, Historical Fiction, Family

112 pages, Hardcover

First published April 13, 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

[Jenifer Dale · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was interesting to me. The entire family puts so much effort into trying to curb Jo's temper, but when Amy acts up, they blame Jo and say that she doesn't notice Amy until she acts up. The book, however, was a good read. It just bothered me that whenever Jo attempted to write, she thought about what her future 'fans' would want to read because she's convinced she's going to be famous. I honestly think it would have been successful if she had used the journal to only write her feelings and not worry about what other people would be reading. While she was mean for what she wrote in the journal, fictional or not, her family, including her mother, had no right to read it, and I feel that should have been addressed more seriously as well. In the end, she basically says even though she's a writer, she's never going to use the journal again, which is disheartening.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought the family put a lot of demands on Jo to keep her temper in check while Amy got to routinely behave badly.

[Leila Jackson]

I wanted to read is