The Young Adult Historical Fiction Society discussion

Let me know what you think about this book.

This book is available on Project Guttenburg. If you have OverDrive you can download it through the OverDrive site.

If you have Goggle, it's available http://books.google.com/books?id=MzlH...

Thanks for letting us know.

Thanks Qnpoohbear! That was helpful :-)

I downloaded the book on iBooks and I'm almost done. It's a quick, fluffy read but I'm enjoying it. Patty is outrageous but I love her. I'm also sensing an underlying feminist message in the book. It's subtle but I think it's there. I'll research Jean Webster (who wrote the fabulous Daddy Long Legs) and see if I can find out anything about her.

Patty is outrageous, but I can see why everyone loves her. I think I would do. She would certainly make college life more entertaining. This novel was written in 1905 but the author was raised in a progressive household so the novel has an underlying feminist theme. It's a new century and new progressive ideas about helping the poor and women's suffrage were taking hold. A little bit of this shines through the book. It's subtle, but it's there. For all her fooling around, Patty is smart and the subjects she studies typically masculine and tough. This is real college, not a place to go to find a husband. (The school isn't co-ed and hardly any boys come to their dances anyway). There are frequent references to "manning up" and "being a man" about things. The characters are never allowed to become wilting flowers or silly simpering misses in any way. The very last chapter ruined the book for me. I would have liked to see Patty progress to growing up on her own throughout the course of the novel.

Jean Webster wrote a prequel to this book called Just Patty. I wish that she hadn't died young so we could have had more Patty adventures.