Rachel Field's Hitty: Her First Hundred Years

Rachel Field's Hitty: Her First Hundred Years
by Rosemary Wells

Rachel Field's Hitty: Her First Hundred Years
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Book Summary Information

Author: Rosemary Wells
Illustrator: Susan Jeffers
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-10-01
ISBN: 0689817169
Number of pages: 112
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing

Summary of Rachel Field's Hitty: Her First Hundred Years

Based on the 1930 Newberry Award Winner

On a cold Maine night in 1829, an old peddler carved a small doll out of a piece of mountain ash wood. Her name was Hitty and she was no ordinary doll.

Hitty's first owner, Phoebe Preble, takes her from Boston to India. From the hands of Phoebe Preble, Hitty travels on with a snake charmer, a Civil War soldier, a riverboat captains daughter, and a former slave. Along the way she meets presidents and painters, relating each adventure in vivid detail.

Rachel Field's masterful novel "Hitty: Her First Hundred Years" was first published in 1929; it was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1930. In this full-color adaptation, the award-winning team of Rosemary Wells and Susan Jeffers has taken Hitty down from the shelf and dusted her off for a new generation of younger readers. The short, fast-paced chapters and pictures on every spread bring life to this beloved classic, and make it perfect for sharing with the whole family.


Following the "life" of a wooden doll may seem like a strangely passive way of learning American history, but it turns out to be a remarkably gripping approach. In the course of her first hundred years, the peddler-carved doll Hitty travels from Boston to India, is abandoned for years in an attic, is shipwrecked in the South Seas, meets President Abe Lincoln, and at one point lives with a snake charmer. Seen through her hand-painted eyes, the 19th-century world is a miraculous and usually wonderful place, with some mysteries never to be fathomed. Rachel Fields wrote this Newbery Medal-winner in 1929; 70 years later Rosemary Wells and Susan Jeffers did what to some is the unthinkable: they adapted the classic. In their defense, they did a gorgeous job and did in fact give Hitty a much-needed new lease on life. As Wells says in her note to the reader, "no one I spoke to had actually read Hitty in at least thirty years, and that seemed a real shame."

Of course, as in any adaptation, something of the original is lost. Wells even makes a few significant changes to the story. But purists take note: Wells has the utmost respect for the importance of Hitty, and Susan Jeffers's richly imagined illustrations are definitely worthy of this classic. Don't let another hundred years slip by without reading this gem! (Ages 9 to 12) --Emilie Coulter

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