Eight Cousins, Or, The Aunt-Hill

Always a joy, if one remembers what time and place this book was written and set in, and how thus, it is pretty progressive in comparison. 1875 in Boston was a much different time and place then where I am reading this book today in 2024. And yet I think there are some morals in this story still relevant to this day. How kindness and a steadfast hold onto one's beliefs does more to convince others of them than grand speeches. How to value 'our elders' without doing so blindly and how to keep an open mind. Do I believe that sometimes Dr. Alec overdoes his shielding Rose from "the frivolities of fashion and such"? Yes. But it is shown in this book nicely how he does so because he doesn't know better. He becomes Rose's guardian when she is already 13, after having close to no experience in raising a child. And yet I believe his approach to parenting is more reasonable than some examples I have witnessed both in real life and on the internet. All in all I think this book would be a great one to teach critical reading with. It uses some language that we, nowadays, understand to be racist, but never so in a way that is ill-intentioned. And it shows some classicism in the characters minds and how it fits with or might have emerged from their world view. And it does so without excusing it away.