Women, and I changed the ending!
As I close the door to Mr. Ochocinco’s room behind me, I see Jackson and Charlotte pass by in the hallway, holding hands.
After I told Charlotte about Jackson liking her on Friday night, and after we finished eating dinner, she got up the nerve to call him while I worked on my paper—the paper I’ll now have to rewrite.
Oh, well.
So Jo wound up with Laurie, and Charlotte is winding up with Jackson. Me, I wound up with neither Jackson nor Laurie. But that’s as it should be. It’s the way the story was always meant to go. Someday, I’ll have my own guy. He won’t be either Jackson or Laurie. He’ll be some guy I genuinely like for who he is, and who likes me for who I am.
I have got to find Kendra—I need to tell her everything that’s happened!
But then I realize: I’ll never be able to tell anyone what’s happened to me, what I’ve seen, where I’ve been, and how I changed the story even as it changed me—who would ever believe me?
And suddenly I miss my family, my other family: starchy Meg, annoying Jo, sweet Beth, and even Amy, the interloper.
I finger the paper crown in my hand as words come to me, words that I instinctively know are the last bit of dialogue Beth speaks before she dies, saying, “… for love is the only thing we can carry with us when we go; and it makes the end so easy.”
Yes, Beth, I think. Yes, it does.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Pamela Harty and everyone at The Knight Agency for superior representation.
Thanks to Melanie Cecka and everyone at Bloomsbury USA for superior publishing.
Thanks to writers who helped this particular book on its way—Lauren Catherine, Andrea Schicke Hirsch, Greg Logsted, and Rob Mayette—for superior help.
Thanks to Lucille Baratz for being a superior mother, Greg Logsted for being a superior husband, and Jackie Logsted for being the most superior of daughters.
Thanks to booksellers, librarians, and readers everywhere—superlative beings, one and all.
Author’s Note
[Author’s Note about the Author’s Note: Please don’t read this if you haven’t finished the book!]
When I was younger, I read Little Women more times than I can count. I loved the world Louisa May Alcott created, although I did have two major issues with it: I always hated it when Beth died, and I really hated that Laurie wound up with Amy instead of the person I’d have him end up with if I were in charge of the world, Jo. There are some books you first encounter when you’re younger—Jane Eyre and The Great Gatsby immediately spring to mind—that you read again as you get older, but Little Women had never been that way for me. Once I reached a certain age, it became a book I no longer reread, the Marches existing instead in fond memory and movie adaptations.
But then, a few years ago, my daughter, Jackie, and her best friend discovered Little Women for the first time, and I began really thinking about the book once more. We discussed how sad it is that Beth dies, how even Joey on Friends is so upset about it that he makes Rachel hide the book in the freezer! And we discussed how wrong we all thought it was that Laurie winds up with Amy instead of Jo.
That’s when I had the kind of moment that drives so much of my writing: What if? In this case, what if a contemporary teen somehow found herself inside the world of Little Women, her mission there being to change one of the two problems readers traditionally have with the book? So I sat down and wrote the prologue to Little Women and Me, in which Emily is literally sucked into the story. And then I pulled out a copy of Little Women and set about writing the rest of my book.
Normally, when writing a book, I might do all of my research first, which in this case would have meant rereading all of Little Women before writing my own version. But I didn’t do that. Instead, I’d read one chapter of Alcott’s book and then write my own version, keeping the plot points and whatever else I wanted from hers, while inserting Emily into the story and adding my own twists. This chapter-by-chapter correspondence goes on through Chapter 30. Alcott’s Little Women continues for another seventeen chapters while my version veers off there into the epilogue. I leave the story before Beth dies, although the reader now knows that eventually she will, that no matter what Emily did, she couldn’t stop that.
Here’s the most surprising thing I found while rereading Little Women, something I never noticed when I was younger, but that Emily comments on several times during her journey through the book—it’s all so random! Sure, there’s a plotline, but family members and friends and even events enter the story from out of the blue, like the meeting of the Pickwick Club. The March sisters have been seemingly meeting regularly to put together their own newspaper, but no mention is made of the club before or after the chapter in which that one meeting takes place.
So if readers of my book occasionally think, “Wow! That thing that just happened was so random!” chances are the original book was random first.
One thing that may surprise readers is how I came up with the ending. Most of the time when I write a book, I know how it’s going to end practically from the beginning. Not so with Little Women and Me. Louisa May Alcott wrote her book in episodic fashion, and so it was with me and mine. But about two-thirds of the way through, I had one of those epiphanies that sometimes happen while writing a book, and I realized: Whoa! Emily’s not the only time traveler in the book—Amy’s a time traveler too … and Papa! That’s when I knew how the book would end: Emily and Amy would confront each other, and eventually Emily would “fix” the story, making it so that Jo would wind up with Laurie, thereby earning her way back to her own life.
It was while I was writing the epilogue that another moment of inspiration struck. Earlier, I mentioned the Pickwick Club. In my chapter about that unusual writing society, just as in the original version, the March sisters wear badges with the initials “P.C.” on them wrapped around their heads like crowns. There’s a great book on writing by Christopher Vogler called The Writer’s Journey. It primarily discusses writing for film, but a lot of it can be used for writing novels as well. It breaks down a story’s structure into twelve parts, and one of the parts near the end is called “the return with the elixir”—think of the elixir as some tangible item that the hero or heroine brings back like a reward for their successful journey or, in Emily’s case, proof that the journey even happened. In the epilogue, after Emily talks to her teacher about her paper, she’s still stunned by everything that’s happened, still unsure if it was all a dream or if it was real. Then the paper crown with “P.C.” on it falls out of her notebook—the elixir Emily didn’t know she brought back with her—and the truth finally hits: she time traveled into Little Women and she changed the ending.
I hope you enjoyed Little Women and Me even half as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thanks for reading!
Also by Lauren Baratz-Logsted
The Twin’s Daughter
Copyright © 2011 by Lauren Baratz-Logsted
First published in the United States of America in November 2011
by Bloomsbury Books for Young Readers
Electronic edition published in 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to
Permissions, Bloomsbury BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Baratz-Logsted, Lauren.
Little Women and me / by Lauren Baratz-Logsted — 1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Modern-day teen Emily March turns to Louisa May Alcott’s famous book for a school
assignment and finds herself mysteriously transported to the world of Little Women, where she
undergoes surprising changes.
eISBN: 978-1-59990-514-3 (ebook)
[1. Space and time—Fiction. 2. Sisters—Fiction. 3. Family life—New England—Fiction. 4. Conduct of
life—Fiction. 5. New England—History—19th century—Fiction.]
I. Alcott, Louisa May, 1832–1888. Little women. II. Title.
PZ7.B22966Lit 2011 [Fic]—dc22 2010038095
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
Also by Lauren Baratz-Logsted
Imprint
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
Also by Lauren Baratz-Logsted
Imprint