Reviews for Jack and Jill

The average rating for Jack and Jill based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-03-01 00:00:00 Seth Sauberman Old-fashioned? Sure. Out of date? Not at all. Despite being written more than a century ago, this charming and sweet book has some very important themes and messages for today. In classic LMA fashion, this book is meant to be morally inspiring for Tweens and teens who already accept the moral premise of classic conservative Christian values. To evaluate a LMA book outside of that bent is to essentially judge a fish's ability to climb a tree. In my opinion, this book is highly entertaining and inspiring. As a life long LMA fan and a young mom, I enjoyed many of the characters and their story arcs. Admittedly, this book is not without sermons and it is difficult to follow the conversations in places where the speaker changes but the formatting seems to hide that fact. There is no question that I enjoyed this book as a young mom and look forward to sharing it with my children.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-11-22 00:00:00 John Bingley Although this here Louisa May Alcott novel, although Jack and Jill is in many ways incredibly preachy and moralising, and definitely much more so than her Little Women, and although I always do tend to cry my eyes out at one particular part (even more so than when Beth dies in Little Women), I keep rereading and enjoying Jack and Jill. Now I am indeed more than well aware and appreciative of the fact that many of the messages presented and promoted by Louisa May Alcott in Jack and Jill are rather massively outdated, that there are gender inequality and obvious social stratification and often rather overtly presented, but that has also not stopped me from calling Jack and Jill one of my personal favourites, and a novel that I do and continuously savour and cherish (over and over and over again). And sometimes, that is really all one can and should expect of reading material to be considered a classic and perennial favourite, namely that it has personal reread potential and reread appeal (as for me, any book, any novel, that I enjoy rereading and often, any tome that has that special and magical appeal, is to and for my feelings great literature, potential issues, potential problems even with outdated content and/or possible stylistic issues always quite notwithstanding and even at least personally above my own criticism). And while Jack and Jill certainly exhibits many instances of especially moralising preachiness and is thus by no means a "perfect" novel by any stretch of the imagination, it has equally had, and from the very first time I read Jack and Jill as a young adult, that very and oh so special rereading magic which make certain books personal favourites, and thus, at least to and for me, enduring and much loved literary classics.