Little Women Book Club

I fell in love with the Winona Ryder movie adaptation of Little Women in college when it came out. Ever since then I’ve thought of Little Women as a Christmas movie. It may not be, but that’s how I think of it, so last year we read Little Women in December, and watched it after Christmas. Now with the new movie coming out is the perfect time to share our Little Women Book Club for a book and a movie, specifically, it’s found on the 8th-grade books made into movies.

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Little Women

Little Women is a semi-autobiographical book written by Louisa May Alcott. It follows the story of the March sisters as they grow up and venture out into the world. The book follows each of the sisters equally, however, the movies tend to focus more on Jo and to a lesser extent Beth.

Little Women has a few sequels that follow the stories of the sisters but focus more on Jo in the school she opens. They are much more episodic, so they do make great read-alouds because each chapter (though rather long) focuses on one kid at her “boarding school.”

I’d also say, there’s a fair number of movie adaptations of Little Women. I love the Winona Ryder Little Women movie, but the BBC had a great mini-series come out, that does a somewhat better job of focusing on the other sisters a bit more, but it still gives a very short shift to Meg, unlike the book.

I’m both excited for and a little worried about this new Little Women movie because I feel like Emma Watson always plays the same character (much to Belle’s detriment in Beauty and the Beast, she played Hermione, and they are different characters). What do you think, are you excited about the new Little Women movie?

I’m seeing it with some friends in a few days.

Future Ticia 2023, I did not end up seeing it, and I don’t know why. The Artist saw it at a friend’s birthday party and she had very mixed feelings on the movie. And by mixed feelings, I mean she really didn’t like it, and that’s what I’ve heard from several people. It’s a bit hard to follow what time period scenes are supposed to be in, because they don’t

Little Women Book Club

This time for our Little Women book club we used the 7 Sisters Little Women discussion guide (It’s also in their American Literature full-year guide). This was the second discussion guide we’d used, and they struggled with this one because it wasn’t so much comprehension, but critical thinking and putting together disparate ideas. It talked a lot about Louisa May Alcott’s philosophy/religion because her transcendental meditation opinions are a strong underpinning of the book.

Since we hadn’t covered what is a relatively minor part of US history, but a topic you would cover in high school US history, they didn’t have the background knowledge. We did a lot of discussing to talk about it.

Side note, if you want to see how her TM beliefs play out more, read Eight Cousins or Rose in Bloom (this is the edition I read to pieces and then bought a second copy) and then come back and have another Little Women book club discussion comparing those three (especially Rose in Bloom, which is probably my very favorite Alcott book).

With that, I would recommend, if you want to do the Little Women book club using 7 Sisters waiting until high school and more in-depth coverage of US history.

But, if you don’t want to go into all that, and just want a few things to discuss. Here are the things I love to discuss:

1. AFTER READING THE FIRST SEVERAL CHAPTERS, what do you predict will happen to each of the girls? Write your predictions down to revisit when you finish the book.
2. This book, like most of Alcott’s books, was first written in a serialized format, each chapter would come out in the newspaper and be a self-contained story. How do you see this impact the story of the movie?
3. The March sisters describe themselves as poor, and so do their friends. What proof do you see of this description? What would you use to say their complaints aren’t true?
4. AFTER READING THE BOOK, were you surprised by the ending?

Little Women Book Club snacks

After reading Little Women and talking about it, we, of course, watched the movie. This time we watched the Little Women mini-series because I really like the actress they got for Jo, and they included one of my favorite scenes from the book, where Jo is fighting with Laurie over a pillow and the placement of the pillow between them.

Most of our snacks are picked right out of the book, since Alcott was a firm believer in simple foods, she mentioned them quite a lot.

• Strawberries and sugar- I paid exorbitant prices for strawberries in December and chopped them up and tossed them with some sugar
• Fried Apples- we made some cinnamon apples from one of Batman’s cookbooks
• Scalloped potatoes- my kids were not as big a fan of these as I thought they would be (sadly)
• Pickled Limes- poor Amy, she finally got some and the mean teacher made her throw them all away, ours are candied fruit gummies (which Amazon sells in giant bags)
• Snow- powdered sugar donuts
• Stories- gold nugget chocolates with lorem ipsum print (which can be found on the subscriber page down where the book and a movie printables are)
• Berry preserves- I bought some jams (though, a fun activity when berries aren’t insanely expensive would be to make jam. See our My Side of the Mountain movie night)
• Good homemade bread- using our favorite bread recipe (which I really should blog about sometime, since we use it ALL the time)
• Simple homemade stew- made from Batman’s World of Warcraft cookbook
• Tea Cake cookies- sugar cookie recipe (I had some frosting on the side to put on them)
• Christmas breakfast- cinnamon rolls!

Little Women movie adaptations

There are a lot, Little Women is one of the very first books made into a movie, it was made first as a silent film, and then as a talkie. Ever since then, it’s been remade every few years.

There is a YouTube series that attempted to update it to modern times, but unlike many of the other classic books, they did not do a good job updating it for modern times. They couldn’t figure out a way to finish the series, so they just left the book off halfway through it.

I know there are some modern adaptations somewhere, but I haven’t seen any yet, if you know of one, let me know about it.

• Little Women with Winona Ryder– probably the one most of us know
• Little Women 1949– probably the one your parents grew up with, also the first one in color
• BBC Little Women– like I said, I really like some of this one, check out the Frock Flicks take on costumes
• Little Women with Katherine Hepburn– I’ve heard she makes a great Jo
• Tales of Little Women– an anime series
• Also read Frock Flicks take on all the movies

Another Option for an Online Little Women Book Club

Over at Hide the Chocolate, she’s put together a great Little Women Online Book Club you could try out. I haven’t tried this one out, but the clubs I’ve done so far are lots of fun with a lot of learning going on.

Other great ideas to go with your Little Women Book Club

I need to put together a couple more featured images for some of these posts…

• Civil War Nursing– nursing was theoretically invented in the Civil War, and Mrs. Marsh goes to nurse her husband back to health
• Colonial American Games– because many were the same during the time of Little Women
• Civil War Unit– because that’s the background for the first half of the book
• Worldview Unit– if you’re discussing TM, you might look at other worldviews
• US History lessons– because everyone needs to look at more of American history…

Picture from Christmas at Cloverlawn, and used under Creative Commons