The book ends with the introduction of Tib Muller. There's some foreshadowing for the rest of the series in Betsy's active imagination, and the stories she makes up about herself and Tacy having fabulous adventures. The story is basically a series of vignettes - the two girls play together, quarrel with their older sisters, go to school for the first time, and each deals with a family crisis: Betsy has a new sister born, and Tacy has a baby sister die.

Betsy-Tacy: The first book in the series opens with the four-year-old Betsy Ray wishing she could make a friend her own age, and discovering that friend in the bashful new neighbor, Tacy Kelly, at her fifth birthday party.

Three other stories are set in the fictional Deep Valley, and all have a tangential link to Betsy. A good slice-of-life from the Edwardian period, with the added bonus of portraying female friendship as healthy, positive, and nurturing.

The last six books take them through all four years of high school, follow Betsy on her Grand Tour of Europe right before the outbreak of WWI, and then follow all three young women into marriage on the eve of war. The first four books in the series chronicle the childhood of Betsy Ray, and her two closest friends, Tacy Kelly and Tib Muller, from ages 5 to 12. The series begins in early 1899, and ends in the middle of 1917. Maud Hart Lovelace's Betsy-Tacy series has a comparatively small, but extremely devoted, fanbase, complete with yearly conventions in Maud's hometown of Mankato, Minnesota. “It was difficult, later, to think of a time when Betsy and Tacy had not been friends.”Ī historical, fictionalized autobiographical series, though far less well known than the Little House books.

Betsy tacy and tib books