I’m pretty sure that I wrote the following review when I was in fourth grade. There will probably be some grammatical errors as what I am posting is the original that I wrote in fourth grade, I think. The following review is of Little Women (Great Illustrated Classics) by Louisa May Alcott. Great Illustrated Classics are abridged (shortened) versions of classic books.

Little Women is a story about four sisters. Their names are Meg, Beth, Jo, and Amy. It was Christmas time during the war. Their father, Mr. March, was away at war as a Chaplain. He wasn’t well enough to be a soldier. The girls were thinking about Christmas and how they hated being poor. They were thankful to have a mother and a father, but they were worried about their father getting hurt or even killed in the war.

Each one of the girls had one dollar. They were trying to decide what to do with the money. At first, they all thought they would buy something for themselves that they really needed. Jo wanted to buy herself a book. She was a bookworm. Beth, the piano player, needed some new music. Amy wanted to get a nice box of drawing pencils.

Meg’s job was to take care of a nervous, fussy old woman, and she was getting tired of it. She wished they could just have the money they used to have when they were little, so they could have lots of pretty things. The sisters were sitting around the fireplace when they heard their mother come home. That’s when they decided to buy something for her with their money.

I think it must have been very hard to live during the war. I would not like it if my father had to go away and be around all of that fighting. It was very nice that the girls decided to buy something for their mother for Christmas instead of spending their money on themselves.