Louisa May Alcott was born November 29, 1832 and died at the age of fifty-five on March 6, 1888. An American novelist, she is best known for the novel Little Women, published in 1868. This novel is loosely based on her childhood years with her three sisters in Concord, Massachusetts. Part two, also known as Good Wives, (1869) followed the March sisters into adulthood and their respective marriages. Little Men (1871) detailed Jo’s life at the Plumfield School that she founded with her husband Professor Bhaer at the conclusion of Part Two of Little Women.  Jo’s Boys (1886) completed the “March Family Saga.”

Although the Jo character in Little Women was based on Louisa May Alcott, she, unlike Jo, never married. In 1879 her younger sister, May, died. Alcott took in May’s daughter, Louisa May Nieriker (“Lulu”), who was two years old. The baby was named after her aunt, and was given the same nickname. In her later life, Alcott became an advocate of women’s suffrage and was the first woman to register to vote in Concord, Massachusetts in a school board election. Despite worsening health, Alcott wrote through the rest of her life, finally succumbing to the after-effects of mercury poisoning contracted during her American Civil War service: she had received calomel treatments for the effects of typhoid. She died in Boston on March 6, 1888 at age 55, two days after visiting her father on his deathbed. Her last words were “Is it not meningitis?”

CCA Middleschoolers! Don’t forget that you have some summer reading to do.

Summer Reading List for 7^th and 8^th grades:

• Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
  
• Little Men, Louisa May Alcott
  
• The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
  
• The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper
  
• The Deerslayer, James Fenimore Cooper
  
• The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
  
• Across Five Aprils, Irene Hunt
  
• A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle
  
• The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
  
• Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
  
• The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
  
• Heidi, Johanna Spyri
  
• The Red Pony, John Steinbeck
  
• Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
  
• The Prince and the Pauper, Mark Twain
  
• Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne
  
• The Swiss Family Robinson, Johann David Wyss
  
• The Black Stallion, Walter Farley
  
• Christy, Catherine Marshall
  
• The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells
  
• Born Free, Joy Adamsom
  
• Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
  

   

WOW!! I can’t believe that another school year has come and gone. Our first year of middle school was great and we are looking forward to next year.

I wanted to start this page to use as a central point for pictures and information about middle school at Crossroads Christian Academy. If you have anything that you would like to have posted; pictures, info, whatever, this is a great place to do it. Just shoot it to me via e-mail and I can post it here. I have two e-mail accounts that I use and they are listed below.

Summer will be over before you know it. I hope that you have a safe and fun time! Give us a call and we can hang out!

Lori Servies, mom to Emma, 8th grade

• lservies@aol.com
• lservies@gmail.com

Check out my other blogs

• Words for a Woman’s Heart
  
• Begging for Bread