Kathryn Worth (1898–1969)

When fourteen-year-old Josephine McNair arrived at the Pensionnat Savarel in Geneva, together with her older sister Elizabeth, the young American girl was surprised to discover that - with one or two notable exceptions - all the other pupils at the small boarding school run by Tante Berthe gave them the cold shoulder. Only Trudy Glockner, a friendly Dutch girl from Amsterdam, seemed willing to befriend Josie. What could have caused this hostility, the McNair sisters wondered, and what did it show more have to do with the mysterious Cutie Rhinelander and Lucy Vandercook, about whom they had both been questioned? Slowly, a story emerged of two other American pupils, whose inconsiderate and ill-mannered behaviour the year before had created a lasting impression in the minds of the Savareliennes, an impression that was especially strong in Mimi Massenet - a talented musician, the most popular girl in the school, and the one whom Josie particularly wanted for a friend. Could Josie and Elizabeth undo the damage caused by their predecessors? Could they convince their new peers that, despite outward differences, they held some of the same ideals? Most of all, could they finally make friends with their European schoolmates?

Published in 1944, and set in the Switzerland of 1937, New Worlds for Josie is one of a number of American school stories featuring girls who go off to Switzerland (see also: Louise Lee Floethe's A Year to Remember, and Madeleine L'Engle's And Both Were Young), and is - ironically, given the period in which it is set, just prior to WWII - a study of cross-cultural misunderstanding and rapprochement. It is also an engaging tale of a young girl - something of a poet and a dreamer - expanding her horizons and her perspective, and discovering the wider world for the first time. A little bit of romance with an English boy also attending boarding school in Switzerland, some schoolgirl rivalries (Hilda Boekman makes a wonderful villain - the kind one loves to hate!), and the obligatory dramatic rescue that proves the heroine's worth, make this an entertaining book to read! I did wish that poor faithful Trudy were better appreciated than the "desirable" Mimi, but aside from that qualm, found New Worlds for Josie an agreeable little school story bonbon, ideally suited for curling up and reading, on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Which is just what I did... show less

Maggie McArn is three days shy of 14 at the opening of this book. A parson's daughter, the middle of eleven children, she's stubborn, determined, and hot-tempered. She's also ambitious. On New Year's Day, 1883, she announces her ambition to go up North to learn to be a doctor. One of her older brothers is the first to shoot down her plan. Her father declares that being a doctor is not one of the things a woman is fitted to do.
Her mother thinks Maggie wants to forget she's a woman. Don, her show more favorite brother, is the only one to support her -- but not where their father can hear him.

Maggie has read about a woman studying to be a doctor in Philadelphia in the Presbyterian Journal . They have cousins in Philadelphia. Maggie figures she can board with them. The tuition should cost $800.00, which she hopes their rich Uncle Malcom will lend her. With her father's permission, Maggie writes to ask for the loan.

Uncle Malcolm is willing to lend her $700.00 if, in the next two years, Maggie earns the first hundred dollars on her own, and Maggie learns to control her temper. None of that hundred dollars may be given to her. It must be earned.

Conquering her temper isn't easy for Maggie. She comes close to killing someone at one point. Still, when it comes to learning from the local doctor, nursing rich and poor, and keeping her head in emergencies, Maggie has the right stuff. One of the local boys, Marshall Elliott, has definitely noticed. Will Marshall be able to handle Maggie's dream or will he expect her to be content just being Mrs. Marshall Elliott? That is, if he can win Maggie's heart...

Don't miss the chapter where Maggie has to take care of Marshall's peppery Aunt Elvira. She's something else, as the lady proves later on.

This isn't a book of all sunshine and sweetness. Some of the patients don't survive. The hardest deaths to take are the ones that needn't have happened. Thank goodness Dr. Farquard warned Maggie not to let her patient with consumption (tuberculosis) cough on her. Maggie believed the notion that it wasn't catching.

I like old books and picked this one up after just looking at the frontispiece and the first couple of pages of chapter one. When I started to read it, I noticed that one of the chapters was titled 'Pomp's Pickaninnies' and my heart sank. Sure enough, the depiction of the African-American characters set my teeth on edge. On the plus side, the abominable N-word hardly appears at all. The sister who thinks it's beneath the family dignity for a McArn to nurse African-Americans gets promptly set straight by their father. The prior enslavement of Africans is stated to have been an injustice. Twice Maggie is wrongly suspected of breaking something that didn't belong to her. Once the real culprit is white and once African-American. The African-American clears Maggie's name much, much sooner after the fact than the white person does.

It's a pity about the racial stereotyping because otherwise this is a very good book that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend.

By the way:
Maggie's botany book, Field, Forest, and Garden Botany by Asa Gray, is real.
In chapter six it's established that the Little River flows all the way down Cape Fear, so it's probably the Little River (North Carolina has 10 called that) that's a tributary of the Cape Fear River.
Yes, 'Scotch' is the drink and the people are 'Scots,' but that error was still common here in the USA when I was young, so don't be surprised to see it made in a book from 1941.
'Linsey-woolsey' can be used to mean cloth woven of linen and cotton as well as linen and wool, which is how it's used here. show less

This book was egregiously racist both explicitly and implicitly. I could tell you that it was the story of a young girl and her quest to become a doctor in the late 1880s, but that's not enough. It's also the story of how black people are dirty, stupid, worthless, lazy, scary, and naturally only fit to wait on the white folks. This sentiment lies under the entire book, and is verbalized numerous times by various characters. I kept putting it down and fuming. Had it not been a library book, show more and an Inter-Libray Loan book at that, I would have thrown it.

I read it all because it came highly recommended. I am deeply shocked that it did so.

And I think I read it all because I couldn't believe my eyes. I haven't hated a book this much in a very long time. Not recommended. Ever. At all. For anyone.

Negative 30 billion stars. Now I'm going to go wash my eyes out with sulfuric acid and benzene. show less

Tears and laughter alternate in this novel of a young girl's growth to womanhood in the 1830's. Sixteen-year-old orphan Martitia is taken into the home of Dr. Gardner, a North Carolina Quaker, who has five lively sons as full of merriment as himself. The boys do their best to get Martitia to laugh, but she is at first overwhelmed by their pranks. Little by little she struggles to become a true Gardner daughter. And in so doing, she grows in humor and in love.