Six Degrees of Separation – From Frommer's New England to Charlotte's Web

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place as other readers, add six books, and see where you end up. This month’s starting point is any travel guide from our bookshelves. I used to work for the publisher of Frommer’s Travel Guides and happened to pull down Frommer’s New England the other day for a friend who was visiting Salem (when you work for a travel publisher, you collect a copy of every book/location you think you might visit or need as a reference in the future).

Love, Jacaranda by Alex Flinn, a retelling of Daddy Long Legs

Title: Love, Jacaranda
Author:  Alex Flinn

Publication: HarperTeen, Hardcover, July 2020

Genre: YA

Plot: Jacaranda Abbott is a foster kid with a voice.  While working as a cashier at the Publix grocery store in Florida, she makes up and belts out a song for an elderly customer and it goes viral. When she is offered a scholarship to attend a performing arts boarding school by a mysterious benefactor, she knows what an incredible opportunity this is but is worried people will find out her mother is in prison.  School is hard work but fulfilling and Jacaranda, now calling herself Jackie, is determined to take advantage of every opportunity.   She is happy but once she starts dating a millionaire’s son who seems sensitive and caring she wonders what will happen if he finds out her secret.

Six Degrees of Separation: From Fleishman to A Cure for Dreams

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Start at the same place as other avid readers, add six books, and see where you end up.

This month’s chain begins with Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner who often writes about celebrities for the New York Times Magazine.

I have not yet read Fleishman but the author’s name led me to my first book which is Daddy- Long-Legs by Jean Webster (1912), an old favorite.  At a fictional college based on Vassar, orphaned Judy learns how to have fun as well as to study, making choices and developing personality not previously available to her. There is plenty of taffy and fudge making (a pity that tradition has not endured) in these college stories. As Bronte Coates observes,

“A variant on the boarding school theme, these stories were set in fictionalised versions of women’s colleges and are credited as playing a part in normalising the idea of higher education for women.”