A Budding Reporter Makes Her Voice Heard in Changes for Kit

Kit, the star of a series of American Girl books set during the Great Depression, is a budding journalist. Throughout the six short chapter books featuring her, she delights in writing “newspapers” for her family, but in Changes for Kit, the final volume of the series, the spunky 11-year-old decides to branch out by submitting a letter to the editor of the Cincinnati paper.

A couple years ago, the Kit books were adapted into a movie mostly taking into account the first, second, fifth and sixth books, but with substantial changes. In this case, the movie has Kit frequently visiting the newspaper office in hopes of convincing the ornery editor, Mr. Gibb, to make her a cub reporter. In the book, while she dreams of one day joining the journalists at the newspaper, the reason for her frequent visits is her uncle Hendrick, a character not included in the movie.

Uncle Hendrick is introduced in Kit’s Surprise, the third book in the series, which is focused on Christmas. While his disposition is unpleasant, Kit begins to look forward to her afternoons helping him around his house as he recovers from an illness, since they afford her an opportunity to earn a bit of pocket money. In this sixth book, he comes to stay with Kit’s family for a while, and one of his favorite tasks is dictating letters to the editor, which inspires Kit to compose her own, expressing a very different point of view.

Changes for Kit is a fitting conclusion to the story because Kit draws from her experiences in each of the previous books as she decides exactly what she wants to convey to her fellow Cincinnati citizens. The activist tone that is latent in earlier volumes finally comes to the forefront as Kit’s experiences with hoboes and other homeless people inform her desire to make a difference.

Like the rest of the books in the series, this one is written by Valerie Tripp, and she writes in an engaging manner, particularly when giving voice to Uncle Hendrick and Mr. Gibb. Kit’s letter to the editor is polished but also seems as though it could have been written by an 11-year-old. As always, Walter Rane provides illustrations, sometimes full-page paintings, sometimes tiny pictures for the margins, often focusing on objects that might not be familiar to a modern audience.

Changes for Kit works as a stand-alone story, but it’s best read as the culmination of the series. While the events within it are not as dramatic as in the movie, they are a tad more realistic, and the book offers encouragement to pre-teen readers that there are ways to make a positive impact upon the local community even at a young age.

Aunt Millie Demonstrates the Fun of Thriftiness in Happy Birthday, Kit!

The American Girl series uses books and dolls to teach pre-teen girls about various periods in America’s history. Kit Kittredge is a spunky tomboy whose story begins in 1934, when the Great Depression begins to have a major effect on her cozy lifestyle. Happy Birthday, Kit! is the fourth in a series of six books charting the changes in her life over the year and half following the closing of her dad’s car dealership.

Before I read the books, I watched the movie Kit Kittredge: An American Girl. Of the six, only one book is less represented in the movie than this one. The main thing that carries over to the film is her adoption of a droopy hound dog and her efforts to sell eggs to her neighbors. The most significant side character in this book doesn’t make it to the big screen, and that’s a shame because she’s a lot of fun.

Happy Birthday, Kit! begins with the arrival of “Aunt Millie,” the woman who raised Kit’s father for much of his childhood. An effusive woman with a host of funny country expressions and oodles of tips for making ends meet during tough times, she becomes Kit’s roommate, an arrangement which the budding reporter mostly loves. She finds her ideas so interesting that she begins putting them into a book, with some help from her best friend Ruthie and Stirling, an artistic boy who is one of several boarders in the Kittredge home.

Although the story is set in the 1930s, some of Aunt Millie’s tricks seem like they could be useful today, and certainly her general air of cheerful thriftiness is something worth emulating. Valerie Tripp writes the character with great affection and personality, making me wonder whether she might have grown up with a mentor like this in her own life. Meanwhile, Walter Rane fills the margins with interesting thumbnails, like a portrait of William Shakespeare (who Millie loves to quote) and an old-fashioned sewing machine. Full-page illustrations focus on key moments among characters, like when Kit and Millie, assisted by others in the family, plant a vegetable garden.

The main point of this particular volume seems to be showing how fun it can be to think shrewdly about money. For the most part, Kit embraces her aunt’s suggestions, generally finding them ingenious and not minding so much if they’re strange. But she also keeps her home life strictly separated from her classroom, and she doesn’t want her classmates to know how hard her family has to work just to get by. Hence, there’s also a lesson in dealing with potential peer ridicule.

I enjoyed all of the installments in the Kit series, but I think this one is my favorite because there’s such a sense of joy that pervades it. Kit’s family is not on stable financial ground by any means, but they’re managing, and thanks to Aunt Millie, they have a lot of excellent ways to stretch their resources just a little further, whether it’s by patching shoes or adding dandelion greens to the dinner salad. It’s a very optimistic book offering hope that with some creativity and teamwork, families and friends can endure difficult times and even have fun in the process.

Kit Learns to Endure Through Hard Times in Meet Kit

Last year, my friend Libbie and I watched Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, the first big-screen adaptation of the American Girl series of books and dolls that features young heroines from a variety of historical periods. Plucky Kit is a Depression-era aspiring journalist, and her story, set in 1934, seems to resonate especially deeply during this time of financial uncertainty. We both enjoyed the movie, so when Libbie got ahold of the book collection and suggested I read it too, I happily complied.

I became familiar with American Girl when I was about 10, and I read several of the books involving pioneer Kirsten, Victorian Samantha and World War II-era Molly. Kit came along later, but her stories follow the same basic pattern. Each series features the same six titles, but with different character names. In this case, the introductory volume is Meet Kit, and it tells us everything we need to know about the young protagonist and her immediate family.

Valerie Tripp and illustrator Walter Rane fill their tale with details pertaining to the time period; as the narration or one of the characters brings up an object or concept that may be unfamiliar to modern readers, a tiny picture of it is provided in the margin. The first of these is the clunky old typewriter that Kit uses to type up the “newspapers” she writes for her father and other members of her household.

Marginal illustrations like this appear on nearly every page, while each chapter also has one or two full- or half-page paintings featuring Kit and the other characters. My favorite of these in the first book shows a sulky Kit sitting on the steps, moping after an unfair incident, while her understanding older brother Charlie tries to put her troubles into perspective.

Having seen the movie first, I found it interesting to compare some of the choices made in the adaptation. For instance, Charlie is cut out of the film altogether, and I can understand why, given the time constraints and the desire to focus as much as possible on Kit’s independence. But in the books, he is a warm, supportive presence, and he ended up being one of my favorite characters. Similarly, Mr. Kittredge has a much smaller role in the movie, but in the books, we get a fairly intimate look at his struggles to provide for his family in the wake of his job loss.

Meet Kit explains some of the reasons for the Depression and shows us how a family’s situation could go from prosperous to precarious rather quickly. Kit’s family lives in a large house, and she and her best friend Ruthie, an imaginative girl who loves fairy tales as much as Kit loves news briefs, have never wanted for anything. But the situation hits close to home when Mrs. Kittredge’s friend is evicted from her house, prompting Kit’s mother to offer a room to the woman and her delicate, artistically inclined son Stirling. This act of generosity inspires a way to stay afloat financially, a plan that means big changes for Kit, especially in terms of her living arrangements and her chore load.

Later installments deal more heavily with some of the tricks and tools Kit and her family learn for saving money and stretching meager materials. Though the stories are set 75 years ago, many of the tips have modern-day applicability, making these not only engaging tales that teach about the past but also treasure troves of thrifty advice. The friendship Kit and Ruthie share and begin to develop with Stirling is another positive aspect, as each is very different but learns to respect each other’s strengths and perspectives. Later books introduce a variety of other characters who further demonstrate the importance of treating those who are different with compassion and dignity. Meet Kit lays the groundwork for more powerful encounters and deepening relationships, and once you have met Kit and those closest to her, there’s a good chance you’ll want to visit them again.