‘Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy: a modern retelling of ‘Little Women’ by Rey Terciero and Bre Indigo
The story of the March sisters in Little Women has been retold and reimagined many times and in many formats since it was first published in 1868. We have been drawn in time and again by their individual and distinct personalities as they navigate the struggles presented by their social and cultural circumstances. We have been captivated by the energetic, dramatic, and entertaining relationships between Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy as they face the tribulations of growing from young girls to women. The endurance of this classic text speaks to its ideas of family, identity, and belonging that readers have connected with for over 150 years.
Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy is a modern retelling of Little Women in graphic novel form that takes the essence of Louisa May Alcott’s classic and drops it in Brooklyn, New York, in 2019. It follows a year in which the four sisters face challenges in wanting to fit in, health scares, questioning identities, and finding their place while their father is overseas with the military and their mother working to make ends meet. The creators of this text, Rey Terciero and Bre Indigo, have retained the original theme of class differences and poverty, as well as exploring issues of race (the March family is blended and mulitracial) and sexuality (Jo struggles with telling her family she is gay).
The illustrations are vibrant and bring an energy to the storytelling that keeps you turning the pages. Interspersed emails to their father and journal entries reveal inner thoughts and feelings beyond the dialogue. Each chapter offers students multiple opportunities for reading deeply and analytically, and to connect the ideas with the world around them or their own personal experiences.
And as with the original, this text is a ultimately a celebration of family and loving and accepting each other for who they are, and the courage that brings when dealing with challenges; something that was meaningful for us when we first read (and reread many times) the original Little Women, and remains just as relevant today.
Suitable for:
Grade 5 to Year 10 (and adults who love Little Women)
Inspires thinking about:
Families and friendship
Social issues affecting adolescents
Identify and belonging
Diversity and representation
Useful for exploring:
Multimodal texts: the use of emails and journal entries to develop different perspectives and insight into character thinking
How the features and language devices of graphic novels tell a story
Inferring through images, text, and between frames
Universal themes and ideas: how adaptations retain the themes and ideas of the original text in a modern context
Representations of diversity
Modern social issues that relate to adolescents
A specific literary lens (e.g. feminist)
Why we recommend it:
A great gateway to classic literature by seeing the themes and ideas as universal and representing a particular time and place
Offers lots of interesting reading experiences for students; is an excellent example of the depth graphic novels can go to in exploring ideas
The references are current and identifiable
Celebrates family and friendship amongst differences and difficulties
The vibrant and energetic illustrations
