Invincible Louisa: The Story of the Author of Little Women by Cornelia Meigs

This is an interesting one... it won the Newbery award in 1934, so it is supposedly meant for children, but it did not feel like a children's book at all. I suppose it was less like a traditional biography because there were hardly any mention of dates or timelines, and there was this ongoing theme of how tough Louisa was and how she never gave up, even when her family was in poverty and life was hard. But it was very much not meant for a young audience, in my opinion. Of course, maybe kids in the 1930s had the ability and attention span to read this sort of biography... but definitely not today. I enjoy biographies, and I love, love Little Women, and I love Louisa May Alcott (I definitely did at least one presentation on her as a kid, whenever we had to do something about a historical person or an author at school), so I enjoyed reading this. I think the Alcotts are such an interesting family, specifically her dad Bronson and his interesting life and personality, and it is so enjoyable to me to read about how art imitated real life in her family, and to see the similarities in how her family lived and the book that we all know and love so dearly. It seemed like quite a lot of the book focused on her childhood, and then less about her as an adult, which makes sense (for a supposed children's book). It makes me want to go revisit all the books she has written, which I bought a bunch of after reading Little Women, because I loved them all when I was younger.

I guess this would be a great biography to give to someone who loves Little Women, if they were wanting to learn more about Louisa herself. But I don't know that anyone else would be remotely interested in it, haha.