Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott

I am sure that I read this book when I was younger--either at my house or my grandma's house when we were visiting. I didn't really remember anything about the story, though, and I felt like it ended up being kind of a drag to read now. Maybe I'm just not getting along with the unbelievably "good" children in these books, and having a harder time dispensing with my unbelief here, but I felt like none of the characters in this book felt real. This story is about Rose, whose uncle becomes her guardian after her parents have died, and how he uses all of these unusual parenting and childrearing techniques to help her regain her health and happiness. And how she gets to know her seven boy cousins, who she is afraid of at the beginning of the book (come on, really?). I thought the unusual things that Uncle Alec pushes on Rose were the most interesting part of the story, seeing how they really thought about things and what he had to push back on and change in how Rose was being raised. But Rose herself was a cardboard cutout of a person, and it felt a little weird how Uncle Alec talked to her and treated her like a six-year-old instead of a fourteen-year-old, and how she was always sitting on his lap and stuff. It felt a little creepy with a girl that age. I have to say that I liked An Old-Fashioned Girl better than this one, and I don't think I'm going to force myself to read the sequel (although I bought it--hopefully Lucy will get into Louisa May Alcott someday and read it).