"REBECCA is good company, and that's why we enjoy the book. Any child who can write

When Joy and Duty clash
Let Duty go to smash.

goes straight to my heart, and stays there," writes Clifton Fadiman in his afterword.

Rebecca is a girl's Tom Sawyer. She is "smart as a whip" and funny and bubbling over with good, lively humor. She loves pretty pink dresses and silk parasols, but has difficulty keeping them away from wet paint and thunderstorms. Rebecca moves from her beloved Sunnybrook Farm to the formidable brick house of her two old maid aunts, where she tries very hard to please her strait-laced Aunt Miranda. She quickly wins the heart of everyone in the little Maine village (except the school bully and tattletale Minnie Smellie)—and eventually even Aunt Miranda comes to recognize the joy and happiness Rebecca has brought her.

Lawrence Beall Smith's Rebecca is a wise, bouncy, lovable, and all little girl. His fifteen full-page illustrations create a new portrait of one of literature's most popular heroines.

"Children have just as much right of access to genius as to swimming pools and hot lunches. More. Infinitely more. Let the child read above himself... Let him travel farther in the realms of gold than in the realms of lead." In his afterword, Mr. Fadiman talks with warmth and personal feeling about Rebecca and the author, Kate Douglas Wiggins. Speaking directly to the reader, he brings out the enduring value of this beloved classic.

From the dust jacket of the Macmillan Classics reprint