Finding Hattie
Can Hattie find her way—and herself—again?
After the deaths of her father, mother, and little brother, lonely, intelligent Hattie Knowlton is sent to Miss Bulkley's Seminary for Young Ladies. It's a school for wealthy girls, and Hattie is terrified the other girls will find out she's a charity case. So she pretends to be someone she's not. But when she ends up betraying the only real friend she has at school, Hattie realized she's lost her way. Can she find it—and herself—again?
Hattie Knowlton is the author's great-grandmother, and a journal she wrote in the 1880s while at Miss Bulkley's school still exists. Using excerpts from the actual journal, Sally Warner has woven together a warm and moving story about a poor, friendless orphan who finds a new home, a new family, and herself at a privileged girls' boarding school.
Click here to see pictures relating to the story.
An Amazon.com Women's History List choiceA Junior Library Guild selection
Bank Street Best Books of the Year
New York Public Library's Books for the Teen Age 2002 selection
This book, intended for ages 10 and up, was published in February, 2001 in hardcover, by HarperCollins.
"Warner demonstrates that she is equally at ease in the past as the present as she plumbs her great-grandmother's diary to create this winning historical novel set in the early 1880s...
Warner seamlessly details Hattie's domestic and academic life while keeping her heroine's observations historically accurate.
Even with its period setting, this atmospheric tale portrays the timeless teenage struggle to find one's own way."
Starred review in Publishers Weekly