Alcott, Louisa May

Rose in Bloom

This is a sequel to another of Alcott's books, but you can easily read it on its own. It's a cute story about a girl who has grown up with her cousins, being raised by her uncle, and about her coming of age and romance. If you have a daughter who's just starting to be interested in romance, this is a great story for her. It's completely clean - not even any kissing - and the heroine is very level-headed and is much more interested in the character of a man than in his looks. I highly recommend it.

An Old Fashioned Girl

This is another great one for young teenage girls. Polly is a very poor girl who goes to spend the winter with a wealthy friend, and is all about the adventures they have as a family. It's a lot of fun and again, a very cool-headed heroine who knows that what's inside is much more important than fancy clothes or lots of money. The story picks up again 6 years later when they are all grown up and experiencing the beginnings of romance, and is another very clean story and one that I would have no qualms at all about giving to my young nieces.

*Note* If you can find a publisher besides the one I read (1st World Library), please do so. If you cannot, give your daughter a piece of notebook paper and have her write down every punctuation, capitalization, and grammar mistake she finds in the book. This would be an excellent English assignment and will teach proofreading skills. 1st World Library is run by donations, and they apparently haven't gotten enough to hire a proofreader yet, as there were literally hundreds of mistakes in this edition. It's still a good book, but the mistakes were enough to make it frustrating to read as I kept getting jarred out of "story mode".