Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster

By Al R. Young

In Jean Webster's Daddy-Long-Legs, Jerusha Abbot is an orphan with a "wicked" pen and penetrating insight. Lately of the John Grier Home for orphans – of which too little good cannot be said – Miss Abbott embarks upon a course of college study funded by an anonymous benefactor. This epistolary story contains her charming letters to her unknown Daddy-Long-Legs, named by Miss Abbott because only once at the orphanage did she see his shadow drawn out in the headlights of the car toward which he walked.

The insight and wit in this little book are priceless. And as with stories skillfully told only by presenting letters, the images "between the letters" invite imagination to paint delightful pictures and conjure feelings that warm the heart. If any book makes genuine goodness desirable, this book does so. Gratitude emerges as perhaps the overriding theme by which all comes right whether along the way or in the end.