NEXÖ, MARTIN ANDERSEN. Ditte: girl alive! *$2 (2c) Holt
20–26759
This story, translated from the Danish, describes the life of poor fisherfolk and of the poorest of small farmers. It is the story of a little illegitimate girl left in the care of her grandparents, whose one joy in life she becomes. When her mother, a cold, selfish, cruel creature, now married to a rag-and-bone man and huckster, wants her as nurse for her other children, she does not hesitate to take her away from the blind, widowed grandmother. Ditte’s life is wretched, her only true friend her step-father, the jovial rag-and-bone man. She repays him by standing by him, through all his sorrows and afflictions, with indomitable good nature and courage, until she is forced to leave him to go into service.
“The loveliness in human nature and the evil also stand out in sharp relief against the simple, often sordid background. Will interest readers of ‘Pelle the conqueror.’”
+ Booklist 17:73 N ’20
“The Danish author has not been fortunate in the translation, however, which is uneven and lacking in idiomatic grace.” E. P.
+ − Dial 70:106 Ja ’21 60w
“With all the straitened cruelty of its events the story has a quality which is almost glamorous. The simple telling and lack of stress somehow give it breadth; it is full of the effect of open spaces. There are passages of great tenderness, and others of fresh gaiety and resilience. Then, too a primary perception of human forces lifts the story out of any narrow bondage.” C. M. Rourke
+ Freeman 2:213 N 10 ’20 420w