Who: Ages 6 & up
Where: Concord, Massachusetts, USA
Even girls who haven't read Louisa May Alcott's 1868 classic novel Little Women know the story from its many film versions and the Broadway musical. The story of its author, Louisa May Alcott -- Jo in the novel -- is even more powerful when you consider that she was one of the first women to earn a living as a writer. My daughter and I were thrilled to feel her presence hovering in every room of Orchard House.
The Alcott family lived from 1858 to 1877 in this saltbox-style frame house. Not only was Little Women set here, but it also was written here by the adult Louisa, at a shelf desk her father built between two windows in her bedroom. Although Louisa was 26 when they moved into Orchard House, she modeled the March's family's house on it. Other family members were the models for the characters in Little Women: Anna ("Meg"), the eldest, an amateur actress; Elizabeth ("Beth"), a gifted musician who died before the family moved to this house; and May ("Amy"), a talented artist who went to study in Europe on Louisa's profits from Little Women. Their mother, the social activist Abigail May Alcott, frequently assumed the role of family breadwinner -- her father, Louisa wrote in her journal, had "no gift for money making." Louisa herself, who never married, also helped support the family when she began to publish her short stories at age 22.
Visitors are guided through the modestly furnished house, which features many authentic heirlooms -- the family china is laid out on the dining room table, props and costumes await their amateur theatricals, half-finished needleworks lie on side tables, and some of May's drawings are still scribbled on her bedroom walls. Anna's wedding was held in the parlor here, just as Meg's was, and all the sisters took turns cooking in the spartan kitchen.
Contact: 399 Lexington Rd. (tel. 978/369-4118; www.louisamayalcott.org).
What: Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasured Island
Who: Ages 6 & up
Where: Saranac Lake, New York, USA
Look at the houses around Saranac Lake and you'll notice many share one architectural peculiarity -- sleeping porches on the second story. That's because 19th-century Saranac Lake centered on a famous sanitarium, the Trudeau Clinic, where patients with tuberculosis came to be cured in the cool, dry Adirondack forest air. Modern medicine has nearly wiped out tuberculosis, and no one comes to Saranac anymore for "the cure." But on the edge of town there is one relic of those days -- the cottage where one of Dr. Edward Trudeau's most famous patients, the writer Robert Louis Stevenson, fought for his life.
The Stevenson cottage isn't well advertised; its hours are limited, and you'll have to ring the doorbell hoping the caretaker/curator will come out and let you in. But for Stevenson fans like my kids, that made the experience all the more special. This quiet white frame cottage is absolutely crammed to the gills with Stevenson memorabilia, and the curator (who grew up here -- his grandparents were caretakers before him) knows just about everything that's worth knowing about the author of such classics as Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. While there are other Stevenson museums around the world, each with its own cache of manuscripts, letters, and clippings, this was the first (founded in 1915) and it's the one most evocative of the great writer's life.
The threadbare Victorian furniture here is all original, and dusty glass cases display such treasures as a lock of his hair, his velvet smoking jacket (a sprig of heather in its buttonhole), the old-fashioned ice skates he wore to skate on the local pond, even burn marks in the mantelpiece from his cigarettes. I fell in love with this place myself as a child and was astounded to find, 40 years later, that it was exactly the same. And having read so many Stevenson books to my kids, I was thrilled to see them fall under its delicate, musty spell, too.
Contact: 11 Stevenson Lane (tel. 518/891-1462; www.adirondacks.com/robertlstevenson.html)
What: The Mark Twain Home: Tom Sawyer's Stomping Grounds
Who: Ages 6 & up
Where: Hannibal, Missouri, USA
When you roll into this laid-back river town, about 130 miles up the scenic Mississippi river road from St. Louis, you may get a nagging feeling that you've been here before. Well, you have -- if you've read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Every scene in that book was based on affectionate memories of the town where a boy named Sam Clemens grew up, long before he became Mark Twain. Sometimes Hannibal leans on the association a bit too much -- every third restaurant or shop seems to be named after a Tom Sawyer character -- but the historic heart of town really does have a remarkable connection to this beloved American writer.
Eight properties around town, packaged under the name The Mark Twain Museum, have rock-solid associations with Sam Clemens. The main one is the small white frame house at 208 Hill St. where the Clemens family lived from 1844 to 1853; the parlor, the dining room, the kitchen, and the three upstairs bedrooms are all furnished in the period. You can almost imagine Sam climbing out the window of the back bedroom he shared with his brother Henry, sneaking off to nighttime escapades. Across the street is the much more prosperous house of the Hawkins family, whose daughter Laura -- Twain's lifelong friend -- was the model for Becky Thatcher. The law office of Sam's father, John Clemens, has been moved to the same street; its tiny front courtroom was the setting for Muff Potter's trial in Tom Sawyer. After a shift in the family fortunes, the Clemenses moved to cramped quarters above the old-fashioned pharmacy run by Dr. Orville Grant, over on Main Street. The last stop on this historic trail may not be authentic, but it could be the kids' favorite: the Museum Gallery, set in an old department store on Main Street, where interactive displays on Tom Sawyer allow children to whitewash a fence, hide in a spooky graveyard, and get lost in a cave, just like Tom and Huck and Becky did.
Sleepy as Hannibal seems most of the year, it crackles to life during the National Tom Sawyer Days, the long weekend around July 4. All sorts of Twain-themed activities are held outdoors, from fence painting to frog jumping, and it's just generally the sort of whoop-de-do that Sam Clemens -- or Tom Sawyer -- would have loved.
Contact: 208 Hill St. (tel. 573/221-7975; www.marktwainmuseum.org).
What: Anne of Green Gables Country
Who: Ages 8 & up
Where: Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, Canada
Sometimes I wonder what Prince Edward Island would have done to attract tourism if Lucy Maud Montgomery hadn't written the Anne of Green Gables books. Lush and bucolic, blessed with red-sand beaches on the relatively warm Gulf of St. Lawrence, PEI can be enchanting -- but you wouldn't necessarily know that without having been drawn here by this wholesome, century-old book series about a red-haired orphan girl.
Start out in Charlottetown with Anne of Green Gables -- The Musical, which plays every summer at the downtown arts center at 145 Richmond St. (tel. 800/565-0278 or 902/566-12670). Chirpy and well performed, it's a quick refresher course in the book's plot and main characters.
Then head for the center part of the island's north coast, where the town of Cavendish is Green Gables Central. Bypass the tourist traps and head to Green Gables, a solid white mid-19th-century farmhouse with green shutters (and, naturally, green gable points) that belonged to Montgomery's cousins. In her imagination this tidy farm with its precise white rail fences became the Cuthbert farmstead, where spunky orphan Anne Shirley arrives from Nova Scotia to live with dour Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. Parks Canada owns the site and has meticulously furnished the rooms according to descriptions in the books. Getting outdoors is essential for falling under the Anne of Green Gables spell, and walking trails from the house lead to settings from the novel such as Lover's Lane and the Haunted Woods. Although Montgomery spent most of her adult life with her clergyman husband in Ontario, she remained so attached to her native PEI landscape that she asked to be buried in the nearby Cavendish Cemetery.
Amid a stretch of tacky amusement parks and motels, Avonlea, Route 6 (tel. 902/963-3050; www.avonleavillage.com), has a bit more class than its neighbors: Among the faux vintage buildings of its "village center" (Avonlea being Montgomery's fictional name for Cavendish) are a few real historic structures imported from elsewhere in the region, including a schoolhouse in which Montgomery once taught and a church she attended. The costumed staff moves along various kinds of jollity, including hayrides, games, cow milking, and oyster shucking. Commercial, yes, and a little hokey, but younger children especially will find it engaging.
To connect with the rural vibe, head for nearby Prince Edward Island National Park, a lovely swath of sand beaches, placid inlets, vast salt marshes, and wind-sculpted dunes topped with marram grass. Pastoral peace and quiet -- that's the gift of Anne of Green Gables.
Contact: 2 Palmers Lane (tel. 902/963-7874; www.pc.gc.ca).
What: Brontë Parsonage Museum
Who: Ages 8 & up
Where: Haworth, England
The most-visited literary shrine in England after Shakespeare's hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon, this modest parsonage amid the bleak Yorkshire dales was home to not one but three gifted novelists -- Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë. Whether your favorite Brontë heroine is mousy governess Jane Eyre or passionate Catherine Earnshaw of Wuthering Heights, the spell of this remote, obscure Yorkshire home is captivating.
The village of Haworth, though overrun in summer by Brontë worshipers, still seems to hang precariously onto the edge of the Yorkshire moors. Try to screen out the crowds as you walk its steep, cobbled main street, where you can visit a pub called the Black Bull, which was frequented by the writers' dissolute artist brother, Branwell. Stop by the very post office where in 1847 the sisters mailed their manuscripts hopefully to London publishers.
At the top of the village on Church Street stands the square, stone-sided Georgian parsonage where the Brontë family lived, granted for life to Patrick Brontë, curate of the local Church of St. Michaels. The Brontë children knew tragedy early -- their mother and two sisters died when they were young -- and though the shy, odd Brontë sisters ventured away for school or teaching jobs, they always fled back to this haven. The sparely furnished house has been preserved complete with personal treasures, pictures, books, original manuscripts, a huge collection of family letters, and the authentic family furniture (some bought with proceeds from Charlotte's literary success). Look at the dining room, where the sisters sat side by side writing their novels at the dining table, and the nursery, where they scribbled on the wall in their tiny, spidery handwriting. The walled garden has been laid out to resemble the one cultivated by the Brontës. Note that the museum tends to be extremely crowded in July and August, and is closed in January.
Charlotte and Emily are buried in Haworth in the family vault under the Church of St. Michael (the one standing here today is not the original church, which was torn down and rebuilt in 1879). Be sure to allow time to walk out onto the nearby moors, where the spirit of Wuthering Heights still sighs in the wind.
Contact: tel. 01535/642323; www.bronte.org.uk.
What: Hans Christian Andersen House: Denmark's Storyteller Supreme
Who:All ages
Where: Odense, Denmark
Though the children may not recognize the name Hans Christian Andersen, they know his stories all right: The Emperor's New Clothes, The Princess and the Pea, The Ugly Duckling, or The Little Mermaid (yes, the story existed before Disney), immortalized in the famous statue in Copenhagen harbor. Like most gifted writers for children, Andersen tapped into the terrors and humiliations and stubborn yearnings of his own childhood. How better to understand those stories than to get a picture of the boy Andersen was?
Begin at the Hans Christian Andersen Museum, a major museum documenting Andersen's life, times, and works. Films, touch-screens, and listening posts bring the writer into focus; a tall, clumsy, ugly man who, beneath his sophisticated manners, remained at heart a poor kid with a chip on his shoulder. You can see a re-creation of the study where he wrote, the bed where he died, and such memorabilia as a lock of his hair, his trademark walking stick, a top hat, a battered portmanteau, and letters to his dear friends the Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind and fellow writer Charles Dickens.
Next door is his birthplace, a tiny yellow house on a corner where five poor families lived, including Andersen's grandparents and parents, at his birth in 1805. Andersen's father was a shoemaker, his mother a drunken washerwoman, and Andersen himself grew up a shy, somewhat dorky kid, susceptible to the folk tales and superstitions he heard around him. A few blocks away, the H.C. Andersens Barndomshjem (Childhood Home), Munkeollestraede 3, is the humble half-timbered house where he lived from age 2 until 14 -- when, dazzled by a traveling theater troupe, young Hans ran off to Copenhagen to become an actor.
The city of Odense has created a walking tour around the downtown area that passes several historic buildings Andersen would have known. Look for granite squares in the sidewalk, decorated with a cheery sun face of Andersen's own design. Try your best to take in the Andersen plays performed mid-July to mid-August at 4pm outdoors in Funen Village, Sejerskovvej 20 (tel. 66-14-88-14; closed Mon), the open-air cultural museum with reassembled historic buildings from around the island. It's a site worth visiting even if you don't attend a play, a good place to recapture the 19th-century lifestyle of Andersen's time. Even though the plays are in Danish, it'll be easy for the kids to follow the visuals -- these simple, timeless stories speak a universal language.
Contact: Bangs Boder 29 (tel. 66-14-88-14; www.odense.dk).
What: The Anne Frank House: Life in the Secret Annex
Who: Ages 8 & up
Where: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Teens and preteens in particular connect with the spirit of Anne Frank, not because she was anything special, but precisely because she wasn't. She was a mixed-up kid like themselves -- only she happened to be a mixed-up kid fleeing the Nazi terror, living pent up for more than 2 years in a secret set of rooms in Amsterdam with seven other people. We know about her only because she poured out her heart in a startlingly frank diary, which now every school kid eventually reads. In summer you may have to queue for an hour or more to get in, but nobody should miss seeing this house, where Anne Frank waited out the darkest days of World War II. Even if they haven't yet read the book, this is the place where kids really get the tragedy of the Holocaust.
The hiding place Anne's father, Otto Frank, prepared for his family and friends was a back section of a house, consisting of four rooms and a tiny damp attic, connected to his office and warehouse. It's a typical Amsterdam canal house, with very steep interior stairs; the entrance to it from the office was hidden by a movable bookcase. Their existence protected by four trusted employees, they remained safe until close to the end of the war -- after the landings at Normandy Beach spelled hope for the war to end -- when suddenly, tragically, the secret annex was raided by Nazi forces. All eight of the onderduikers (divers or hiders) were deported to concentration camps. Anne herself died, with her sister Margot, at Bergen-Belsen; only Otto survived to see the Secret Annex again.
The rooms of the hiding place look surprisingly bare, for all the furniture was confiscated after the arrest; at one time it was refurnished to replicate its appearance from July 1942 to August 1944, but today it is stark and empty and utterly moving. Among the few things left in place are photos Anne pinned up of her favorite actress, Deanna Durbin, and the young English princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, along with a map upon which Otto Frank hopefully charted the progress of the war.
The canal side of the house, where the helpers worked, has been restored to its authentic appearance, based on references in Anne's diary. Personal items belonging to each of the eight fugitives have been put on display in the building next door, along with the original manuscript of Anne's diary, which helper Miep Gies found scattered on the annex floor after the Franks were dragged away. The red-and-white autograph album in which Anne began her diary lies in a glass case, looking so innocent and childish -- it makes her tragedy especially poignant.
Contact: Prinsengracht 263 (tel. 020/556-7105; www.annefrank.nl).