Hello Beautiful

Little Women (1868) is a classic novel written by American author Louisa May Alcott (Eight Cousins, Little Men, The Inheritance, Behind a Mask). The book follows the lives of the March sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, as they grow up in New England during the Civil War era. Despite their different personalities, the sisters are devoted to each other, and the novel follows them as they navigate the challenges of growing up. Along the way, they learn important lessons about love, loss, and the importance of family and friends. They also learn how to lead fulfilling lives as women in a time when opportunities for women are limited. The book has been beloved by generations of readers young and old for its timeless themes and memorable characters, and it continues to be a cherished classic in literature today. As a coming-of-age story, the novel is considered appropriate for middle-grade readers.

Ann Napolitano's novel Hello Beautiful is a powerful tribute to Louisa May Alcott's classic novel Little Women. While not a direct retelling or adaptation, Hello Beautiful incorporates many of the elements that made Alcott's novel a classic and is an homage to the enduring legacy of Little Women in contemporary literature.

The Padavano sisters in Hello Beautiful are similar to the March sisters in Little Women. The oldest sister, Julia, is practical and focused like Meg. Sylvie is literary-minded and unconventional like Jo. Like Amy, Cecelia is an artist, and like Beth, Emeline is a nurturing homebody. In Little Women, the sisters’ neighbor is an orphaned boy named Laurie. William is his counterpart in Hello Beautiful; while not technically an orphan, William has been emotionally abandoned by his parents and longs for the warmth and family that the Padavanos provide. Napolitano does not create exact doubles for Alcott’s characters; rather, she adapts their character traits and personalities to a contemporary setting. Both Cecelia and Julia become single mothers, rejecting the expectations for them to raise a child alongside a husband. It is Sylvie who marries William, not Cecelia (her counterpart, Amy, marries Laurie in Little Women), and ultimately it is not Emeline (i.e., Beth) who has the tragic death, but Sylvie.

Hello Beautiful explores themes central to Little Women, such as class status, women’s roles in society, and the bonds of sisterhood. Like the Marches, the Padavanos are a working-class family, and they struggle for financial stability. While in Little Women, Mrs. March hopes to accomplish this by finding her daughters husbands, in Hello Beautiful, the sisters are career-oriented and marriage is only one option out of many. Little Women concludes that a woman’s place is in the home, reflecting the values of its time, but it does allow its characters to individually express how to shape that home. Meanwhile, Hello Beautiful takes a modern approach, exploring issues such as single motherhood and queer relationships. Both novels celebrate the bonds of sisterhood, focusing on the importance of family, especially in times of conflict.

Little Women is not the only literary work Napolitano references. She includes several intertextual references to the poetry collection Leaves of Grass (1855) by Walt Whitman, who was a transcendentalist like Alcott. Transcendentalism is a 19th-century American philosophy stating that society is a corrupting force while people and nature are inherently good. These ideas undergird Hello Beautiful as they did in the 19th-century American fiction she cites.