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About Hitty, Her First Hundred Years (Unabridged)

Hitty is a doll, so a listener would be forgiven for assuming that this is a story written only for little girls. But Hitty's tale which spans a century, told from her perch in a New York antique shop, includes a hazardous journey on a whaling vessel, a stint as assistant to an Indian snake charmer, and, like Moses, abandonment in a basket on a muddy river. This is a story of adventure. She was carved in 1822 by an old peddler in a house in Maine as a present for seven-year-old Phoebe Preble. He fashioned a precious 6 1/2-inch piece of mountain-ash wood into a doll with pegs for her arms and legs and a painted face that wore a pleasant expression. The wood, the peddler explained, had special properties: it brought luck and had power against witchcraft and evil, qualities that reassured Hitty through many trying times. Little Phoebe painstakingly cross-stitched Hitty's name on her linen chemise which survives with her, and so she is called Hitty no matter whose hands she falls into. Sometimes dolls are lost; often children outgrow them. They can be boxed up and stored on a shelf for months or years or even buried in a hayloft. All this happens to Hitty but each time she is rediscovered, a new adventure begins. Of course, she cannot speak and has no control over her fate but her wonder at each rebirth is marked by the passage of time. Stagecoaches are replaced by trains, then by automobiles. Women's clothing is more voluminous, then (shockingly to a doll carved in 1822) bare legs are in fashion! Winner in 1930 of the prestigious Newbery Medal for excellence in young people's literature—and the first awarded to a woman, author Rachel Field—Hitty's story has survived almost another century, continuing to enchant both children and adults.