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The final book in the All-of-a-Kind Family series, Ella is unique in that it focuses primarily on Ella rather than the family as a whole.
Ella is now eighteen and wants to marry Jules, but is also interested in a singing career. Through a distinctly shoe-horned-in mechanism (“I just now remembered that I have a cousin I never mentioned before who’s in showbiz and can get you an audition!”) she gets an audition and an offer of a career in a traveling show. Jules is upset because she’s putting her career over marrying him; this goes over particularly badly because this is happening during the suffrage movement, which their father opposes though not in a mean way.
Ella does not enjoy doing the traveling show, which is hard and uncomfortable work in a very realistic manner, and quits. But luckily, she gets another sudden offer, to sing in a New York choir, and so is able to sing and marry Jules too.
Ella has a somewhat YA feel and is the shortest of the series, with a somewhat abrupt ending. That plus the convenient plotting makes it feel slight in a way the other books don’t, even though it’s ostensibly dealing with more important topics.
My favorite part has nothing to do with the overall plot, but is when Charlotte and Gertie (now 10 and 8) babysit a younger girl and get the brilliant idea of giving her bangs, but one side keeps being shorter than the other. Attempts to even it out go exactly as you know they will if you ever tried to trim your own bangs.
Ella of All-of-a-Kind Family (All-of-a-Kind Family Classics)
Ella is now eighteen and wants to marry Jules, but is also interested in a singing career. Through a distinctly shoe-horned-in mechanism (“I just now remembered that I have a cousin I never mentioned before who’s in showbiz and can get you an audition!”) she gets an audition and an offer of a career in a traveling show. Jules is upset because she’s putting her career over marrying him; this goes over particularly badly because this is happening during the suffrage movement, which their father opposes though not in a mean way.
Ella does not enjoy doing the traveling show, which is hard and uncomfortable work in a very realistic manner, and quits. But luckily, she gets another sudden offer, to sing in a New York choir, and so is able to sing and marry Jules too.
Ella has a somewhat YA feel and is the shortest of the series, with a somewhat abrupt ending. That plus the convenient plotting makes it feel slight in a way the other books don’t, even though it’s ostensibly dealing with more important topics.
My favorite part has nothing to do with the overall plot, but is when Charlotte and Gertie (now 10 and 8) babysit a younger girl and get the brilliant idea of giving her bangs, but one side keeps being shorter than the other. Attempts to even it out go exactly as you know they will if you ever tried to trim your own bangs.
Ella of All-of-a-Kind Family (All-of-a-Kind Family Classics)
