I find it oddly creepy, though I guess not as creepy as Elsie Dinsmore.

I kind of love how this has become a measure of creepiness. (In its own time, it seems like it was a measure of crappy books. I've found two other books, written while Elsie was still hugely popular, where characters talk about the Elsie books as an example of horrible books.)

What's the deal with Elsie Dinsmore? I've neveer read it.

Heh. I'm too lazy to do a search, but Hill has done wonderful descriptions right in the literary thread in times past. (I think within the past year or so.)

It didn't bother me in DDL, because she is so clearly smart and passionate and the author presents those as totally admirable traits. The fact he has been reading her letters is not a bother to me, since the writing lets us know that he fell in love with her IRL, and being Daddy was hard for him as it was for her.

No, it was earlier than that (sometime in the winter of 2009-2010, I think), and it was in Bitches. Basically, the Elsie books were written as an example for kids of how to be a good Christian child. Elsie was always Good, and cried when she felt like she hadn't been as patient as Jesus would have been, and was quite certain in her faith. The main plot of the first two books is that her father, who's been traveling the world for most of her life, comes back. And he's not a Christian. (Meaning, he hasn't been born again.) And Elsie is desperate to win her father's love (in scenes that are written in ways that sound really creepily sexual to modern readers), and also to make him a Christian. Then there's one Sunday when he has a headache, and he wants her to read him a novel. She says that she'll read him the Bible, but won't read a novel on a Sunday. He punishes her, she won't relent, and it escalates until he says that, unless she apologizes and swears to do whatever he says, he'll send her away to Catholic school. Elsie then falls into a fever, and spends the next twenty pages or so delirious, moaning, "I won't bow to idols! I won't pray to Mary!" Then she dies. Then her father realizes the error of his ways, and accepts Jesus into his heart. Then Elsie comes back to life.

In the later books, Elsie marries her father's best friend, and they have a bunch of children. After a little while, the author seems to have forgotten that books are supposed to have plots, and also totally freaked out about immigrants, and so the later books pretty much consist of the family members telling each other heroic stories about the American Revolution, and worrying about how immigrants and Catholics and Mormons are going to destroy this great tradition.

Oh. And there's also a scene where Elsie tells some little black children that, in heaven, they'll be white.

In other words, possibly palatable, but only as comedy?

The author also made certain that the readers knew that Scottish immigrants weren't like those other immigrants. Scottish immigrants had fought against the English for their freedom, and thus were practically American already.

there's also a scene where Elsie tells some little black children that, in heaven, they'll be white

OH MY GOD.

t cringes away in horror

Oh, Elsie's a Mormon after all. No, wait, at that time, blacks could only get to heaven as someone's servant.

there's also a scene where Elsie tells some little black children that, in heaven, they'll be white

I'd forgotten that last. Did Elsie actually use the words "light and delightsome", or did she avoid the Mormon phrasing of that particular bit of folk racism?

[Connie X-post]