Jacob Have I Loved

Jacob Have I Loved

Katherine Paterson

1980 * p. 215 * YA Historical Fiction

"Jacob Have I Loved" follows the life of Louise as she grows up in Chesapeake Bay in the 1940s. Louise is a tomboy. She loves to go out into the bay with her father and catch crab. She has rough, large hands, is too tan, strong and stocky, and is definitely not pretty. Caroline, Louise's twin sister, is. She is petite, blonde, has a beautiful voice and seems the capture the attention of everywhere.

Louise constantly compares herself to Caroline, and throws herself a pity party daily. In the following excerpt, Louise tells about being born a twin:

"I was the elder by a few minutes. I always treasured the thought of those minutes. They represented the only time in my life when I was the center of everyone's attention. From the moment Caroline was born, she snatched it all for herself.

When my mother and grandmother told the story of our births, it was mostly of how Caroline had refused to breathe. How the midwife smacked and prayed and cajoled the tiny chest to move. How the cry of joy went up at the first weak wail--'no louder than a kitten's mew.'

'But where was I?' I once asked. 'When everyone was working over Caroline, where was I?'

A cloud passed across my mother's eyes, and I knew that she could not remember. 'In the basket,' she said. 'Grandma bathed you and dressed you and put you in the basket.'

'Did you Grandma?'

'How should I know?' she snapped. 'It was a long time ago.'

I felt cold all over, as though I was the newborn infant a second time, cast aside and forgotten" (14-5).

But though she isn't the "favored" one, as a reader you don't feel entirely sorry for her. She complains and is also often rude and possessive of others that she wants all to herself. But she is a typical teenager that is going through the growing pains of living in a shadow, feeling inadequate and experiencing the first pangs of love. Can't we all relate to that? She means well.

A few twists and turns dot the storyline: her friendship with rolly-polly, boy scout Call, the mysterious old Captain, the shock of Pearl Harbor, a devastating flood, and more.

"Jacob Have I Loved" felt very nastolgic. The descriptions of the setting of the Chesapeake Bay and life there in the 1940s is really superb.

-Reading level: grade 8 & up

-Appropriate for all ages

-Some references to puberty and becoming sexually aware of the opposite sex

-Themes of feeling like an outcast, family relationships, self-worth and confidence, pride, becoming an adult