Essentially, Jo turned into her sister Meg, and I wasn’t very happy about that. Mostly, though, I found it disappointing that the rowdy tomboy, the adventuresome Jo whom I liked so much in 'Little Women' would grow up to be as she is depicted in 'Little Men,' having sublimated her own ambitions and become so completely domesticated. I had never read it before, and I'm glad I listened to it. It’s quaint, and the stories are very nice, if a little twee. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy 'Little Men.' I really did.

'Little Women' didn’t have much of a plot, but it certainly had more than this sequel.

'Little Men' is hardly a novel – it’s really just a series of vignettes from the lives of Jo, the professor, and the boys (and a couple of girls) at Plumfield, their school it really has no plot to speak of. It’s not really fair to compare 'Little Men' unfavorably to 'Little Women,' just because they're both by the same author, but I can’t help it. Nat's stay at Plumfield is further affected by two subsequent arrivals, one being Dan who has no benefactor to pay his way at the school (which is facing financial problems), but it where he says he wants to be despite he treating his stay there the exact same as he is when he is on the street: by his own rules, and not the Bhaers or anyone else's.It's not 'Little Women,' but it's still a classic Nat goes through some adjustment of needing to lie to survive on the street to life at Plumfield, but ultimately finds that that different life is one to which he truly wants and that the changes he has to make do make him a better person. Although each being different in the way they exact their discipline, both the Bhaers believe that treating the boys with compassion and treating them as boys will result in them being better people than if they were strict disciplinarians.

Due to an event of living on the streets, Nat gets a benefactor in the form of John Brooke who pays for his schooling at Plumfield, a boys' boarding school in the country owned and operated by John's sister-in-law and her husband, Jo and Fritz Bhaer. Two-week orphaned preteen Nat Blake, in his new circumstance, has been living on the streets of Boston with his more streetwise friend, fourteen year old Dan, who looks after Nat and who survives by his cunning and by stealing.

Little men by louisa may alcott