RED THREAD SISTERS

I picked up this book at the thrift shop today and just finished it. I highly recommend it. It's just so good!

Wen is an 11-year-old living in an orphanage in China. She's been adopted and her American family is there to pick her up. She says goodbye to her best friend, Shu Ling, who helped her get acclimated to the orphanage when Wen arrived. Wen promises to help Shu Ling find a family in the US.

Wen struggles with adjusting to life in the US. She knows quite a bit of English, but she fears getting close to her adoptive mother, because she remembers her biological mother leaving her at the orphanage when she was five. The family chose to keep the newborn boy and abandon poor Wen, then five years old. She's also seen an orphan returned when she behaved badly with the people that were going to adopt her. So Wen has a constant fear of abandonment. Wen also is uncomfortable with anyone that she feels compromises her relationship with Shu Ling. She won't call her younger sister Emily, adopted from China as a baby and now seven years old, "mei mei," because she considers herself "mei mei" to Shu Ling. She's afraid to form the sister bond with anyone else, and she also distances herself from her best American friend, because she's afraid that will be unfair to Shu Ling, her actual best friend.  

While Wen deals with all these feelings, she works toward getting Shu Ling adopted. What she didn't know (and neither did Shu Ling) was that Shu Ling is actually 13, not 12. She's only a few weeks away from her 14th birthday, at which point she'll "age out" of the adoption system by China's laws. Wen has mere weeks to get her best friend a home in America before she faces never seeing her again. So can Wen get Shu Ling adopted and adjust to life with her own new family? Read the book and find out.

Seriously, this is really good. Read it.

DEAR AMERICA: Oregon Trail

We're back on the trail. Sigh. Kristiana Gregory's at the helm though, so this is a good, dramatic, at times emotional read with lots of interesting characters. Gregory, if you recall, wrote Winter of Red Snow and Cleopatra's Royal Diary amongst others.

Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie is kind of an odd title for this though, because if there's one thing Hattie is not, it's lonesome. She's constantly surrounded by friends, family and even people she dislikes.

This was the fifth book in the DA series and one of the ones chosen for the rerelease.

Not too bad an update. At least Hattie looks her age! She also looks quite a bit like the girl from the painting on the original cover, so kudos for that.

Next up: typhus in Canada. Never thought I'd be happy to break for typhus. But then we're back on the trail...

DEAR AMERICA: Irish Mill Girl

Gahhhhhh, this book. So Far From Home was the sixth Dear America book, one of four published in 1997. Barry Denenberg contributed several books to Dear America and its spinoff series.

Like a lot of the earlier books, So Far From Home is short, the type is large and it's a very quick read.

It's very, very frustrating.

Denenberg creates a very likeable character in Mary and she has a strong cast surrounding her. Her horrible, self-centered older sister Kate who works as a lady's maid and does squat to help send for their parents. Her schoolteacher aunt who paid for both sisters' passage, Mary's years after Kate's. Sean, who she met on the ship, and with the help of his uncle, they saved a poor blind girl, whose parents helped Mary on the ship but didn't survive the passage. Annie, an older Yankee mill girl, who writes poetry and is refreshingly independent. Spunky Laura, a more rebellious mill girl. Stuck up Clarissa, another mill girl who meets a rather terrible end due to her own vanity. Every character Denenberg adds to the story comes to life quickly and often disappears. This book could easily have been twice its length. That's the frustrating part. It's over so quickly, you're left wanting more.

But then there's the bad stuff. Mary's constantly ill from mill work. A letter comes and she learns her parents have died in Ireland before enough money could be saved to pay for their passage. Her friend Sean has been arrested for something he didn't do. So Mary and Laura take all the savings Mary and her aunt had put together and they go bail out Sean and save blind Alice, getting her to a school for the blind.

The worst thing though is the epilogue. Sean gets bailed out and disappears. Kate keeps working as a maid and gets married. Her happy ending irritates me. Aunt Nora, Annie and Alice all have happy endings, too, and that's good. But then...then the final two lines.

Mary died in the cholera epidemic of 1849. She was seventeen.

I don't think I'll ever forgive Denenberg for the sucker punch of that horrible epilogue. Mary worked so hard and went through so much only to die incredibly young. Realistic? Yes, of course. But also a bit sadistic, Mr. Denenberg.

I did not see a lot of the Dear America live action shorts, but apparently, Mary got one, judging from this VHS box here. And she also was apparently played by a thirty-year-old. That woman does not look fifteen. Come on, casting. Sigh.

Anyway, up next is one of the other very early DAs, about...the Oregon Trail. Again. Then we've got a two-book break and it's once more on the trail, only this time for the younger readers with a My America trilogy.

MY NAME IS AMERICA: Donner Party

I have to be honest. I just was not in the mood for another Oregon Trail book, especially one that ends in cannibalism. The diary writer didn't partake, but it still happened, of course.

I got about 1/3 through before I skimmed the end, then popped it onto my finished pile. It's decently written and the author's only contribution to the DA series, but I just did the happy ending, less drama version of this book yesterday. I know the Dear America version is coming up, too, but at least that's a female voice.

DEAR AMERICA: Alta California

I enjoyed this one much more than Sherry Garland's other contribution to the DA series, which was the Alamo book.

The lifestyle of the family has some similar elements with American Girl Josefina, but the Medinas are high class and the women don't work, so that's a huge difference. Rosalia is just a servant though, so she does work similar to what Josefina and her sisters did. I love all the characters and the book is very good.

Unlike the Alamo book, which was depressing at the end, Rosalia gets a fairy tale ending, which I won't spoil here. The epilogue has the more depressing stuff in it, with the collapse of the Medina farm thanks to Americans just coming in and doing whatever they want, even though all the citizens of California should now be American, and Rosalia's death in the San Francisco earthquake. She didn't die at a young age, but these epilogues with dramatic character death happening off-page are always a bit jarring for me.

Definitely one of the series I recommend though. It's a good read.

Next up: the Donner party. Hoo boy.

I AM CANADA: The Lost Franklin Expedition

This is one of those books that I learned a lot from, because I had never heard of this expedition before.

An expedition to explore the Northwest Passage, led by John Franklin, departed England in 1845. The two ships still have not been found.

This book is unusual in that it's mostly fiction. The names of the characters were real people, but no one can know exactly what happened or when, since every single man died and even the ships have never been found. In that way, it's more like the Royal Diaries, which work from the sometimes small amount of information we have on the royal personages. This one is far more modern than most of them, but it's an incident we have sadly little information on.

The story at the beginning is less interesting, because it's a lot of teenage boy on a ship stuff, but as the expedition progresses, it becomes better, though ultimately very tragic.

The author also wrote one of the first three I Am Canada books, Shot at Dawn, about WWI. I think he did quite a good job with this, although it rather depends if you like your historical fiction leaning very heavily toward fiction.

MY NAME IS AMERICA: Oregon Trail

Welp, it's Oregon Trail time. I feel like I've read a lot of historical fiction about these journeys and they're all very similar, just with varying degrees of tragedy. Jedediah's is moderate in that regard, with the biggest tragedy taking place before the book even starts. He's the only survivor of a river-crossing gone wrong. He loses both parents and his younger sister.

Jed's an engaging character and the story was enjoyable. The cast of characters is quite good. This is the author's only contribution to any of the DA series, which is unfortunate. I would have liked to have seen more from her.

ANYA'S GHOST

I received Anya's Ghost today in my selection of birthday gifts from my best friend. I sat down to read it before work and really enjoyed it.

I'm rather stuck here, because I'd love to talk about it in detail, but that would require giving a rather massive spoiler, which I don't want to do.

Anya, our main character, was born in Russia, but moved to the US before she started school. While she's had time to learn the ins and outs of American culture and she's lost her accent, she still really only has one friend, who's kind of abusive, and is on the outskirts of social life at the private school she hates. After a particularly crap day at school, she falls into a well in a park and meets Emily...who's a ghost. Her bones have been down the well since 1918. Emily helps Anya get the attention of a passing boy and he gets Anya out of the well. And Emily, too. Yep, unbeknownst to Anya, one of Emily's bones ends up in her backpack, so Anya begins life with a ghost friend. At first, it's good and Anya is beginning to get what she wants, but...well, I think you should all read it and find out for yourselves.

I was expecting something very different from what I got with this comic. It's great, don't get me wrong, but it's much darker than I had expected.

MY NAME IS AMERICA: Trail of Tears

Joseph Bruchac is an Abenaki author, whose decades-long research into Native American cultures shows through in his writing. I would not be surprised if this was the best researched book of the entire Dear America series with all its spinoffs.

The book is a great insight into Cherokee culture at the time, although like any book about the whites' treatment of Native Americans, it was hard for me to read, because what happened was horrific. Read it though. It's painful but read it.

STAR DARLINGS 12

Finished this a couple days ago, but I've been letting it sit here because I came down with a fever on Friday. I'll kick it out now.

So we're at the last of the twelve mission books for the SD series. The next one is the first larger adventure that comes out on October 4th, which seems to be the first in a series of larger books.

The SDs are all writing a letter of apology to Lady Stella, because they realize they were wrong about her, but it keeps getting declined. They decide to tell Lady Cordial the good news, but she's about to speak at an assembly. The girls head there only to have Leona get mad because Vivica's band was asked to perform. I agree with her this time, because such a performance could easily influence the voting at the upcoming Battle of the Bands. Leona gets them earplugs, which is both amusing and, as she admits herself, childish, but it also turns out to save the day. Lady Cordial talks about the upcoming Starshine Day and each girl is given a committee assignment. None of the SDs are together, which is suspicious. Then Vivica and the Visionaries come out and Leona passes out the "ear shields." Gemma tries to talk her out of it, but finally goes along with it. Right after. everyone but the SDs is suddenly obsessed with Starshine Day, so it's clear there was some evil subliminal message in the song that Leona's childishness saved them from. Not clear to the SDs, but clear to readers. Sigh. They try to talk to Lady Cordial and she's semi-into the idea that Lady Stella is innocent, but continues with all the Starshine nonsense anyway.

The Starshine Day obsession continues and the SDs go along with their different committee activities. Gemma is worried about her wish orb, because she should be leaving any day now. Lady Cordial basically confirms that. Piper gets them all together for a meditation session, which is interrupted by Gemma's wish orb arriving. The orb looks different than the others and Lady Cordial won't even let Gemma touch it, which should have been some red flags, but nope. Sigh #2.

Gemma gets to be on Wishworld for Halloween, and her wish seems easy enough. There are two best friends, but one of them also wants to be friends with some popular girls. As popular girls in books always seem to be, of course they're not nice. Leona arrives to help out, even though Gemma insists her mission is on track. Gemma also says she expected her sister and she almost got her, but as they were strapping Tessa to the shooting star, Leona heard a voice telling her to go, so she shoved Tessa out of the way and stole her star. Gemma tells her about the mission and Leona questions whether a wish to be popular is a good wish and they soon find out it isn't when Gemma's wisher embarrasses her best friend to look good to the popular brats. Gemma's wish pendant sucks up negative wish energy and Gemma's wisher comes over and begs for help. At least she realized right away that she was wrong. Gemma then discovers that her talent is to turn back time, so she redoes the costume contest and everything works out right this time. She collects positive wish energy and she and Leona return in time for the Battle of the Bands.

Gemma is dragged into the maze by Vega, where she's surprised to see Lady Stella and Indirra, Sage's mom. It turns out they were trapped in a cave in the Crystal Mountains, along with some glowfurs. They taught the glowfurs a new song, which ended up being passed on to Cassie's Itty and she sang of two women trapped in a cave. So the SDs went to the rescue.

The Star Darlings play in the Battle of the Bands and then Lady Cordial makes all twelve girls go onstage...and introduces them as the real Star Darlings, telling all the secrets of what they've been doing. Then she pulls out Gemma's wish orb and blows glitter off it, revealing it to be a negative wish orb. Lady Cordial reveals herself to be Rancora and says she made Gemma grant a bad wish, thus turning the wish energy balance of Starland to negative. Lady Stella confronts Rancora, while Gemma holds out her hand to the wish orb. The orb changes into a good one, turning into Gemma's wish blossom and then producing her power crystal. Rancora laughs and says that doesn't negate the bad energy she collected and she adds that they need all TWELVE power crystals to do anything as the "twelve star-charmed Star Darlings." Yeah, they're missing Leona's. Rancora says she's the one who destroyed Leona's wish pendant, she's the one who made the star keychains on their Wishworld bags and loaded them with negative energy so the missions would go wrong, she's the one behind all the bad stuff. She thrives on negative energy. Lady Stella pulls out Leona's wish orb, saying she held onto it in the hopes it would transform someday. The orb floats toward Leona who pulls out her pendant and discovers the positive energy she and Gemma collected fixed the ruined pendant. Rancora fires negative energy at Leona, but a bot-bot jumps in front of her and takes the blast. Leona's orb transforms and she finally has her power crystal. The twelve crystals swirl together as the SDs join hands and the balance of Starland energy shifts violently into the positive. Rancora vanishes and Sage runs to the heroic bot-bot, who turns out to be her Mojo. He's okay though and Gemma realizes she and the others are all glowing brightly, forming a fabulous rainbow. The crowd cheers them on, but Lady Stella suddenly apologizes. A wind rips through everything and a shooting star crosses the sky, then the crowd acts very differently. Lady Stella erased their memories.

This is the part that bugs me. WHY? Why are we still being secretive about this? It's fucking ridiculous. Everyone on Starland deserves to know something so important is happening.

Naturally, the SDs lose the band contest, too, and Vivica acts like a total bitch. Lady Stella at least sees it this time and says they'll keep an eye on her.

Later, the SDs and Lady Stella are all together on the surveillance deck. Lady Stella tells Cassie not to feel guilty because their misstep caused the real saboteur to out herself. They're not going back to Wishworld right away, but will be working with the wish energy scientists on some things. Sage is happy because her mom will be there. Lady Stella also says they have powers that haven't even been discovered yet and because of them, Starland is now safe.

So that's it. I've been suspicious of Cordial since Leona's book, so turned out that was right. I'm not happy they still have to work in secret, because that seems both counterproductive and unfair to the population of Starland. And I wish Vivica would get a good helping of comeuppance. I see a team up with Rancora in her future, so maybe then.

DEAR CANADA: 1837 Rebellion

This is one of those that is so very Canadian history that Americans know nothing about it, so it should be interesting, but the writing style given to the diary girl is so disjointed that you don't end up really learning much. She writes like a clueless girl who hasn't been told much her entire privileged life, so it's realistic in that way, but as far as historical details go...eh.

This is also one of those that has such a horrible parent that I want to reach into the pages and strangle the bitch. Her mother basically takes a vacation from reality and dumps running the household on her 12-year-old sheltered daughter when the father gets arrested for taking part in this rebellion. The older brother just up and leaves them, too, so fuck him also. When they have to sell their house and move to a small set of rooms, the mother is so obsessed with having a maid that she turns out her own kid. Arabella is thrown into the life of a scullery maid, where she suffers further abuse, because it's okay to dislike the daughter of a rebel, even though she's only 12 and clearly has nothing to do with any of that.

The entire book has the poor girl suffering abuse after abuse and it gets old real fast. Thankfully, things begin to work out for her and that makes the latter part of the book more palatable, but it's still one of the difficult ones to get through.

STAR DARLINGS Stellar Style and Wish-a-Day Diary

I was hoping for some new lovely art in Stellar Style, but overall, I was very disappointed. First, the only non-band SD you'll see in the entire thing is that rather unattractive pic of Cassie on the cover. Second, there are only a couple new art pieces. The five band girls get profile pages with some new looks, including sleepwear. The art is cute, but it the same pose repeated, just wearing different clothes each time.

Stellar Style would be a good book for the more crafty or hairstyle-focused target market, but otherwise, skip it.

Wish-a-Day Diary though is fantastic! The art is mostly just designs, but the gorgeous colors and intricate flowery details make for very lovely pages. Each of the girls has an illustration that's repeated off an on throughout the book. Libby, Scarlet, Piper, Astra, Leona and Vega all have new ones. The others I think we've seen before. Maybe not Cassie's but she's with Itty, so those pics of her kinda all look the same to me. There's a lovely pic of Piper writing in her Wishworld journal on the back cover.

The book begins with a great Piper-centric short story that was longer than I expected. Then there are 365 pages with inspirational comments, writing-provoking questions, etc., a lot of which tie in to whichever SD the page is themed by. I would have loved writing in this when I was younger, although maybe not, because I wouldn't have wanted to mar the pretty pages!

I definitely recommend this one for all fans, especially if you're writing-inclined like me.

DEAR AMERICA: A Line in the Sand

While this book was by no means bad, I found myself rushing through it to get it over with. I struggle with reading things that I know aren't going to end well. It's the Alamo. You know how that went. So the entire book is like "Well, who's not going to make it because they went to fight?" I like Lucinda and her family and everything is done well, but the fight doesn't happen until very close to the end and it just hangs over the entire read.

Sherry Garland only wrote two books for DA. I don't remember how the other one went, but I'm hoping it's better than this!

ROYAL DIARIES: VICTORIA

Anna Kirwan only contributed one other book to the DA family: Lady of Palenque, which I enjoyed mostly because it was something not European. Victoria's book is well-written, though I won't say it isn't tedious and frustrating.

The tedious part is that nothing much really happens. This takes place when she's so young that it isn't that interesting. And Kirwan decided Victoria used the "v." abbreviation for "very," which I find VERY annoying, because "very" is such a short word that it doesn't need to be abbreviated. There was one short entry that had at least six v. uses and just UGH.

The frustrating part is that Victoria hates Sir John Conroy, who her mother lets control every little thing, and she dislikes his spying, tattling daughter, but you never see the comeuppance you want, because it doesn't happen until she's eighteen. I so wanted to see her give him what for, but nope. Off-page.

A decent addition to RD, but nothing spectacular.