I discovered the I Am America book series on Amazon while searching for new offerings in historical fiction. I bought all four that were currently out. All of them were released in 2019, 2 in January, 2 in September. Another 2 are coming next January.
These books look like diaries and contain some 1st person point of view letters and diary entries, but they're not full diaries like Dear America. They're not as simple as the other current historical fiction series for kids though. They're somewhere in between the two in reading level. They do have illustrations, but not as many as Girls Survive and the Smithsonian series. The tone is definitely more for older kids than those two series, though their length is maybe half a Dear America volume.
So that said, I'm putting the first four books in chronological order, not going by publishing order.
First up, we're going back to Nashville in 1879. I don't know how they skipped this story for Dear America! I've never heard of the Great Exodus before, but it was after the Civil War and Reformation periods, when black Americans were struggling with racism and poverty. The government offered free land in Kansas, so black people traveled from all sorts of Southern states to start over somewhere new. This met with some opposition from the white people that had been taking advantage of them, so it wasn't an easy journey for more reasons than just your typical traveling in the 1800s problems.
Our main character, Hattie, wants to be a teacher, so she's not exactly thrilled about moving, but the lead up to the family's decision to go and the trip itself are both written about well. I enjoyed the story a lot.
The only criticism I have is that when her parents are surprised at her, they use her full name: Hypatia. Yet the author never tells us where that name comes from. Hypatia lived in Alexandria, Egypt and was a renowned teacher, gifted in many fields. So it's a great name for Hattie, but I really wish they'd talked about its origins!
If the Fire Comes is actually one of the two books published in September, but it's the next chronologically, taking place in 1935.
Joseph is an 11-year-old living in California during the Depression. His parents are both dead and he lives with his older sister Maya and their Uncle Tanner. Uncle Tanner is basically suffering depression from being laid off and unable to find work. Joseph is a shoeshine boy, whose meager earnings are relied upon by Tanner and Maya, who is unable to use her legs after having polio.
The conflict is that one of the segregated CCC camps is coming to their town, right next to their home even. A lot of the white locals are afraid and assholish about it. Joseph loses business as racial tensions increase and he goes to the camp to try to find work. He and Maya end up helping the CCC with a pigeon-training project, which uses the birds to carry messages about all the fires popping up during the drought they're facing.
This is another one that could easily have been a Dear America book. My only experience with the CCC has been in Kit's books in the American Girl series, so I never knew they went from being non-segregated to segregated or that there were problems over this. Racial tensions during the Depression are also something I don't think was handled by any of the historical fiction series.
It's well-written, but it left me wanting more. Hattie's book didn't do that, because a lot of what was left out would have been covered in any historical fiction book about US travel in the late 1800s. I would have enjoyed hers if it was longer, but I really wanted to know more about the CCC, the pigeon-training, Maya's skills at designing inventions, Tanner's eventual recovery, and Joseph's art. Well done for what it was, but yeah, I wish it had been longer!
The Lines We Draw was one of the first two books released, so we're back to that. Looks like this review is going to keep switching from first to second set.
Welp, there's a Japanese-American girl on the cover. You can guess what this is about! There seriously aren't enough books about the internment camps, but it also says something about these other stories being told if I've read more about Japanese internment, which is a seriously overlooked topic, than either of the first two topics.
Unfortunately, this is the weakest book of the four. There are a lot of newspaper articles, diary entries and letters, but you never really get into the characters' heads. Time passes incredibly quickly and it feels more like a summary of a girl's experiences than a solid story. If you want to read about the internment camps, check out the books in the Dear America and Dear Canada series. Those cover it much better.
This one is about another topic I'd never heard of: the Delano Grape Strike in 1960s Califronia.
I enjoyed this one quite a bit, but it definitely would have benefited from the Dear America treatment. It could easily have been longer and more detailed, telling us about the Filipino workers, their traditions, their daily lives, and then moving into the strike, which lasted for many years.
Tala is a good character though and I liked her ambition to become a reporter and how she handled herself throughout the book. Her close relationship and support of her father was also nice.
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