WWII Part 3

Torn Apart is a bit different than the Dear America internment camp book, but it's actually less graphic. The majority of the book doesn't even take place in the camp. It's odd, but I feel like the DA book with the white main character captured the problems Japanese Americans and Canadians faced better than the DC book with the Japanese Canadian main character. This was good, but it felt tamed down somewhat. It should be hard to read these stories, because this was one of the most embarrassing and terrible times in American/Canadian history, but that wasn't there so much with Mary's book. I do like Mary and the other characters, but I think the Dear America and My Name Is America books tackled the subject better.

Defend or Die is the last in the 1941-starting books. The main character is a Canadian soldier in one of the Japanese-run PoW camps in Hong Kong. The story flashes back and forth between the present day and him recalling what happened as he writes it into a blank book he found. This is definitely one of the best I Am Canada books. It's a not often discussed subject and it's written incredibly well. I'm not big into the war-focused boy books, but this one is well worth the read.

Unlike the other internment diaries, Ben's takes place mostly in the camp. He's got a very different attitude than Piper and Mary, choosing to focus on playing baseball (it got boring in parts because it was too much baseball) and ignoring school. Ben doesn't exactly get a fair deal though, because like a lot of the MNIA series, the book is short and Ben rushes through a lot of things and doesn't do in depth about much.

This is also another of Denenberg's epilogue failures. The character of Mike does a couple dumb things and then isn't mentioned again until the epilogue when he's shot and killed doing an attempted robbery. Nothing about Ben's father's damaged state of mind is ever explained. Only tiny details about a few characters are given, although it's still better than Early Sunday Morning's epilogue.

Ben's book is the first that begins in 1942, but I wanted to place it here with these two, because the topic shift is going entirely to battle. No more internment, just battle after battle for the next four books. Then I think we're finally done with the war!

DEAR CANADA: Gold Mountain

Mei-ling's story is quite good. She's in Canada with her father, while her mother and younger brother wait in China. She works hard, both in school and out. She tries to help earn money to bring her family together again in Canada.

Mei-ling's world is small. Most of the scenes take place in just a handful of locations with maybe a dozen characters. But that doesn't mean the book isn't well-written. It very much is! It just doesn't have huge historical elements to it. It's a slice of life for a Chinese immigrant girl in Canada in the early 1900s.

While I didn't learn much from the book, it was still a great read, unlike some of the others that focus less on history.

DEAR CANADA & I AM CANADA: War of 1812

You know, I complained about more books about war war war, but honestly, these two are quite good.

Sadly, neither author was a strong contributor to the two series. Kit Pearson, author of Whispers of War, didn't write anything else, while Gillian Chan wrote one Dear Canada as well as A Call to Battle.

I enjoyed both of these stories, because neither one is truly focused on the war.

Whispers of War is more about daily life and the tension leading up to the war. Will there be war? Will Americans who moved to Canada have to fight their former countrymen? The lines were far more blurred back then and even those who left America as Loyalists didn't fully identify as Canadians. Susanna and her family are interesting characters, although I kept waiting for an apology from Caroline that never came. I have trouble getting behind a character that's presented as acting so poorly her entire family disagreed with her actions just getting away with it with no mention of it afterwards. "My sister struggled with childbirth" doesn't erase "my sister was a judgmental douche that tried to teach her parents how to parent which is totally not cool." Caroline seems a little more chill after the baby's born, but there's no real resolution to that. I was also a little annoyed that Susanna ended up with the boy she didn't care for at the beginning. I mean, you could see it coming, but I wanted someone else for her. I loved the bits about the Falls and Fort George and Fort Niagara. My neck of the woods and I've been to all of them.

A Call to Battle is really good. I won't be surprised if at the end of these reviews this is one of my favorites from I Am Canada. Sandy is a very realistic character and his story is most entertaining. I didn't want to put the book down. The majority of it wasn't the war. He was only in one battle for the last chapter or so and that's it. But the book covers a lot of different ground, which I liked a lot. The only thing I didn't like was the time jump at the end. I would have liked to see the developing relationship between Angus and Mathilda instead of they just suddenly have kids years later. I would have liked some more development for Polly, too. The book does a really good job of being in Sandy's head, but the family characters aren't as developed as they could have been.

Anyway, still both are good and I'm glad to be doing this reread, because I've forgotten these books so much. I didn't remember Sandy's story at all! Or Susanna's either really.