GIRLS SURVIVE Series: Parts 5 & 6

We're going way back for the earliest-set installment of the newest batch of Girls Survive. It's time for the Black Plague. 

This book is as you'd expect it. Bleak. Set in Florence, Maria endures standing in bread lines because the city is starving and her father won't let her look for work. They've already lost her mother and her younger sister, but as the plague comes in, she loses the grandmother figure she's not actually related to, then is left with uncertainties for the others. 

Her oldest brother goes to Pisa to sell wool to earn money so they can flee to Milan, but the Florentine rulers declare no one from Pisa or Genoa can enter their city, which means her brother cannot return. 

Forced to leave without him, Maria sees her friend Joseph, who's become a grave digger, one last time. 

Then on the walk to Milan, her father contracts the plague. 

Maria is taken in by a band of travelers who will help her in Milan and her story does have a fairly happy ending, but you never know what happened to the older brother or her friend or her father. I think we can safely assume the father died and likely the friend also, but maybe there's hope for her brother. The author even mentions it in the notes at the end. 

This one is decent and fast-paced. Not boring, but definitely very bleak. 

From the Black Plague in Italy to the decks of the Mayflower. This one is decent, but suffers from what I call "Matilda Syndrome." (I call it that because in her book, Matilda from A Girl for All Time was suddenly the one who helped her cousin Katherine get with King Henry and just no.) Basically, the heroine is given a level of importance that far outweighs what a girl in her time would have or what historical evidence shows. 

So Constance slaps a bullying sailor, helps figure out how to fix the broken ship, helps the sailors save her would-be suitor who fell overboard, and breaks up an argument between grown men who are leaders of their respective communities. It's too much.  

It is good? Not from a historical standpoint. Is it enjoyable? Sure, but others in this series are far better.

This one is set during the bombing of London in WWII. Time flies in this book. Roughly half of it is spent in the early part of the war, but then the kids are evacuated to the country, where they spend over four and a half years. 

Like some of the books in this series, this book suffers from trying to cram too much time into too few pages. I didn't become attached to any of the characters and their time away from home felt like nothing because it was written in so few pages. Is it an important subject matter? Of course. But I do think it could have been handled better, perhaps in spending the entire story leading up to the evacuation and then telling what happened after in an epilogue. You're still cheated out of a good chunk of story that way, but to me, it feels like less of a cheat.

I have had this post sitting in drafts for almost a year. I left this 9/11 book because I started reading it and it felt too soon. 

It's over 20 years now, but it still feels too soon. 

The events of the book take place over a very short time. The night before. During. Short parts from the days after and then 6 months later. 

It's good. I loved the characters and their family dynamic. But I can't say it's easy to read. 

I was really surprised to see two more new books in this series! I thought they were done. 

This one covers Tulsa, which is something I admittedly don't know much about. I think the world could stand to know a lot more about this and it should be taught in every American history course. 

It is hard to read because it is a horrific incident but read it. 

 

This one is quite anticlimactic after the horrors of the previous two. It's a terrible accident, but it was an accident not terrorism. Basically, the main circus tent caught fire back in the 40s and it's the story of a girl trying to get out of there with her two twin sisters. One of the sisters is a fucking idiot and ends up stupidly risking her life instead of conquering her fear of heights. It was okay, but definitely not one of the best.

SMITHSONIAN HISTORICAL FICTION Part 1

The Smithsonian has released a new children's historical fiction series. These are done by the same publisher as the Girls Survive series, so they're using some of the same authors and following the same pattern of releasing four books at a time. 

The Smithsonian series is shorter at around 63 pages each and has more illustrations. Each book has a different illustrator. 

As I tend to do, I read them in chronological order. Archie's book is set in 1898. He and his guardian, his uncle Harold, are travelling musicians who got bit by the gold bug. But they see the problems and dangers of mining and end up leaving to return to their old life. 

This one is the weakest of the four. The story goes by extremely quickly and you never get to know Val, the blonde girl on the cover, very well and I found her the most interesting character. 

 

Li's book was my second favorite of the set. She, her older brother and their mother are immigrating to the US in 1921, during a time when immigration for the Chinese was extremely strict. People could be held for months on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, enduring endless questioning about their lives to prove they were actually who they said they were. 

This is a topic I never knew anything about. I knew Chinese immigrants didn't have the best time of it, but I had no idea there was such a thing as the Chinese Exclusion Act, which I believe was also mentioned in one of the Girls Survive books. And that act wasn't repealed until 1943! Even then, only 105 Chinese immigrants were allowed per year from 1943 until 1965. I really wish Dear America had covered this one. I think it's quite important. 

This one takes place during the 1936 Olympics, which were held in Berlin. The main character is a young black boy with asthma, going along with his father, who's a newspaper founder and reporter. 

This is another story I wish had the Dear America (or rather, My Name Is America) treatment, because it deserves to be longer. The idea of a black reporter covering the Olympics attended by Hitler is fascinating. Add in the Jesse Owens factor and you've got great historical storytelling here. I really like Matthew as a character and how he dreams he can be like Jesse, despite his asthma. 

I actually think this one is a better story than Li's book, but I gave Li's second place in my little mini ranking here, because her book taught me something I hadn't known, which is always a thing I love. Despite knowing more of the history behind this book, I still want more of it! 

Ah, girls in science. One of my weaknesses. This was my favorite of the four, because Audrey wants to work for NASA, where her father works, and she struggles against sexist attitudes throughout the entire book, yet comes out on top in the end. I liked all the characters in it, even her dad, who initially tries to discourage her ambitions, because he knows how hard it will be for a female in this specific scientific world. A little conflicting, because Audrey's mother is a former science teacher. I was surprised there was never a scene where she stood up for Audrey more. 

The ending is a little bit farfetched, but I still enjoyed this book a lot. 

I'm looking forward to more from this series!

GIRLS SURVIVE Series Part 3

Yay, it's been since July and now it's finally time for more Girls Survive!

These are still coming out in fours and still coming out earlier than expected. They weren't due until February 1st, yet they all came today. (ETA: I started writing this post back in January and got sidetracked from it for an embarrassingly long time.)

As always, I'm going in chronological order with these, so we're starting in May 1838. This book takes place over the course of ten months of terrible things. Reading anything involving the Native American genocide is always painful for me. I'm not Native American a bit, but it was absolutely horrific what was done to the US's indigenous peoples. One of the worst things to ever take place in this country and it's not talked about enough.

Mary and her family are living in Georgia. Her family is quite large. One cabin has her parents, her older sister Margaret, her younger sister Becky, and herself. A second cabin is for her maternal grandparents and a third has her oldest sister Nelly and Nelly's husband Raven. And their unborn baby.

So the family is doing normal daily life things when suddenly Grandma has a heart attack. She ends up dying overnight and everyone is preparing for the funeral when the house is approached by a bunch of white men. Things escalate quickly from here. Everyone is forced outside. The women gather as many possessions as they can, but also watch as their livestock and other possessions are claimed by the white men. Mary's father has gone elsewhere to build Grandma's coffin, so he's not present for almost the entire book. Grandpa goes along for a bit, then runs back into his home to be with his wife, who won't be buried properly now. And he ends up getting shot. Two people who won't be buried properly.

The family is herded to one of the internment camps by a fort. They're here through June, then off to another camp in Tennessee. They're there until almost November, then finally start heading west. Well, most of them do. Nelly goes into labor right before they're supposed to leave, so she, Raven and her mother stay behind while Margaret takes Mary and Becky on to Chattanooga. Thankfully, they reunite eleven days later.

Then the book time jumps to March, where they're in Missouri, then Arkansas. Nelly loses her baby to illness. Thankfully, the book ends on a slightly happier note as Mary's father is finally found.

Agh, this book should have been a least three times as long as it was. I thought it was quite well-written, but went way too quickly and none of the characters were very well-developed, because you just saw them reacting to tragedy after tragedy with occasional scenes of strength and determination. That's the trouble with cramming an important story into 103 pages. It didn't need that many to convey its sadness though. It was good, but as I said, definitely hard to read.

One thing this series does quite well is choose its authors. This was written by a Cherokee woman and you can tell.

Next up, the Oregon Trail where the main character is black. I honestly don't remember ever reading another historical fiction book with that set up. The author is the one who wrote Ann, Noelle and Charlotte's books.

And I basically described the whole book in the previous paragraph without even having read it yet. (I write these reviews in sections after finishing each book, not all at once after reading all four.) It's the same as other Oregon Trail stories only not nearly as detailed, due to the page constraints, and with bonus racism,

It's pretty good though for what it is, which is too short. Length is the main thing that would improve this series a lot. They're good books with good authors, but they feel rushed and leaving you wanting more.

Sarah and her family live in Iowa where they're free. Her father decides he wants to head west, alongside a neighbor and his son. So Sarah, her older brother James, and their parents all go on the Oregon Trail, leaving the paternal grandparents behind. From there on out, it's your basic Oregon Trail story with a couple added moments here and there. Of course, there are some people in their travel group who are racist dicks. There's a cool scene where Sarah's father sticks up for the Native Americans, as does an older white woman. And another where Sarah's father puts himself in front of the biggest racist asshole's gun to protect some innocent Native Americans who actually just want to help them across a river. Basically, Sarah's dad is a badass. He was my favorite. Sarah herself is fun, too. Her mom's on the feminist side, so she's been raised on "women can do anything men can do," and when her friend is lost, she takes it upon herself to join the search and she's the one who actually finds her.

My biggest issue with the book, aside from the length, is that it feels like the author had a checklist she was going down. And there's a reason for that. She pretty much says the same thing in the afterword. She says she wanted to show the trip from the perspective of a black girl. Check. She wanted to show it was difficult. Check. And she wanted to show it was tragic for Native Americans. Er...half a check? She gives more useful information about that in the afterword than she does in the text itself, where there's only that one conversation plus the gun incident. I'd also add that she wanted to show Sarah doing something men couldn't accomplish. Check.

Really, it's a fun read. I just get nitpicky when I write these reviews.

Up next, earthquake! This is the one I was most looking forward to from this batch.

And sadly, it was a bit disappointing. I like Lily and her family a lot, but the story was all about the two kids making their way to the ferry to Oakland and it took up most of the book. Most of the book for just a few hours and then most of it wasn't interesting. Devastation. Broken things. Racism. Nothing new. 

Unlike some of the others though, this one has a happy ending. The kids find their parents on the other side. Both the older man and young woman with bound feet who accompanied the kids also make it through the story alive. So that's good anyway. 

I wanted this one to dig deeper, but it just didn't. 

This book came out in January, but it's the one I recommend most. Who knew that we'd be facing a pandemic at the time? There were hints, but none of us really had any idea what we'd be facing. 

Daisy is a German-American, so she's facing prejudice based on the war, as well as the onset of the Spanish flu. 

I'm not going to spoil what happens, but this one was extremely well-written and is certainly relevant to today's times. 

GIRLS SURVIVE Series Part 2

Finally back with another review! I wish I was more consistent with these, but alas.

The Girls Survive series just released another four books. These actually came out a couple weeks before they were originally supposed to, so that was a pleasant surprise.

I'm going in chronological order again, so we're starting with the book set during the Civil War. This was written by the same author that did Ann and Noelle's books from the first batch of four.

Our main character is a 12-year-old free black girl named Charlotte who works for Elizabeth Van Lew, who was a real person. Miss Van Lew freed all her father's slaves upon his death and even tracked down their families and freed them, too. Fictional Charlotte is one of those she found and freed. Charlotte came to live with Miss Van Lew and work for her, along with Charlotte's older cousin Mary, who is also based on a real person.

The story is set in Richmond in 1864 and quickly jumps into the action with Charlotte learning Miss Van Lew and a lot of her friends are spies. Or "patriots," as Miss Van Lew insists. The story, like all of these books, is very fast-paced because the books are so short, so Charlotte starts off her own spy career the very next day after she discovers that little secret. Her adventures culminate in her risking everything to see her cousin Mary for a few moments, which thankfully turns out advantageous when it could easily have gotten everyone involved killed. The book ends on an open, but hopeful note.

I like this one the best of this author's three. I liked all the characters and it was cool to learn that so many of them were based on real historical figures.

I've gotta be honest, I didn't know how well I was going to do with Carrie's book. For those that didn't know, I'm a Hurricane Michael survivor. Not that things were that devastating, because I don't believe anything compares with the Galveston hurricane's level of loss of life, but still. It's still fresh.

It's 1900. Twelve-year-old Carrie's a bit of a flighty character. She seems on the shallow side, being really into clothing and hairstyles and she's obsessed with her best friend's older sister to the point of almost insulting said best friend. She was supposed to go to her best friend's house for a sleepover on the day of the hurricane, but Carrie's shallowness is eclipsed only by her mother's social-climbing, so Carrie's stuck at home babysitting her younger brother.

And then it's all boom, hurricane action. The water's rising. Let's go upstairs! The roof is caving in. Let's throw a chunk of it out the window and use it as a raft! Carrie does some pretty epic heroics. I'm not sure I really buy her being able to lift a chunk of roof big enough to float her and her brother on out a broken window. It's not like the water level was that high and she just directed it out the window while it was floating, which seems more believable. Then she does a daring rescue and she, her brother and the boy she saved wait out the hurricane on their roof raft, because Carrie managed to wedge it up against a couple trees.

When the storm is over, they make their way through the devastation and Carrie finds her mother, who says her father is also okay. He's helping with the rescue efforts. Carrie also runs into her teacher, who breaks the news that both Carrie's best friend and her beloved older sister are dead. Their entire family is dead. And Carrie freaks out because not only has she just learned she lost people, but she also knows she was almost dead, too, if she'd gone to the sleepover as planned.

The book ends on a hopeful note, as Carrie refuses to leave Galveston and says they should stay and rebuild because this is their home. William, the boy she rescued, lost most of his family, except his father and their dog, but he's staying as well.

Now to paraphrase Ann M. Martin for a second, what I didn't tell you was that Carrie was white and William was black. Remember the first four books that had prejudice shoved into each one? Some historical stories are meant for that. The Civil War. Pearl Harbor. Internment camps. Anything involving how Native Americans were treated. The Titanic one wasn't. This one isn't really either. The author explains that she liked the real life accounts she read of people helping each other regardless of their race during the Galveston hurricane, because Galveston was segregated. That's all well and good, but work it into the story naturally. There are a couple very heavy-handed mentions of Galveston being segregated and Carrie just treats it as the way it is rather than having any sort of emotion about it. It feels mechanical. Forced. Shallow. I like the character of William, but that whole angle could have been handled much better.

Next up: Triangle Shirtwaist fire. From a slightly triggering hurricane story to one of my worst fears: being stuck in something on fire that I can't get out of. Yay.

So Lucia, or Lucy as she prefers, is a 14-year-old Italian immigrant. She wants to go to college and be an astronomer, but her father says no. He was injured at his job, so their only income right now is from Lucy and her brother's jobs, plus laundry their mother takes in, and boarders that share the only bed in the house.

Lucy works at Triangle, along with her friend Rosie, who's a Russian Jew. Rosie and Lucy's brother Tony have mutual crushes but can't hope to be together due to their religious backgrounds. That's the snippet of prejudice tossed into this book. Also working at Triangle are Lucy's cousin Cara, Cara's fiance Frank, an Italian boy named Michael that has a crush on Lucy, and a girl from Michael's hometown named Marcella that likes Michael and naturally then hates Lucy.

All these characters are established over the course of the first four chapters, as well as unions and poor conditions at the factories.

Then we get right into the fire and it's all action until the end. It's all panic. Michael finds Lucy, but ends up having to save Marcella. Lucy tries to find Rosie multiple times and does catch a glimpse of her once, but can't get to her. Lucy finally ends up on the building's roof and is one of the few that were on the ninth floor that managed to escape. Lucy actually worked on the eighth floor, but went to nine to look for Rosie.

Lucy finds Marcella in the aftermath. Marcella tells her Michael didn't make it and neither did Rosie, who was on the fire escape that collapsed. Cara's fiance Frank didn't make it either.

This one was mostly well-written and I thought it captured a lot of the tension well, after establishing the characters and their world.

Only one moment I thought was a poor choice. Lucy's cousin Cara is sick and can't go to work, so she gives Lucy a note for Frank. Lucy's caught up in some drama with Michael over lunch and forgets to take the note to Frank. At the end, Cara is comforted by the fact that Lucy gave Frank her note and he knew how she felt at the end. Eeyeah, except he didn't get it, because Lucy was being a forgetful idiot. Not that Lucy tells her. She lies her ass off. This whole situation was unnecessary and puts Lucy in a bad light for absolutely no reason.

Other than that though, this one was good.

And now the Holocaust book. Technically, Kristallnacht. I always struggle through Holocaust books. They're painful to read. I've been to Dachau. It's something you never forget. But in the light of some things going on in this country today, things like this are even harder to read.

I'm going to be brief because this was indeed a struggle to read. It was good, but difficult. You know the ending, while seemingly hopeful, is ultimately going to be sad, though you'll never know for sure.

I love that these books are always in groups of four. The next set, due out in February, will be about a Cherokee girl on the Trail of Tears, a black girl on the Oregon Trail, one living through the 1918 flu epidemic, and a Chinese-American girl during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

GIRLS SURVIVE Series

It's been many months since my last review! I've been reading, of course, but nothing really reviewable. Until now!

The Girls Survive series debuted on February 1st with four books. They're short books, each with only 112 pages and black and white illustrations.

Being a lover of children's historical fiction, I had to check these out, although I only recently got them.

Overall, I enjoyed them, but definitely some more than others.

Ann Fights for Freedom is the obvious Underground Railroad book. It's not as well done as Addy's first book from the American Girl line and nowhere near as good a look at slavery as Clotee's from the Dear America line, but it has decent characters and a fast-paced storyline that gives a good, if quite brief, look at the situation. I find the Underground Railroad bit a tad misleading though, because a main part of the plot is that they're NOT officially on the Underground Railroad.

Emmi's book was quite good and my second favorite of the line. Emmi is a German immigrant in Chicago who came over from Europe with her toymaker father. The story quickly moves into the events of the fire and it's very fast-paced.

Emmi's book did make me wonder something: whether or not the authors were instructed to include some sort of prejudice in each volume. Obviously, the slavery book and Pearl Harbor book featuring a Japanese character are going to have this, but the Chicago fire and the Titanic? Not necessarily and yet, there it was. Emmi has to run around the city with a pair of Irish twins that have bullied her for being German. The disaster quickly brings them together and they end up having a happy ending. I didn't mind including this aspect of Chicago life in the story, but it also made me want to read more. It seemed unrealistic to have the twins and Emmi come together so easily and forget all their past animosity. I suppose in times of great duress it does happen, but with a story this short, it felt rushed.

The language at the beginning of the book is a bit odd. The writer in me wanted to edit quite a few things, but I quickly became caught up in the story and looked past it.

Written by the same author as Ann's book, Noelle's lead character is half-Haitian, half-French. So here we go again with the prejudice side story. This time though, the story suffered for it. The instances of racism just felt tacked onto the already dramatic story of the Titanic disaster and the main character's point of view as a biracial girl in the early 1900s wasn't fleshed out like it should have been. This was a topic meant for a much longer book where it could have been explored in greater detail and given proper attention.

And of course, it's the Titanic. It's the only one without a happy ending. My least-liked of the four.

From least-liked on to favorite! Alice is the daughter of an American-born man of Japanese heritage and a Japanese immigrant woman. This is one of the only historical kids' fiction books I've read about Pearl Harbor that actually has the main character as Japanese.

I loved all the characters in this and the story really came alive. Despite it taking place over the most spread out amount of time, it felt like the most complete story. Although I still want to know what happened to everyone during the rest of their lives! This one didn't feel long enough, not because the writing wasn't done well, but because I got so attached to the characters, I wanted to read a full-length novel about them.

This series continues in August with two more books. One is a black girl spying during the Civil War and the other is the Triangle Shirtwaist fire.