DEAR AMERICA & MY NAME IS AMERICA: Dust Bowl

Well, we're still in the Depression, but some areas of the country have upped the ante and their residents are suffering from humongous dust storms.

We have both Dear America and My Name Is America tales from this time period, but they face the problem in different ways.

The Dear America book tells of a family who won't leave the Texas panhandle, despite numerous setbacks, while the MNIA story is about a family that leaves Oklahoma for California.

The different experiences overlap, of course. The girl in the Dear America has a friend who tells her about the California experience, and the boy from MNIA has a friend and an aunt who remain in Oklahoma.

I preferred the characters and stories from the Dear America book, although I did like the traveling bit in MNIA. Naturally, the characters in the MNIA deal with more abuse. Californians were embarrassingly unwelcome to these poor people that needed help. Too bad they couldn't have been shipped off to live in dust for a month and see how they liked it. But history always has been and always will be full of assholes!

Next up, we're up in Canada for a girl who has polio and then we begin the loooooonnnng stretch of World War II.

MY NAME IS AMERICA: Finnish Immigrant

This one's just kind of there. We've got the mining experience, but not in heavy detail. We've got the immigrant experience from the Finnish point of view, which is nice, but it's not that different from others. Labor unions blah blah blah. The characters are just kind of there, just like this book is just kind of there. It's not horrible, but it's not excellent. It's merely run of the mill Dear America series.

MY NAME IS AMERICA/DEAR AMERICA: Railroad Race

The transcontinental railroad is the subject of both My Name Is America and Dear America books. Both tell similar stories about the race between the Union Pacific and Central Pacific in their battle during the construction of the railroad.

I felt the My Name Is America book was stronger, because this is a tale better told by a male character. The Dear America was all right, but quickly turned into a love story and was more about family issues than anything involving the railroad. There have been great DA books with stories told from the female perspective, but in this case, when the subject is building a railroad, it works better as the journal of a boy that's doing all these various jobs, not someone who's just travelling along while her father writes a newspaper about everything.

So if you just want one book on the subject, read the My Name Is America one. The Dear America isn't bad, but it's not the better story for this subject.