MY NAME IS AMERICA: Revolutionary War Patriot

Barry Denenberg has written many books for the Dear America series. He's done five for Dear America and was one of only two male writers for the female-led series. He only did two for MNIA, this one and Ben Uchida's. He also wrote one Royal Diary for Elisabeth.

This is an enjoyable book in an unusual format. Instead of the typical day by day journal entries, the book is divided into section with different topic headings. I think it works because it seems to fit the narrator's character well.

There are interesting characters here and some action-packed Patriot moments, but there's not a lot of meat to the story. It felt really short and a lot of the characters just appear out of nowhere with no real background. I do like it, but I think if it had been longer, it would have been much better.

DEAR AMERICA: Love Thy Neighbor

Love Thy Neighbor was one of only two DAs released in 2003, the penultimate year of the initial run. It doesn't have the ribbon bookmark, which I sorely missed when they took it away. I'll have to try to keep track of when it disappears. Because I care about weird things like that.

Ann Turner only wrote one other book for the series: The Girl Who Chased Away Sorrow. That was one of the bigger name DAs, with the Sarah Nita character even getting to the prototype stage of a Madame Alexander 18" doll.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit, because Revolutionary War stuff is, like, 95% Patriot. It's interesting to see a simple family, who aren't at all bad people, stick by their beliefs in times of war. It's a reminder that not all people on the side you don't agree with are bad. And it's a reminder that even people you agree with can act like massive assholes. (Tarring and feathering, anyone?) The only thing I didn't like was that there was never any sort of clear explanation of what was up with Walter, the oldest brother. He stays behind and seemingly turns Patriot. Does he actually agree with them? Or is he just doing it to marry Prudence's ex-BFF, who he does actually end up with? He tries to get the family to return to Greenmarsh after the war, but they don't want to go back where there are bad memories, but it says nothing of any bad feelings about Walter himself. I just find it odd that no one sees him ever again and Prudence seemingly doesn't speak to her former best friend ever again, even though this girl is married to her brother. It was an odd choice. The war is over. There weren't any bad feelings between Pru and the friend or the family and Walter, so why this distance?

Anyway, if you're interested in this time period, I recommend giving this book the quick read that's all it requires. It's nice to see that different perspective a lot of people likely forget about.

ROYAL DIARIES: Marie Antoinette

I'm going to be honest here. I've read this one several times and I didn't feel like rereading it. I guess I'm in the mood for American history right now and not the decadent world of Marie Antoinette.

The book is quite enjoyable and thankfully takes place when she's younger. I got a few pages into it and the opulent lifestyles just weren't catching my attention, so I decided to just give it a generic thumbs up and move on to Revolutionary War America. Heh.

But if you're interested in Marie Antoinette, definitely check this one out. And there's a book about her daughter in the Beneath the Crown series (The Princess in the Tower) that's also worth reading.

I do love that cover though. It's gorgeous. The rerelease cover? Not so much. It's beautiful, don't get me wrong, but she looks far too old. (I was going to have more pictures here, but with the minimal text, the formatting is being a bitch, so yeah, no more pics.)

DEAR AMERICA: Look to the Hills

Look to the Hills is one of the last three DA books in the original run. It was published in 2004, before I Walk in Dread and Hear My Sorrow.

This is the least known of Patricia McKissack's four DA works. A Picture of Freedom, Clotee's book, is the most well-known. She also wrote Nzingha's Royal Diary and DA's Color Me Dark. McKissack is definitely a skilled author, because I love this book and being so late in the series, I do tend to forget about it, so rereading it is like looking at it for the first time. She crafts characters that come alive, much like the ones I mentioned earlier in Mary Pope Osborne's Standing in the Light. Look to the Hills has a full cast of characters that are black, white and Native American. There are people on all different sides.

The main reason this book is special to me is that it's close to home. The primary setting is Fort Niagara, which I've been to numerous times. Lozette also visits Beau Fleuve, which she doesn't understand at first, because the settlers pronounce it "Buffalo." Yeah, that's my hometown. Although there actually is no firm proof behind where the city name came from and there are many theories, including ones that predate the French-based theories. Lozette is also wowed by Niagara Falls and I can't even tell you how many times I've been there.

The story is very enjoyable. McKissack's work is a bit lighter than others in the series. It's a very quick read like Nzingha's, but also like that book, it's a good read.

DEAR AMERICA: Standing in the Light

Oh, my precious. This is my favorite DA book ever. I'm pretty sure it was one of the first I ever read. It was the tenth book in the series and it's one of the few written by Mary Pope Osborne, who sadly only contributed one other DA book and one trilogy to the My America series.

Catharine became one of the main DA girls. She got one of the reissue books with a new cover design.

And long before that, she was one of the few who had a live action special and a Madame Alexander 18" doll.

Catharine is blonde in the book and on both book covers, but the actress chosen to play her sports red hair and the doll, which was based on the actress, has even darker red hair. I personally think the original cover picture is a little young-looking, but I like her blonde, so the updated illustration works better for me. She looks more like a 13-year-old there. On the other hand, the actress looks a bit old.

Standing in the Light is about a 13-year-old Quaker girl and her younger brother, who are both captured by the Lenape in 1763/1764. Catharine, horribly upset especially because she's been separated from her brother, initially holds back and takes out her anger by just babbling away angrily whenever she's around the Lenape. However, one of them, Snow Hunter, is a captive himself. He's 17 now and thinks of himself as Lenape, not English. So he's understood every angry word she's said. He takes her to see her brother, after she dreams that he's sick, and she's able to bring him back to their camp. Gradually, Catharine grows to respect the Lenape and enjoy some of their ways. She and Snow Hunter fall in love, which you'd think would come across kind of creepy, but when you're reading this book, it's easy to fall into their time and a 13-year-old marrying a 17-year-old is pretty preferable to a lot of the ages a 13-year-old could be married off to! Sadly, right after they express interest in their somewhat timid ways, Snow Hunter goes off hunting and never comes back. The English have come and the final pages of the book are quite hard to get through. Poor Catharine sees her adoptive mother injured, possibly fatally, and she's just an old woman. She doesn't know what happened to her Lenape sister or nephew. She still doesn't know what's happened to Snow Hunter. And she and her brother get dragged back into the white world. She suffers greatly trying to readjust and finally gives her diary to her father to read. He understands her, though many others do not. The unlikeable mother character pretty much can't bear it, because oh, it's so horrible that Catharine not only lived but didn't hate every single fucking moment of her captive life. I was glad to read in the epilogue that the mother dies the next year.

The Madame Alexander Catharine and Mem dolls

Catharine never marries and both she and her brother go on to do good works, inspired by what they learned during their captivity. Thomas, the brother, eventually learns about John McCloud (Snow Hunter) and the final line of the epilogue reveals that he was killed by soldiers in 1674, the year Caty was captive.

Standing in the Light is a sad book, but it's also very well-written and the characters come alive and make you care about them. This brief romance is one of my favorite written romances ever, and I recommend this DA book over any other. It's simpler writing than a lot of the others in the series, but the story is also far, far better.

DEAR CANADA & I AM CANADA: French and Indian War

I should have put all four of these together, since the previous review is from the same time period. All of these books cover the French and Indian War. The first one was the Acadian deportation. Brothers in Arms is about the fall of Fortress Louisbourg. The siege of Quebec is covered in both The Death of My Country and Storm the Fortress.

Maxine Trottier, who wrote the excellent Alone in an Untamed Land for Dear Canada, tackled three out of four of these books. The only one she didn't write was Brothers in Arms, which is written by Don Aker.

Brothers in Arms unfortunately was the most boring of the three, so Trottier once again proves herself as a strong historical author. The problem may not have been Aker, but the subject matter, because it's not exactly fun to read chapter after chapter of a losing battle.

The Death of My Country was far more interesting, being about an Abenaki girl, who was raised by a white woman and a white Ursuline nun in Quebec. They attempted the same with her older brother, but he left for the Abenaki settlement instead. His white friend, who was adopted by the Abenaki, is the most fun character and I hoped he and Geneviève would end up together, but nope, he dies and she ends up with a Scottish dude. Eh. He was okay, but I preferred the other guy by far. This book is okay, although I find it a little divorced from the action.
Geneviève does help the wounded, but I never got the feeling she was in danger much and her lifestyle doesn't change much throughout the book. Good, but nowhere near as good as Alone in an Untamed Land. The Christmas short story in A Christmas to Remember is all right, but feels quite tacked on, although that's a problem with several of these, if I recall.

Storm the Fortress was pretty good, because so many of these male-fronted historical books are all war, war, war, battles, battles, battles. This is definitely war, but there's also a lot about ship life, which is pretty interesting. It's also from the British perspective, so quite different from the other three.

So I've learned more than I ever wanted to know about the French and Indian War, and I'm very glad to be done with it and moving on to what is possibly my favorite Dear America ever.

DEAR CANADA: BANISHED FROM OUR HOME

This is not one of the feel good books of this series. It's about something I knew nothing about before reading it: the deportation of the Acadians. The Acadians were a seperate group of settlers who lived in one specific place. They were caught between the French and English during the French and Indian War, and, suspected of aiding the French, were deported by the English. They were thrown onto ships, many times separating families in what would end up being a permanent way, and sending them off to various places in the colonies. Many would end up migrating to Louisiana.

Angélique Richard and her family are split apart by this conflict. One brother goes off to fight the English, the other two are held by the English as is her father, but in separate places. Her elder sister chooses to stay with the family of her husband and the Richards never learn what happened to her. Family members die during and after the journey by ship.

One of the reasons I've taken such a break from my Dear America etc. reread is that this book is on the depressing side and I kept setting it down. Being stuck in this hotel until our apartment is fixed, I have little to do right now but read, so last night, I made myself finish Angélique's book and the accompanying Christmas story, which is found in A Season for Miracles. They're great because they're educational, but not exactly uplifting.

DC SUPERHERO GIRLS 2

The second DC Superhero Girls book came out on Tuesday. If you remember my review for the first book, I wasn't exactly impressed with it. Well, this second effort is a big improvement.

If you've seen the animated special on Cartoon Network, you know the basic plot of this book. Supergirl is new at school, clumsy with her powers, but with some help from Batgirl, saves the day at the end. This is the same.

I found Supergirl to be a much more enjoyable character than Wonder Woman. Wondy is great in the show, but in the book, she was played so out of touch with basic life that she came across as alien. Supergirl, on the other hand, actually IS an alien, but she's not played that way at all. It's a fairly odd choice really and I'll never understand why they did Wonder Woman that disservice.

The book gets more in depth with Supergirl. She's a very conflicted person. She watched everything she knew destroyed in the blink of an eye, somehow ended up on Earth decades later than her cousin, and is struggling with these newfound powers she never had before. She's got a lot on her shoulders and she tries to be friendly and happy, but she has nightmares and struggles with being too happy when she also feels she should almost perpetually be in mourning.

Barbara Gordon is as great a presence in the book as she was in the cartoon. I'm looking forward to the third book, which is hers. I'm wondering if the plotline will be the Hero of the Year DVD's story.

This book does better at showcasing a wider array of characters. Cheetah, Frost and Star Sapphire take an instant mean girl dislike to Supergirl. Cheetah's even worse than she is during the cartoon and she doesn't have that moment with Barbara where Babs' tech saved her. The other two aren't as big a presence. I'm hoping these three get some better development down the line.

Bumblebee, Hawkgirl and Flash are focused on a bit, as the detective squad. And Ivy, because she helps them. Harley gets a little attention, including an amusing scene where both she and Mad Harriet are videoing a fight.

Katana and Beast Boy have a lot of scenes together.

Miss Martian is the main one that's developed more than what we've seen of her in the show. She's barely in the show and all we know is that she's shy and turns invisible. Well, she actually can read minds and pops into Kara's a few times. She's got a lot of potential as an awesome character.

There's also quite a bit of content that wasn't in the cartoon version, like several of the Supers joining the Kents for Thanksgiving dinner, and the battle against the Furies is lengthened a lot. The Supers actually fight them before they get mind-controlled, then again after.

Overall, this is a really fun book. It takes what was already a great animated episode and lengthens it into something that's, for the most part, even better. The treatment of Cheetah is really the only thing worse in the book.

AMERICAN GIRL: Samantha

Ah, Sam. Possibly the most famous American Girl. When the dolls and books first came out, I was the odd girl out because Molly was my favorite. Every other girl I knew wanted Samantha. She did have an excellent wardrobe. My Molly doll ended up with Samantha's Christmas dress and her nightgown, too!

Samantha has a ton of books. She's been around forever and she's super popular, so of course she has a ton of books. I reread her story collection, her short story collection, Nellie's book, the ocean liner adventure, and all five mysteries. Yep, she has five. Which is hard not to hold against her when I had to wait over a decade for Kaya and Josefina to get their second mysteries and poor Addy still only has one. Sigh.

Don't get me wrong. I actually really love Sam's books. She's the rich girl character who doesn't act rich. Even though she's been brought up as a lady, she treats servants and other poorer people just the same as anyone else. Which makes her a little problematic, because that behavior doesn't quite ring true with Grandmary's. Grandmary is very proper and she's brought Samantha up for years, since her parents drowned. So how did Samantha end up the way she is? Grandmary doesn't treat her staff poorly by any means, but she certainly has lines of propriety. She doesn't hang in the kitchen with Mrs. Hawkins or chill with Jessie in the sewing room. So why is Samantha allowed to? It's a conundrum. But despite that, I still enjoy the books and don't let trying to figure things out get in my way. Samantha is a very generous character and that makes her extremely endearing, too. Every time I would reread her books, I'd want a Samantha doll. I finally did get one, but I don't like how her hair is styled, so I sold her not too long before they announced the retirement. (Should have waited and made more money!) Then I reread her books, wanted her doll again and ended with a #16 Just Like You doll that has hair in a style I like better and she acts as my Samantha.

Anyway, yes, Sam is generous. She's outgoing, smart and perhaps a bit ahead of her time with her lack of boundaries. The rest of the cast is equally excellent. Nellie is one of my favorite best friend characters, although the repeated times she has to be reassured that the family's not going to just reject her and dump her and her sisters in the street is annoying. Like once should have been enough. You got adopted. Stop worrying. But she's also very smart, astute and isn't afraid to stand up for herself and people she views as more like herself. Agnes and Agatha are awesome, too, and I wish they were around more.

All of the books are quite good. I don't think there's a single one I don't like. Curse of Ravenscourt is my favorite of the mysteries, but I do like how they wrote a mystery for each leg of the European trip Samantha and Nellie take with Grandmary and the admiral. And I didn't even notice it until tonight! I think I connected Stolen Sapphire with Clue in the Castle Tower before, but didn't realize Danger in Paris was still the same trip, because I read it when it came out, not in conjunction with a full reread.

AG Best to Least Best (they're too good to be called "Worst") Historical Ranking:
-Josefina/Addy
-Felicity
-Samantha
-Kaya
-Kirsten
-Marie-Grace and Cécile
-Caroline
-Maryellen

Samantha pops ahead of Kaya because Kaya's less likeable family holds her back, but Felicity's awesomeness is something Sam doesn't quite attain.

Next up: Rebecca! Yay.