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.

EVER AFTER HIGH

This Raven book came out back in January and I only just sat down to finish it today. I decided to work on some of my series books that have been piling up and I grabbed three from EAH's recent offerings. 

I abandoned Raven's book because I wasn't liking the transformation spell aspects going on, but I made myself plow through it. 

Basically, Faybelle and the Evil Queen team up to bring out Raven's evil. Faybelle leaves her an anonymous thronecake that's carrying a curse that encourages your evil side. But the spell is meant for trolls, so Raven spends most of the book accidentally doing evil(ish) things and trollish things. 

The main part that bothered me was that everyone around her keeps sniffing, because apparently she smells like...I think it was broccoli and old coffee. But no one mentions it until Maddie and then Mr. Badwolf connects the smell with trolls. The thing that's annoying is that Raven is with CERISE for half the book. Cerise should have known something was off with Raven's scent. She's half-wolf. 

Once they figure out there's a curse, Raven uses her acting skills to get the spellbook from her mom and reverse the curse. It was an okay book, but definitely not one of EAH's stronger offerings. Points for mentioning Ramona, although she didn't make an actual appearance.

The second book in the series, and unfortunately probably the last, is Apple's. And it's really weird to say this, but I liked Apple's book more than Raven's. Apple gets caught up in some mouse mischief planned by Faybelle, Kitty and Lizzie and the girls are assigned to clean up the mess their mice made and the dance that was supposed to happen that night is now off. 

In true Apple form, she gets shit done, but also comes to realize that Kitty, Lizzie and even Faybelle actually like her. They end up getting to know each other better, sticking up for each other and actually having fun. This one was a much better read than Raven's and involved more characters, which is always good. Author Heather Alexander actually used Duchess and anything with Duchess is a plus for me.

The other current EAH series is Once Upon a Twist, which has characters going into tales that aren't their own. This mayhem was of course concocted by Faybelle, who apparently is the go to villain in every book now. 

I read the first one, where Cupid is now Cinderella, Maddie is the Fairy Godmother and I believe Hopper was Prince Charming, months ago, so I honestly don't remember it. My main critique was that they didn't use the stepsisters from the webisodes, but made up new ones. 

The second book has Cerise as Beauty and Dexter as the Beast. This one I just read today. It's a solid story, but it's very insular. I love so many EAH characters that I like to see them, so my main disappointment here was that this was solely about Cerise and Dexter. Others were only there briefly. 

I think the diary series is over, but Once Upon a Twist has at least one more book, which puts Rosabella in the Goldlocks role. Cedar is there, too, but I don't know what her role is. It comes out on July 18th.

DEAR AMERICA & MY AMERICA: Immigrants

Say hello to one of my favorite Dear America books. This is definitely near the top.

Dreams in the Golden Country is about Zipporah (I always want to stick a T on the front of her name), a Russian Jewish immigrant starting her new life in New York City.

Every character is interesting. Her father is a musician, while her mother wants to stick to some of her old-fashioned Jewish ways. Her eldest sister becomes obsessed with labor unions and the middle sister runs off and marries an Irishman! There are great tragedies and quite a bit of drama, but they're well-written and they feel real, not sensationalized.

Zippy was one of the girls who got a live action special.

Unfortunately, I've never seen it!

She's just a great character. And I have to wonder if the American Girl Rebecca author was a Zippy fan. Both girls come from Russian Jewish families. Both live in New York City. Both want to be actresses. I think my love of Zipporah is why I loved Rebecca so much when he books came out. Not that they're that much alike, but the little similarities are enjoyable.

Zippy was one of the four dolls in the second set of Madame Alexander Dear America dolls. Sadly, these were never made. Zipporah would have been my most wanted, although I think Sarah Nita is the best of the four. Zippy's just that much of a favorite of mine!

I'm honestly shocked her book was not part of the rereleases. It's a pretty important one, I think.


Moving on, I was going to do just Zipporah's review, but then I started the My America Sofia trilogy. These three books were also written by Kathryn Lasky, so I decided to stick them on the end here.

Sofia's another immigrant child in a large-ish family. The thing that really made me put her review on Zippy's is that the same thing happens to both characters. At the end of their journey, the girls are both looking up at the Statue of Liberty when they get a cinder in their eyes. This causes them to not pass inspection and get an E chalked on their backs. Zippy's quick-thinking eldest sister saves her by flipping her coat inside out, but Sofia's family is not that on top of things and she's dragged off alone to quarantine.

The entire first book, Hope in My Heart, is about Sofia's adventures in quarantine, where she meets her new best friend, an Irish immigrant named Maureen, who also had the cinder-in-the-eye incident happen. The girls finally get out at the end.

The second book, Home at Last, is about Sofia getting settled in Boston, MA. I'm glad Lasky moved the setting to Boston, because New York would have been too much like Zippy. Sofia excels at school, watches her family adapt and succeed, and eventually develops infantile paralysis and then has to struggle with that at the end. The only unrealistic part is Maureen. Maureen's family stayed in New York, but the two keep in touch via carrier pigeon. Well, Maureen's mother dies and her father can't find work, so he decides to take himself and his fifteen kids back to Ireland. It's never explained well, but somehow he accepts Sofia's family's offer to take Maureen in. So she now lives with Sofia's family, while everyone else is across the ocean back in Ireland. It just seems to happen too easily, more for plot development than the sake of actually telling a realistic story.

An American Spring is the final book in the trilogy and follows Maureen and Sofia through their spring together. They help Sofia's big sister Gabriella with her new dress-making business. They work in the family store. They do a school scavenger hunt-type exercise with riddles about the American Revolution. So they're learning history and talking about history within a historical fiction book.

Sofia's a cute character, but I think her trilogy is possibly the weakest in My America. Zippy handled this topic and did it better. All three books have unrealistic elements. It's not Lasky's best work.

DEAR CANADA: Landslide

All Fall Down follows Abby and her family as they travel from Montreal to the town of Frank in Alberta and start a new life there. The father of the family is killed in an accident and when all his debts are discovered, the mother decides to write to her brother for help. He's started a hotel in Frank with his wife and son, so they're glad of the help.

Abby's main job is taking care of her younger brother Davy, who has Down Syndrome. He's the second such character in the series of DA and its spinoffs, although Gideon from Down the Rabbit Hole was much older. Olivia and John, the eldest siblings, practically hate their younger brother, and it takes months for them to grow out of their father's bad influence. The father was really an asshole character, while the mother is nice.

Everyone pitches in at the hotel or finds other local jobs. Olivia has boyfriend drama. Abby makes a Native Canadian friend. John's kind of an ass.

Throughout the book, there's a big secret and John is the one that finally reveals it. Abby isn't related to them. She's a baby that was brought to the mother by her father. She was one of the few survivors of a cholera epidemic aboard a ship and the mother's father brought her the baby, knowing she needed someone to care for, as her husband was pulling her own children more under his influence and away from her. (Told you he was an asshole.) The father never likes Abby and makes his children not like her much either. Thankfully, their time together after his death fixes all those shitty things.

Right when Abby is dealing with this shocking news, the landslide happens, killing many people, though all the main characters survive. Abby talks to her mother about her history after they've recovered from the tragedy and finally learns what little her mother knows.

The book is well-written and the characters, while not all likeable immediately, all eventually end up well. The landslide comes at the very end, so mostly this is just the story of a girl and her family.

MY NAME IS AMERICA: NYC Newsie

Written by the same author as the overly sensationalized Down the Rabbit Hole and the squick-inducing Coal Miner's Bride, this book gets a lot of points from me for reading much more like a typical DA book and not something for adults.

Finn's a strong character and he paints a good picture of New York City in 1899 and what it was like for poorer families.

The book is a very quick read, but it's enjoyable from cover to cover.

DEAR CANADA: Home Girl

I think this was the first Dear Canada I ever read, though I'm not positive.

I love this one. It's written by the daughter of the family with the Home Girl, not the Home Girl herself, who really wouldn't have much time to write in a diary.

Victoria is obviously a well-to-do girl, but she's still a likeable character. She's like Triffie from a few books ago, although not as wealthy. Victoria wants to be a writer and her diary reflects that well, because her writing is very engaging.

The entire cast of characters is well-rounded and interesting. Few go without a backstory or development.

The action and drama are fun, but also believable, unlike some of the other DA series books.

Definitely a high recommend for this one. The follow-up Christmas story is also a nice addition, because that is written by the Home Girl herself, not Victoria. Marianna is given a diary by Victoria and she does find a little time to write in it, although she mentions that she doesn't have much free time, still having her duties to perform.

DEAR AMERICA: Coal Miner's Bride

This is possibly the most problematic DA for me. It's not the controversial Ann Rinaldi book, because that one has the author clearly in the wrong. This one gives me the most mixed feelings.

I love the main character and her love interest. Their story throughout the book is great.

However, the love interest is not the same person as the guy she marries.

Anetka is 13 when she leaves Poland, after her father sold her hand in marriage to a fellow coal miner in exchange for 3 ship tickets.

Sold into marriage at THIRTEEN.

I mean, seriously, think about that. This book isn't set in the ancient world or Middle Ages or anything. This was 1896. And shit like this actually fucking happened. It disgusts me.

Because at 13, this poor girl lost her virginity to someone literally twice her age. He was a widower with 3 young daughters, who only wanted a body to take care of his kids and a slave to take care of his own physical needs. He's emotionally abusive to Anetka. He's an alcoholic. He berates her for not having everything the way he wants, even if she spent the day taking care of his three sick kids or helping her friend give birth. He attacks her for writing, saying what could possibly be in her head that's worth writing down. He's repeatedly abusing and arranged marriage raping a 13-year-old girl and this is a book for children. Thank the gods he died before she got knocked up!

And the extra sad thing is, Anetka just wants him to love her, like he clearly did his dead wife. He calls her by the dead wife's name a couple times. But no, he just continues to be a douche and dies before she hardens her heart against him, which I wish she'd done. I also wish she'd bitched out her father, who's another alcoholic idiot, but she never does. She yells at the two of them once, but that's not nearly enough to make up for what she's put through.

Thankfully though, douchebag husband is killed halfway through and then the book gets good again. Anetka is very enterprising for 13 and you root for her to succeed and for her and Leon to finally get together.

It's a good story that's briefly mired in a bunch of squicky things. It's hard to look past the horror this author chose to write about to find the good stuff, but it's worth the read as long as you can handle the yick.

I do think this author's on the fucked up side though. This is the same chick who wrote the overly dramatic book I ripped apart not long ago. Is she aware she's writing for children? Because I don't think she is.

DEAR CANADA: Great Fire of St. John's

This is the diary of a very well-off girl in St. John's, who loses almost everything in the devastating fire. Triffie is presented as spoiled sometimes, but she's a very likeable character despite. She doesn't lord her status or money over anyone. The way she writes about things is more matter of fact, as it's all she knows.

The family owns a store and the stone warehouse is saved from the fire, so they all move into it and start salvaging what they can of their business.

It sounds rather boring summed up, but Triffie's such a likeable character that you want to read about her ups and downs. I like this one a lot.

ROYAL DIARIES: Kaiulani

You would think this would be an interesting book, because Hawaii! That's different and I'd like to learn about it.

But no.

The first part of the book takes place in Hawaii and it's the most interesting part. But Kaiulani is really not that different from the European diaries we've read in this series. Her life is rather dull, having to do political things and following all these boringly proper procedures so no one is offended blah blah blah. She likes to ride her horse and has pet peacocks and is friends with Robert Louis Stevenson. The most interesting parts are the more Hawaiian ones, but those are few and far between, because it's 1889. I'd like to learn more about Hawaiian history, but back farther in time.

Then the latter half of the book is her in England and I found it so dreadfully dull that I ended up skimming the last half. The political turmoil is mildly interesting, but not that much, because you know what happens and it isn't good.

I'm going to have the same This Does Not End Well struggle with the final Royal Diary, but at least Anastasia's story is more interesting than this.

DEAR CANADA Mill Girl

This book's title makes you think it's going to be horrible and depressing, but it's not. The diary is mostly focused on the people Flora knows and what she experiences. I don't even know if 10% of it is written about the mill.

The main effect of the mill has nothing to do with child labor and instead has her uncle losing fingers in a mill accident. He's basically an ass after that until Flora and her aunt concoct a scheme, writing to the uncle's brother, who then writes him, pretending not to know of his injury and asking for help on his farm out in British Columbia. At the end of the book, they decide move.

That's not saying this isn't a good read. It is. It's just very often not about working in a mill at all, which should kind of be the point, I think. You get the sense that the mill is dangerous and kids shouldn't be working there, but at the same time, it's presented as a necessary evil, and Flora even pulls a trick to keep her job. Days of Toil and Tears are not what's presented by the majority of the story at all.